After mistakenly playing the next game release-order-wise last time (thanks PS4 collection menu!) it’s finally time to tackle Kingdom Hearts II in this on-and-off marathon of my first time playing the series, and I was excited about this more than most because it’s often cited as the best one. Now obviously I still have three main games and two spin-offs to look at yet (not counting mobile titles, which I won’t be covering gameplay wise at least) so I can’t say “I agree!” but I did enjoy myself a lot, which can never be a bad thing… let’s take a closer look at the game then, nearly 20 years after its initial release (Coincidentally!)
Background:
Childhood versions of Final Fantasy characters square off with evil zipper men, no pun intended (with the use of “square”, not “evil zipper men”)
Kingdom Hearts II was first released for the PS2 on December 22nd 2005 in Japan, followed by a US release March 28th 2006, with the PAL release arriving September 28th 2006. On March 29th 2007 a “Final Mix” version with additional content was released for the PS2 in Japan only, at least until the up-scaled port dubbed “Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix” came to the PS3 on October 2nd 2014 in Japan and then December 2nd/5th in the US/Europe. 2.5 Remix was then paired with 1.5 Remix to release on the PS4 as “Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix” and released in March 2017 worldwide. It has since come to XBOX One and PC via Steam, as well as a nasty and unnecessary Cloud version for the Switch.
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix was then bundled with “Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue” as “Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far”, which is how I own all these early titles in the series, and THAT was later added together with Kingdom Hearts III. I know I went over this in the past with the original game, but it does make me laugh how most ports and remakes get a one port with a subtitle, if that…
Gameplay:
Kingdom Heart Warriors …. Actually, that would be a pretty fun idea!
The gameplay at its core is still an action RPG allowing you completely free movement in battle to hack and slash your way through enemies, with a menu at the bottom left giving your access to special attacks, magic and items. The biggest change and one I really didn’t like was that the ability to dodge roll has been essentially removed and replaced with “Reaction Commands” along with a regular block button. Reaction Commands are as they sound, when fighting an enemy a green triangle-looking symbol appears and if you press triangle in time you either attack with more damage, counter or dodge out of the way, depending on the situation. It’s basically my old nemesis-of-fun QTEs returning, which given the year the game was made is about right, if not a little early in adopting it. Did I get used to it? Yeah. Are some of the counter animations satisfying to look at? Yeah. Did it get annoying when I really wanted to just dodge out of the way of an attack but got hit because I forgot I can’t? Yeah. Is having to finish off certain bosses being down to reaction presses rather than skill really annoying? Yep! Mixed bag then, but I will say I had to redo the final boss three times, one because I cocked up, fair enough, first time etc, but the other two times was because of a button mashing mini-game right at the end that didn’t explain things very well, leading me to have to do the whole thing again twice, including some unskippable cut-scene style segments leading up to that one, so… yeah. Very annoying reminder of why that stuff was thankfully dropped!
As for the rest of combat? Very fun, the hits feel clean, the magic is good fun and your AI companions in Donald the mage and Goofy the … knight who only uses a shield are much more competent, have more variety in moves and commands that allow you to better dictate what they do. You can also use summons like the previous game and if you’re in one of the Disney worlds where either Donald or Goofy have been replaced with a one-off companion you can do essentially a tag team move with them if you’re close together. As you level up you’ll learn new moves and can assign them to either Sora, Donald, Goofy or the guest characters but each move costs a certain amount of “AP” and each character only has a specific amount (though it goes up when levelling up or when you use AP upping items) meaning you have to choose what skills to assign, which can be tricky as the skills run from basic stuff like seeing opponent’s health bar and blocking all the way up to magic attacks and powerful offensive moves. It adds a little bit of strategy I guess, but I would prefer a more straight forward progression system with maybe just a choice of big moves or something. Getting a big new move but not being able to use it without sacrificing a bunch of key gameplay mechanics or stripping yourself of other moves is a bit annoying.
Got to love Donald and Goofy having their actual black and white era designs… well, minus the staff and shield, obviously.
You have a health and magic meter that can be refilled by either saving or by picking up coloured orbs from defeated foes, as well as a Drive Gauge which can only be filled via coloured drops or special items. What does it do? Well, Sora has four “Drive Forms” that he can transform into: Wisdom Form (does lots of magic attacks, Donald disappears from the battle), Valour Form (increases his melee striking ability at the cost of Goofy), Limit Form (basically reverts Sora back to his KH I self, complete with dodge rolling!) and Master Form (very powerful attacks that have a wide area of damage) and each have their own general stat boosts, unique movesets that can be upgraded and each take a certain amount of Drive Gauge to activate, and while these forms are active the Gauge slowly depletes so you can only use them for a short amount of time. If you abuse the Gauge too much you can turn into the “Anti Form”, which gives Sora the appearance of a Heartless and while it can be detrimental due to lower stats it does give him a really long melee string, so it can be quite good in a glass canon kind of way. Near the end you can also get the “Final Form”, which has a little bit of everything and much bigger stat gains, though at the cost of more Gauge to activate. Each form can level up too, right up to 9 if you’re insane with the grinding and super boss killing. It’s really fun and extremely satisfying to use and experiment with, definitely the highlight of the game, gameplay-wise.
On the other hand the “lowlight” of the original game, gameplay-wise was the Gummi Ship segments and instead of seeing all the criticism and removing it for the sequel they kept it in and tried to do a better job with it, which they did but part of me couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just remove them… This time they’re more like a Starfox on-rails shooter with fancier camera angles and occasionally even big boss ships to take down (or hold out against until you reach the end), thankfully the ship plans you can unlock include some ships with enough armour and weaponry that you can get through the segments easy enough without having to mess with it. Instead of gaining teleporting system this time once you’ve cleared a route once you don’t have to do it again, so it’s still not very intrusive on the overall experience. Apart from your usual exploring environments, the odd side quest and plenty of mini-games in and out of Winnie the Pooh and his 100 Acre Woods, that’s your lot!
Flying down an F-Zero course in a Gummi Ship… is an odd sentence even if you are familiar with Kingdom Hearts!
It’s a great action RPG, I can see why it’s so popular thanks to the replayability with the Drive Gauge forms alone, but for me the QTE-like prompts knock it down a bit, and I really do prefer the ability to dodge attacks quickly during combat rather than just block or again, use the “Action Commands”. A lot of criticism of the game is found in its opening four or so hours, where instead of playing as Sora and the gang and moving the plot forward you play as Roxas in a digital recreation of Twilight Town where he, Axel and Shion spent all those long, long hours eating ice cream in, which at the time wasn’t a thing yet but thanks to me having mistakenly played 358/2 Days before this it was great finally getting the resolution to Roxas’ story before moving back to Sora, so I actually enjoyed it… There’s an upside to everything!
Graphics and Sound:
This rematch with the evil genie version of Jaffar really shows the bright colours, if nothing else!
Due to this being my first time experiencing the game I can only talk about this PS4 version, and it looks really nice. Colourful environments, the character models are detailed enough and have that fun Disney cartoon aesthetic blended with an anime flare in the case of the Square original cast, and generally it looks very nice and clean. Sure looking at Kingdom Hearts III footage shows how it’s still very much a HD version of a PS2 game, but due to being more cartoony they got away with a lot more than others would.
The sound is once again fantastic. The soundtrack is top class, the voice work well done and the sound effects are very pleasing to the ear, no complaints at all in that department.
Story:
The passing of the torch… back to the person who had the torch in the first place.
Now this is the funny thing because if I’d played in release order like I’d planned then I’d be going on about “playing as some random new character called Roxas at the start” but given I’ve already played through 358/2 Days I’ll start the story bit of this review from my perspective!
At the end of 358 Days Roxas, the “Nobody” of Sora (basically when someone is killed in certain ways their non-literal Heart turns into a Heartless while the body that gets left behind becomes a Nobody, and if you have a strong enough heart your Nobody can retain its likeness and an approximation of your personality as well, though in Roxas’ case his appearance is somebody else which I believe is explored in the next game…) was captured by Riku and the mysterious DiZ and soon finds himself in a digital recreation of Twilight Town, having befriended the trio of kids his real self saw a few times, playing some games, having fun, meeting more Final Fantasy characters (including a child Seifer from FF8 and weirdly Setzer from FF6!) and killing rogue Nobodies with his keyblade, those sort of fun childhood things. This is all done to preserve him until the real Sora wakes from his deep sleep and to protect him from Organisation XIII, who wish to exploit his ability to wield the keyblade again. Despite interference from Axel, a member of Org. XIII who was friends with Roxas when he was also a member and Roxas slowly finding out the truth about his existence and therefore throwing things into array, the plan works and Roxas finds himself in front of Sora bitterly accepting that his “summer vacation is over” and willingly getting reabsorbed into him in order to make Sora complete once again.
I don’t think it’s just their magic that clearly doesn’t belong in this world, Pete…
With the prologue over Sora wakes and meets back up with Donald and Goofy, his memories restored, apart from the goings on in Castle Oblivion (lucky bastard), so soon they meet back up with King Mickey and Yen Sid who tell them (and the audience at this point, assuming they played the games in release order…) all about Nobodies, Organisation XIII and what Riku has been up to before vanishing. This leads to them exploring different worlds looking for clues and running into Org. members who are messing about with the established plot of the films / natural order of the worlds. They return to Agrabah from Aladdin, Halloween Town from Nightmare Before Christmas (and actually visit Christmas Town and generally have more film-relevant scenes), do some more mini games in the 100 Acre Woods, and sing some extremely cheesy Disney songs in Atlantica (where the actual plot of the film is better adapted, even if you don’t really do anything other than a very basic rhythm game…) They also pay a visit to the Pridelands from The Lion King (where the cast is turned into animals and have different movesets as a result), the “Land of Dragons” from Mulan (ancient China somehow floating in the Kingdom Hearts void would be a bit confusing, to be fair), Beast’s Castle from Beauty and the Beast, the old timey world of Steamboat Willie and other early black and white Mickey Mouse adventures, which was good fun, Port Royal from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (which felt a bit at odds with everything as the cast looked more like regular humans…) and the cyber-world of Tron, weirdly enough, dubbed “Space Paranoids”. During most of these worlds we also encounter classic Disney foil Pete, who is working for the resurrected Maleficent who has some basic hold on the Heartless.
When not messing about in Disney worlds (visiting each location at least twice, which was a bit overkill in some places…) the main plot is pushed forward during visits to both Twilight Town but mostly Hollow Bastion, where Leon (a.k.a Squall), Aeirth, Yuffie, Cloud, Tiffa and more Final Fantasy and some other Disney characters call home. We find out that Ansem, the main villain from the first game, wasn’t actually Ansem and was instead a sentient Heartless of a man called Xehanort who managed to retain his personality in the same way some Nobodies can, that DiZ is the actual Ansem who once called Xehanort his protégé but he was cast into the realm of Darkness by him (hence he was “Darkness in Zero” or DiZ… whatever the hell that means) and that the head of Organisation XIII, Xemnas, is the Nobody of Xehanort, meaning we’re essentially facing the same boss again… During the plot Hollow Bastion is assaulted by a tidal wave of Heartless which not only had a very fun set piece fight where you have to kill 1,000 Heartless but also sees Cloud and Squall fighting back to back (that would’ve sent teenage me into an excitement fit, was still fun to see even now) and Sephiroth gets written into the storyline proper including some fun cutscenes with Cloud… sadly being part of the gaming circle I know full well pretty much all of the Final Fantasy stuff gets dropped from here on out.
*Spoilers for the ending from here to the next bolded sentence!*
Sora and the crew find a passageway to “The World That Never Was”, where Organisation XIII’s base is, and thanks to a remorseful Axel sacrificing himself to get them there they soon arrive and begin to assault the fortress, finding Kairi and her Nobody Namine there, already having been rescued by Riku, who thanks to becoming one with the Darkness inside him has taken the physical form of Ansem (the Xehanort Heartless version, not actual Ansem…) Xemnas manages to make Kingdom Hearts appear (well, he did that a while ago but I guess it’s near completion now is what they’re getting at) but his plans are stopped by the actual Ansem using some sort of special gun seemingly at the cost of his life but with the handy side effect of returning Riku to normal. At some point Namine returns to Kairi leading to a nice scene where Roxas and Namine sort of say goodbye to each other through Sora and Kairi and then its time for the final showdown with Xemnas.
Mmmmmm…. that’s good villain cheese, right there.
The battle is mostly Sora and Riku double-teaming him during some crazy set-pieces. After their victory Sora and Riku are trapped in the realm of Darkness but are soon saved by Kairi sending a message in a bottle filled with light or something that teleports them back to Destiny Islands for a big reunion with her, Mickey, Donald and Goofy. This was actually quite a satisfying and definitive end to the adventure really, but wouldn’t you know it? A post credits scene shows Sora, Riku and Kairi receive a letter from King Mickey that makes them all smile and nod, signifying more to come! … I mean, obviously playing this for the first time now means I knew there was more to come, but nobody did when this first released…
*Spoilers for the ending are over now!*
It’s funny given the length of the game it felt like the story had a lot more weight to it, but I guess when you don’t include the Disney side-steps there isn’t as much to talk about as I thought. Much like I’ve said the past three Kingdom Heart reviews I may not be the biggest Disney fan but luckily I’m completely familiar with all of the films adapted here, so that was still a good laugh, but really I just enjoy the over-designed characters waxing lyrical about Darkness and Light and deep-voiced villains over-gesturing as they monologue. It’s great fun!
Thoughts Now:
The previously mentioned scene of Cloud and Squall fighting back to back … *sigh* I’m kind of glad I know it doesn’t go anywhere ahead of time, stops the disappointment anyway…
Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix was a really fun ride, a mostly great combat system and fun over-the-top characters and plot to follow. The QTE-a-like system was a downer at points and having to write in second visits to all the worlds felt like padding, so I can’t say it’s a 5/5 “one of the best games ever made” like some say, but I can say it was a very good game that I wouldn’t be opposed to playing again down the line (not that I don’t still have enough brand new Kingdom Hearts on the plate in the future…)
Hogan Reviews 