lindalove

So picked this up Wednesday and have already invested 10 hours of my life into it.

Solid. Ultra Solid. Gamplay is improved over the last iteration although the relative difficulty has been racheted up somewhat (Normal equilvalent to Expert on KH1, IMO). Dual Keyblades rock.

One quibble, the bloody prologue took me six hours to beat. There was no real reason for the length as you don't gain any great benefits from spending time there (at least that I've found without a FAQ)

Some of the voices have changed to my disappointment. Billy Zane's (Ansem) and David Borenaez's (Leon) absences are most notable to me. Haley Joel Osmet's (Sora) deeper voice is a little jarring but is in line with the character.

The gummi ship remains tedious to create but the missions are fun so it's worth the time investment to me.

All in all a 9 out of 10 so far. It's telling when I'm ten hours into a game and haven't made a lot of progress but had a great time doing it.

Seething

I picked this up as soon as possible too. I was a big fan of the first one, even though the series is kinda kid oriented. When I first started playing it, I was immediately left confused and wondering what the hell was going on. The story continued in Chain of Memories for the GBA and I have never played it. It pissed me off that they didn't recap what happened, but I quickly jumped to my friend the internet and read a story summary. Once that was out of the way, I've been playing non-stop.

It looks great, sounds great, and plays great. I've only got a couple of qualms about it so far (about 12 hours in). First, the new gummi ship builder is worse than before, taking a long time to build anything and horrible controls. Second, the drive forms need experience to level, but the bar takes so long to fill, that you rarely get to use it enough to level it. Third, each world seems really short, lasting about 30-40 minutes. You get a special party member in most worlds, but you can only use them for a short time. (And my favorite character from FFX, Auron, is with you only 2 minutes!!!)

Other than that, I'm really enjoying the game. They made a lot of improvements over the first and kept a lot of the good parts at the core of gameplay.

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guthmund

I'm in the middle of a love/hate relationship with this one.

I really like the story, I really like the characters and I really like how they put it all together. However....

The prologue is way too long. The little dialogue beats between characters are too long and often times redundant. Sure you can skip them, but more often than not amid all the "I'm going to go check out the station." and "You should really go check out the station." crap, there's a teeny nugget of 'need-to-know' that aids in understanding the story. I had been 'playing' (according to the save menu) for 2 hours. Actual 'me-physically-manipulating-character-time?' like 15 minutes.

Once the story gets going it's pretty solid. Now, I've only been through the prologue, Hollow Bastion and part of Beast's Castle, but it seems that the worlds aren't as open as they were in the first one. In the first game, I got completely lost in Hollow Bastion. I wandered all around the joint before finally finding the right way to go..it was irritating, but that's what made it a great game. In this one....well, it's not the same.

Don't get me wrong, I like a lot about this game. I like the new look, I like the menus, the new 'drive' options and the controls are a lot less cumbersome than in the first. These are just my first impressions...I'll wait to reserve judgement until later.


You guys are spot on...the gummi ship stuff is still pretty horrible.

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Willravel

OMG, Mickey Mouse has a sword!!!

Usually these types of games are not my cup of tea (I'm a Star Craft/Star Wars Battlefront type of gamer), but this one really has my attention. As said above, the gameplay is quite solid, even when compared to it's predecesor. It's better not to think of the prologue as a prologue, btw. I'm curious to see where this franchise is heading.

lindalove

I'm revising my estimate of the difficulty on this game. Once you gain some abilities and equipment for Sora, its not really difficult at all on standard difficulty.

Still a good game well worth the purchase price, I just wish it was a little less button mashing (not that the first was any better in that regard)

sadistikdreams

Is it true that Chicken Little is in the game?

Prophecy

Chicken Little is supposed to be a summon I believe.

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Seething

Yeah, Chicken Little is the first summon you get. IMO, he's also the worst summon, but I'm not very fond of summons at all. He's still voiced by Zach Braff in the game too, and being a big fan of Scrubs, I pull him out every once and a while to hear ol' J.D.

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ChistledStone

ARGGGG Don't remind me. You guys are going to chuckle at this, but not without reason.

I still

have not

beat the

ORIGINAL

not even

the

first

LEVEL!?

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Anexkahn

i just started this last night and i too have to agree that the prologue is very long and painful. its just way slow and most of it is unnecessary. I'd have loved to see that whole 3ish hours condensed into about 30 minutes and it would have given me the same storyline and intro to gameplay.

After it gets going tho it gets better very fast.

Lasereth

I've read that the gameplay is worse than the first. I didn't like the first one because all you did was ram on X as fast as you can. You didn't even have to cast a single spell or make your teammates do anything to win battles. Just run up to the enemy and press X as fast as you can. Well, in the reviews I've read, they've said it's actually <I>worse</I> in KH2...that you can press X as fast as you can and never even LOOK at your spells and abilities and beat the game. The graphics are great, the levels are great, the characters are cool, the story is awesome, but man, I hate the combat system in the KH games.

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Anexkahn

yeah, thats a pretty fair assessment so far. I'm a bit over 14 hours in now and havent even looked at spells or any of the other abilities. can prettmuch just X plow through anything so far. Im on normal difficulty tho, if i bumped it up that might change.

guthmund

okay...


It really doesn't.

I'm revisted about half of the worlds so far and it still really isn't all that difficult. It's a bit more difficult in the beginning, but once you hit double-digit levels...

Sometimes Goofy and Donald croak out, and there are some exceptions, but for the most part it's still just 'chain together a bunch of combos and tap X as fast as you can.'

It really is worse than the first. There's an option menu that lets you can change the way your teammates behave in battle in the general sense, but it doesn't seem to matter. Whether they fight close to me or far, far away, it doesn't seem to make a difference. I cast no spells other than the 'heal' series. I think I pulled out some thunder magic for the second boss in Port Royale, but I can't be sure.

The battle system is such a shame. I was real excited about context sensitive moves, the new limit system and the new 'forms,' but it's all for nothing. That is to say, it really doesn't matter whether I use them or not. They look nice and I'm sure they'll impress your friends when you show them the game, but you don't have to utilize any of that stuff to succeed. It's an 'X-button' Mash-o-Rama, which is painfully clear when they hurl dozens and dozens of heartless at you at a time.

It feels like half a game. Although there are a lot of worlds, each one is painfully linear (From A go to B-cutscene-Back to B and then on to C to defeat boss.) Some of the mini-game stuff is fun, but all of it's so ridiculously easy...

And they must have recycled a half dozen of the original bad guys...Oogie Boogie? Ursula (resurrected with the same damn story from the first game no less)? Jafar? and the queen of mean,Maleficent really hasn't done all that much except yell at Pete.

I get that there's only so much material to work with and that it's inevitable baddies are going to be resurrected, but don't just bring them back for the sake of bringing them back. And change up the storylines a bit, eh? I got the gist Ariel's story in the first game when I played Atlantica...I'd like not to sit through it again.

Although the narrative gets lost every once in a while, the story is still pretty good and the synthesize system seems to be a lot easier to mess with. I think the graphics are spot on and the voice acting (even the 'replacement' voice acting) is still pretty good. It's a great game, just not as a great a game as was promised.

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Lasereth

I agree with you whole-heartedly about the combat system in the KH games but that paragraph REALLY nails it. When I played the first one I felt cheated out of $50 because it didn't feel like a complete game with the button masher combat system and linear paths. I suppose Square-Enix is attempting to make the series amiable with kiddies, teenagers, and adults, but I would really have liked a turn-based combat system. Or hell -- any sort of combat system. Vagrant Story for the PS1 as well as Parasite Eve proved that RTC systems can work -- since Square developed both of those, I really wonder why the combat system in KH is so lackluster.

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guthmund

It's funny that you mention Square-Enix trying to make the series appealling to everyone...

I overheard my nephew and his friend talking about KH2 last weekend and they were discussing many of the same things we've discussed. The whole thing just feels dumbed down, from the 87 hour prologue to the redundant cut-scenes. But it's Disney, so, it's expected.

You're absolutely right, an RTC system would've been a nice way to go with the KH series.

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CityOfAngels

When I originally heard of Kingdom Hearts, I thought, "Oh cool; a squaresoft RPG with Disney characters. They did it with Mario; you can't go wrong with Disney." They didn't go wrong, but I was still incorrect. Instead of it being an RPG with Disney characters, they made it a Disney game with RPG characters. Because of this, it didn't hold my attention like Final Fantasy 6-8 did, and all of my little cousins loved the game. I was personally disappointed in this game, but I guess it does make sense to do what they did as far as finding a big market goes.

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