It’s one of the thinnest excuses to go adventuring beyond “the barkeep says that a man in town is having trouble with rats in his basement” that I think I’ve ever heard before, and honestly, I’d be up for pest control if I didn’t know the truth about Kingdom Hearts 2.Īnd if you’re still reading this, you’re either getting ready to blast me in the comments or you’re just having a good time seeing someone criticize this game. If this sounds like a skinny plot for a thirty-five hour role playing game, it’s because it is.
Our cartoon trio whittles the cloaked mustache twirlers down in a series of increasingly gimmicky boss fights before making their way to The World That Never Was, a frustratingly named oxymoron of a place where the finale takes place. “I’m going to design a terrible Batman figure someday!”Įventually, the plot actually wakes up and puts the party most people actually give a damn about back in the spotlight, and it’s off to a series of new worlds, fighting a collection of Nobodies (or as you should call them, silver heartless), and heartless (saying Black Heartless sounds bloody racist doesn’t it?) and Organization XIII members. When the most interesting thing that happens in the start of your JRPG is a fan favorite from Final Fantasy IX showing up, you’re not doing a good job getting me into your new schtick, Nomura. Especially since the narrative of Kingdom Hearts 2 expects me to shed a tear when the blonde haired git gets the axe after five hours of minigames and walking around a bland starter town fighting the same small group of monsters while hanging out with uninteresting characters. The first hours of the long awaited sequel finds the player in the shoes of newcomer Roxas, who is Sora’s Nobody, while our heroes from the first game are in a state of hibernation to have their memories restored after suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after having to endure Castle Oblivion and poorly designed card game mechanics in Chain of Memories. I am aware that I’ve lost half of my readers as of this last sentence, a combined group of angry Kingdom Hearts fans and people who think that this story stupid at the mention of a Nobody.Īnd one of these groups is dead-on right, because the concept of a Nobody is a complication that a story about touring the Disney archives doesn’t need. Mulan was a pretty cool movie…God help us if they do a live action remake. Oh, and Donald Duck still doesn’t give a damn about your screaming low health indicator. The ability crafting system in Birth By Sleep is of merit, however, for giving some level of depth to the systems that are in place, but I still mostly hammered the X button while loading two Curaga’s into my loadout to keep the three protagonists of that game afloat. There is little RPG gameplay to be found in this series, and it’s not mechanically sound enough to encourage much in the way of high-level play.
The reality is that Kingdom Hearts is a series of brawlers operating in the context of an RPG. Note, from this point on, I will not be discussing much of what makes these games different in terms of how they are played.
The opening hours of Kingdom Hearts 2 are a clear indicator of this fact. Kingdom Hearts, clearly, wasn’t intended to have sequels. Yes, I know that this is from 358/2 Days.
What followed Kingdom Hearts was undoubtedly one of the worst games I have ever finished in my life, Chain of Memories, which served as a sampler of the narrative insanity that was soon to follow. The gameplay was simple as an RPG could get, the narrative simple enough to follow (Maleficent steals the pure hearts of Disney princesses to open a realm of untold knowledge and power), and is wrapped in enough Disney and Final Fantasy fan service to make your average Baldur’s Gate fan vomit.Īnd with millions of copies sold, the newly minted Square Enix did what any company would do with a hit: make a sequel. The match was truly made in financial heaven two entertainment behemoths coming together to milk the trinity of nostalgia, fan service, and accessibility to create a Final Fantasy game about Disney characters made for a fun game that could easily be enjoyed by anyone with two functioning thumbs and a penchant for melodramatic cartoon characters. In fact, I quite liked the first game in the series. Oh yeah, we’re gonna do this whole thing!įirst and foremost, I want to put a disclaimer at the head of this article: I don’t hate Kingdom Hearts.