A 
Review by tashi
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Background Information:
I never played Kingdom Hearts, so Kingdom Hearts II was my first exposure to the series. I finished KH2 in about a week and clocked 55 hours of gameplay. Now, here's the review.
Genre:
Action RPG (with shooter segments)(also with some minigames)
Story:
You start the game controlling Roxas and in the beginning section of the game, cutscenes recap the events of Kingdom Hearts, so if you forget what happened or never played it, it's not a big deal. After you finish the introduction, you play as Sora with Goofy and Donald in your party, traveling around Disney worlds to help Disney characters with their life problems. The overarching story is that Sora really misses Kairi and Riku and wants to find them. Also, Sora is trying to discover the mystery behind Organization XIII and the Heartless.
Gameplay and Controls:
Gameplay consists of about equal parts of cutscene and combat. Combat is generally carried out solely with the x button. Sometimes square can be pressed to block or do finishing moves, and triangle is used for "reaction commands." Reaction commands are context specific actions, such as grabbing an enemy's weapon or deflecting bullets or dodging. Drive forms are special transformations of Sora which last a short period of time, boosting his stats and changing the color of his outfit. Leveling up is done in a very user-friendly fashion. Dead characters gain experience, and all characters in your party gain equal experience, and when you meet new characters, they are always your level, so you don't have to waste time leveling up different party members. Like FFIX and other RPGs, your characters have Ability Points (AP) and different abilities, which cost certain amounts of AP. Some abilities are passive, like "Lucky Lucky" which increases drop rate of rare items, and others are active, like "Trinity Limit" which you activate in battle from the Limit Menu. The UI is very user-friendly overall, having plenty of information to let you know what's going on, and it's also intuitive. In battle, the D-Pad lets you switch between magic, items, drives, summons, etc in a manner which is much simpler than it sounds.
Besides the normal gameplay, there is also a small shooter built in called the Gummi Ship. To get to different worlds, you have to travel through the Gummi Ship levels, which are something like a watered down, plotless Starfox 64. There is a custom Gummi Ship editor so you can build your own ships, or just use the default models. In the Winnie the Pooh section of the game, there are a number of minigames, such as riding on a pot of honey, or flying around hitting tree trunks. The basic formula of the game is this: go to a new world, watch cutscene, fight some enemies, watch cutscene, fight boss, watch cutscene, leave world, play gummi ship level, enter new world. After that point, it just repeats.
Graphics and Sound:
Graphics are very pleasant. Light and colorful. Nice to look at. A nice detail is that different equipment has different models in game and in cutscenes and also has different special effects. Sound is top notch and most of the tracks are either arrangements of Disney songs or Square stuff.
Conclusion:
A very friendly game overall. Dying lets you continue from a nearby point in the story, and on Proud Mode (hard mode) you might die pretty often, but you'll manage to get through. I did really hate the tron cycle part, though... But that's only one annoying spot out of an otherwise shallow, enjoyable game. Well, one warning: the beginning can be kind of slow. If you keep with it, though, you'll eventually be rewarded.
Tabasco on 04/07/2008
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