March 29th, 2006 what an exciting day
that was. Upon coming home to
school I almost immediatly
jumped into my sister's car and we drove off towards EB Games to buy the sequel
to the best game ever released , well at that point it was the best game ever
released, with my friend scott, I returned home right away and placed the
game into my PS2. My life, at least for the next month, was over. That night I
played through the first 4 hours and 15 minutes until I got to Hollow Bastion.
My first Disney world would of course
have to wait until the next
day. Less then a week later I had already
beaten the game with a total time of about 42 hrs. So I decided
today I'll review Nomura's Masterpiece.
Story
100/100: This, in my opinion, is the main attraction to this game. The
gameplay, sounds, music, graphics, everything else is attractive as well but it
would not be the best game if it weren't
for the story. To anyone who plans to pick this game up I will let you know that
you should plan on playing Chain of Memories before hand. You
start off 6 days before Sora reawakens and my what a
great story did Nomura make for this one. The
Nobodies are an even more powerful enemy then the Heartless
and are alot harder to beat.
The Massive and in some ways complex story gets pieced together bit by bit as
you travel from world to world in search of Kairi, Riku, and the King with a finale
that almost made me cry. It's
almost as if Nomura is trying to torture us with anticipation for the Third Title.
Gameplay
97/100: Now the gameplay is of course
important as well. And nearly every aspect of the game is
perfect in gameplay. The gameplay is fast paced and action-packed and definitely
with looking at. Even things that most developers would look over like the synthesis
and gummi-ship areas have been vastly improved. The
gummi-ship battles are fast and often keep you on your
seat instead of in the first one where you basically
traveled at half the speed of smell on a track. The synthesis portions are my
favourite. With all the new ways you can create items, it definitely is worth
using synthesis this time around.
However my one beef with the
gameplay is the Limits and Summons. The Summons
main fault is that there are so few, I really wish the design
more than 4 for the third. But why I dislike the Limits
and Summons so much is because
I think they should be reversed.
I think that Limits should use the drive bar and that Summons should use the MP
bar. It just seems to make sense
since usually summons are something that consumes Magic and Limits are something
that may or may not contain magic so why would you need to use
magic to use them. Otherwise the gameplay is picture
perfect though. Sounds
95/100: The sound effects in this game are perfect. I mean absolutely
perfect. If you have this game and don't understand why the sound effects are
so
perfect, play the timeless river and you'll find out why. With the classic 1920s-1930s
sound effects and the sound of a rolling film in the background it almost makes
you think everything around you is black and white for a while. The music is just
as perfect as it was in the first game. But where the sound deserves a 95 is in
the voice acting department.
Now most of the voice acting is awesome, I mean Christopher Lee is in the game
playing DiZ, but characters like Demyx, Xigbar, and Cid really need to
get new voice actors. All three of their voices weren't
good at all. Cid just had a voice that didn't seem to fit with the Kingdom Hearts
enviorment and Xigbar sounded like a surfer dude. I really wanted to kill him
ASAP in the battle because the way he says Roxas just pisses me off. Demyx's voice
sound really whiny and the fact that they couldn't get all the disney voice actors
hurt the game as well. I mean most of the voice acting is good, like in Port Royale,
where even though they didn't have the original voice actors they didn't seem
far off, but Barbossa's script reading was a bit dry and Jack
Sparrow sounded like Johnny Depp but still the even small difference made was
noticable. Alot of the Final Fantasy characters weren't handed good lines which
hurts them alot, I mean Seifer says "That is undeniable proof that we totally
owned you lamers." and Aerith's voice actor just kept skipping beats and it sounded
like
crap. Graphics
99/100: Each world in kingdom hearts is like an interactive cartoon.
When your in the disney worlds never once do you say "This 2D character looks
weird in 3D." because it's almost as if you don't notice that it's 3D. Sora, Donald,
and Goofy blend in so well from world to
world that it never once occurs to you that they should be hear. Even in worlds
like the Timeless River, Tron, and Pirates of the Caribbean which most likely
presented the most challenges to the Kingdom Hearts team. That being
said, there are a few minor things that could be improved, like how from far away
the mouths still look like they move randomly and stuff like how the boats don't
leave
ripples in the Pirates of the Caribbean world. Also of course as with all PS2
games not everything is perfectly round. Otherwise with graphics the game is almost
perfect. The animations are as fluid as have ever been seen in a video game yet.
Even things from jumping to swinging the keyblade to complex reaction
commands and drive combo finishers is done as fluidly as humanly possible. There
is no fault at all in the animations. Overall
100/100: Overall I give Kingdom Hearts II a perfect score. Now you might
be wondering why when I didn't give everything a perfect 100. The reason KHII
gets a perfect score is because it has the best combination of sound, gameplay,
story, and graphics in a video game yet. There hasn't been a point since I got
it that I haven't wanted to watch, hear, or play the game. Tetsuya is an absolutely
mastermind at concept design and he brings us along for a wonderful ride. Not
only that but Square Enix and Disney never forgot their hardcore fans. The Beginner
difficulty is easy enough for a 5 year old to beat, the Standard difficulty is
perfect for the average gamer and the Proud difficulty is hard enough to give
any gamer a challenge. This game is the most replayable game known to man, you
can speed through the game in 35 hours and still have tons of fun. This is the
game of the year for sure, no matter what IGN says.
