Kingdom hearts 2 is actually the third game in the franchis with chain of memories taking place between kh1 and kh2. The game starts out with an incredibly long and almost unforgivable tutorial section. I say almost because Roxas's litte story arc at the beggining is actually pretty interesting and kinda sad. By the end of the tutorial you actually find Roxas to be a pretty likeable character and you feel pretty bad for him. Now if a game can make you get attached to a character that has only had about a one hour story arc you know you're in for an incredible game. All that being said the tutorial is way to long and really needs to be shortened. When you finally take control of Sora the games pace picks up and you're off visiting Disney worlds again and its just as brilliant as last time. All of the worlds are vibrant and filled with nostalgia with some pretty interesting new world's like beast's castle, Mulan, and even PIRATES OF THE FREAKING CARRIBEAN. Now I had a few problems with the original game but this game mostly fixes all of them. For starters the games camera now has a y axis so you can look up and down. YEAH!!!! THe gummi ship segments are incredibly improved. Every gummi ship segment is a really good space shoot em up with a few of the gummi stages feeling like F-Zero which is amazing. THe only thing that they didn't improve on over the original is ATLANTICA. Instead of just entirely scrapping the world like they should have they turn the entire world into a rhythem/quick time event game. You don't even explore the world anymore like in the previous games you're just stuck in these two little areas where you select the song that you want to do. That's right I said soong all of the quick time events are set to music so you're stuck doing these stupid and painfull songs. Thats really the only gripe I have with the game. Everything else improved over the original. The combat is quickened with a lot of new abilites wich make yor combos longer. THe new addition of drive forms which lets you dual wield keyblades is amazing and the story is a little more complicated then the original but that actually lends itself to the game and makes it even better. Pretty much all of the bosses are awesome with none that are nessecarily bad except for ursula which is just another long quick time event since its in Atlantica. The end game content is massive especially with all of the coloseum tournaments that you may fight through if you want to 100% the game. The last coloseum match is a pain if you actually decide to try to 100% complete the game but it is doable and the cutscen of pegasus kicking hades in the face at the end is so cathartic. Finally I'm going to talk about my favorite part of the game the optional and final boss. This game only has one optional boss if you don't count the coloseum bosses. That boss being the one winged angel Sephiroth and he is a little bit harder than the last time but its twice as epic to fight and thrash him. What makes it even better is tat he has his own little story arc that ties in with Cloud's own little story arc making him less of an optional boss and more of a sidequest. Which is great. The final boss is one of the greatest final bosses I have ever had the immense pleasure of fighting. Yes its an easy fight but it so climatic and cinematic feeling without getting into to many cinematics and its just so freaking epic. I'm not going to spoil any of this boss because of just how amazing he is but this boss is worth the price of admission alone. All in all Kingdom Hearts 2 is a masterpiece in its own right and definitely a worthy succesor to Kingdom Hearts 1. I highly recommend this game to everyone whether or not their a kingdom hearts fan or not.
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