Kingdom Hearts 2

[FMW]

My thoughts regarding Kingdom Hearts II:

 

This game has severe pacing issues. Kingdom Hearts has three main components to my mind. There's the main story, this is the over the top anime stuff with somebodies, nobodies, secret identities, people inside other people, and great hair. There's the RPG grind, this is the combat and powering up progression. Then there's the Disney part, which gives us mini episodic stories and our settings.

 

This game starts with an absolutely terrible introductory sequence. There's no clear conflict, no Disney to distract, and very very little RPG grind happening. It's several hours of walking around a non-hostile environment triggering story sequences that are poorly written and take twice as long (at least) as they need to. Believe me, I was as receptive an audience as Square Enix was going to find for a sequence like this. I just got finished with Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, so I actually had a fairly good idea of what was going on and why I should care. And still I didn't! Words fail me in describing just how tedious this is and how long it feels.

 

Eventually (finally) the introduction wraps up. Hooray! You get to fight a cool boss or two and the main story advances a smidgen. You can start on the game proper finally, Sora and pals adventuring through Disney worlds. At first, I was really happy with this. The mechanics are somewhat refined from the original, and the Gummy ship is actually kinda fun now! The game establishes a pattern, coasting from world to world with Gummy breaks between each. At this point in the game you start to see how much additional care and detail has gone into working with the Disney franchises this time around. The unique look of the different films is much better captured and there's a lot more cameo content.

 

But you remember how I said there are three parts to Kingdom Hearts? You journey around these worlds for upwards of seven hours without any additional motion on the main story front at all.

 

It's okay to be episodic, and it's okay to tell miniturized stories that are self contained. Unfortunately these episodes cannot stand on their own. It's worth noting here that past Kingdom Hearts games have adapted the Disney stories ever so slightly to fit their "theme" for the game. Kingdom Hearts 1 added a spin about friendship to everything. Chain of Memories added something about "memories". Birth by Sleep split every Disney story into thirds, (you played as three characters). Kingdom Hearts 2 doesn't adapt the source material nearly so well as it's predecessors. There doesn't seem to be any central theme to the Disney reinterpretations. It doesn't connect to the main plot, it doesn't contribute thematically, and (I can't stress this enough) watching it takes forever. Cutscenes in this game are unbearably long all the way through. The goal seems to have been to adapt the original movies while making as few changes as possible to work in Sora. The end result is long stretches of watching second rate cliff notes versions of classic Disney films. I quickly lost interest in these extended videos because they don't contribute to the main plot and I already know the Disney stories. And I've seen them done a million times better.

 

By the time I was done with my first jog around the worlds I was pining for the beginning sequence again, but at the end of the beginning sequence I had been pining for just about angameything else at all. I humbly suggest that a more balanced mixture of the various Kingdom Hearts ingredients would have made the first half of this game considerably better.

 

Having finished my first tour of duty, I was sent back to the "hub" planet such as exists - Hollow Bastion. And then the game FINALLY started hitting a fun pace. The music in Hollow Bastion opens with some groovy jazz chords, the Final Fantasy characters all hang out there, you get some progression on the main story front finally, and the Disney stuff starts finally getting mixed in with the Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy stuff. Malificent faces off against the Organization? Mickey Mouse charges an army? TRON is inside Ansems computer? Rapid fire co-operative combat with Final Fantasy heroes? Yes please! The cameos come fast and furious here, none overstaying their welcome and each actually contributing to the main plot in some way. This sequence is great stuff! I'm baffled as to why the rest of the game isn't like this.

 

This sequence is just that though, a singular sequence in an RPG of many hours. When you leave Hollow Bastion again you are instructed to visit all the worlds you already visited a second time, and your ultimate goal has still not changed at all. Just wander through the worlds looking for Riku. Didn't find him the first time through? No sweat, just do it again - he's sure to be on one of them! Maybe you just missed him. ...yeah, the justification for the main quest in this game is as threadbare as it comes. I found the second half of the game more bearable than the first though. Why? Because most of the Disney stories had already been played out so the cinematic content revolved more around killing off Organization XIII members and other somewhat more original vignettes. It's still not great stuff mind, but it's leagues better than what you sit through the first time. Of course, these improvements are balanced out by the fact that you're visiting the same places killing the same enemy types listening to the same music.

 

To summarize/conclude: Kingdom Hearts II is deeply flawed. None of the individual facets of the three part franchise construction (Disney Story, KH Story, Gameplay) are strong enough to carry the game on their own, and yet each is given ample time on it's own without support from the others. The beginning is all KH story and it's boring as all hell. The first trip to the worlds is all Disney Story, and the adaptation of the Disney stories is easily the worst it's ever been in this franchise. When the game finally mixes the KH story with the Disney story at the same time it's when you're doing a second visit to all the worlds, so even though they got the story parts right the gameplay pillar lets them down. I'm really upset with how this game turned out because when the Disney isn't too long winded, the environments are novel, the cameos cycle with decent frequency, and the main plot is advancing all at once it can be quite gripping. Too bad they only got that mix right once or twice in the entire game.