Sequel fixes almost all problems in first game and makes them better.

User Rating: 8 | Kingdom Hearts II PS2

The Good: Charming story, interesting characters, excellent voice acting, smoother controls, fun space levels, epic boss battles.

The Bad: Weak dialouge from Square Enix characters, easy difficulty, Atlantica.

If you've seen my last review, you'll know how I feel about the original. But you know, why not try the direct sequel, also the first Kingdom Hearts game I've ever played? That would be Kingdom Hearts 2.

This game is kind of like the first game. There's Sora, Donald, Goofy, Chip, Dale, and those guys. There's also some new faces like Roxas and Seifer and those people. Sora is still on a journey to find Kairi and restore piece to the world from the opposing heartless. Okay, now onto the review.

Let's see if this makes sense- the story is so bad that it is good. It's such a train wreck! It's so confusing and stupid that you just love it. It's got a lot of heart. The characters are interesting and the voice acting is great. The same can't be said for the spoken dialogue that the Square Enix characters say. The Disney characters have classic lines from their movies to perfectly set the tone for whatever world your in and you can't help but be awe inspired at those moments. Square Enix characters say things like "We totally owned you lamers." Yeah.

The controls are much better in this game than in the original. You really have more control of your character and the camera controls work great. And usually, QuickTime events suck, but in this game, they're awesome. Not only does it make combat easier, but flashier and more fun.

Something that was also made better was the space levels. The visuals are great, the controls are easy to use even though there's some button mashing involved, and it's pretty challenging. Plus, you don't have to do them constantly like in the first game! In the first game, you go through a space mission every time you go from world to world until you have the warp. In this game, you just do it to unlock the world. But it's still fun to just go back to those moments.

The worst part of the game is, you probably saw this coming, is Atlantica. This world is a pointless excuse for a world in this game. In the first game you actually did something in Atlantica. You actually had the ability to kill heartless in the first game Atlantica. The Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts 2 is there for one purpose and one purpose only- to go through boring Quicktime events where you press one button to the tune of songs. Most of them aren't even Little Mermaid songs! What's worse is that to actually beat the world, you have to go through the actual story, making you go through this world more than the others. It gets extremely annoying knowing you have to go back to that world multiple times.

Like the first game, the best part of the game is the boss battles. They're epic! Even better than the ones in the first game. There's a huge range of them throughout the course of the game. It also contains one of the greatest final battles ever- Xemnas. It may not be the toughest battle in the world, but it is technically and visually amazing.

Speaking of difficulty, another weak point of the game is the difficulty. The first Kingdom Hearts game had a fair balance between easy and hard with some moments easy and some moments really frustrating. This game is really easy. Almost insultingly easy. There are different difficulty settings, but that doesn't matter. This game is just easy.

Overall, this game is a lot of fun. It has a few restrictions, like the easy gameplay, the weak dialogue, and Atlantica, those are pretty easily made up for its smooth controls, awesome graphics, likeable train wreck of a story, and stellar voice acting. If you haven't played this game, you are missing out.