“A far off dream
that’s like a scattered memory, a scattered memory that’s like a far off dream,
I want to line the pieces up, yours, and mine.”
Dammit Square you consistently make it difficult for me to
hate you. After several years of playing
Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ and pretending I understand the squiggly lines
that make up the Japanese language, you finally cave in and give me one in
English. How can I hate you for that? Anyway, This really is the definitive
edition of the game. Rather than go through the entire game and pick it apart,
as I have done in the past, I’m simply going to go over the new content. If you
are reading this and would like to know my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts 2 then
you are reading the wrong article.
This
game does, most, everything right. Not only are there fun things to collect,
like crown pieces, but there are some great, challenging, puzzles to solve as
you collect them. Also, there are more conversations between the organization.
That was one of my biggest gripes with Kingdom
Hearts 2, that, with all the shit that
was
happening, the player never saw the organization planning anything, not once.
And the scene at the end of the game with Siax and Xemnas doesn’t count. Also
in this game we get to fight the other organization members. The game kind of just
does a half ass job of explaining it saying something like “Hey remember when—
oh right you went to sleep for a year and forgot everything, no worries though
teleport through these randomly placed data portals and you will get to fight
the people you’ve forgotten.” It makes no sense what so ever but it’s hell-a
fun to fight them. In this game you are
also given a new form, which is supposed to be Sora remembering his past or
something ridiculous. Really, it’s just an excuse to let you use some of your abilities
from the first game. In all honesty though, Quick Run makes Dodge Roll
obsolete. In Birth By Sleep Quick Run was changed to Air Dash, but whatever,
it’s the same thing. Probably my favorite part about this new game is the
Cavern of Remembrance. I love that place. It is so fun and so vast and so hard
and just great. The main reason for this is because in order to survive you
have to utilize all of your skills. I don’t just mean fighting either. One of
the other things Kingdom Heart 2 lacked was in making the player use the cool
skills they learned in their drive forms. High Jump, Ariel Dodge, Quick Run and
Glide were all great abilities but not at all necessary to learn in the whole
of the game. Yeah, sure they helped in the final battle, but still, I never
really felt like I needed them. The Cavern of Remembrance amends that entirely.
Not only do you need to learn all of these abilities, but they have to be
leveled up to the max. If not, then you will find yourself stuck in certain
areas. Oh and not mention the music in here beautiful. Then the caves open up to
a long white hall reminiscent of Castle Oblivion. I have no problems with this,
not really. It can be quite challenging trying to get through this part of the
game, but it’s also a phenomenal place to level up your characters, especially
when you can get upwards of 25000 experience with both experience boosts
equipped.
was
happening, the player never saw the organization planning anything, not once.
And the scene at the end of the game with Siax and Xemnas doesn’t count. Also
in this game we get to fight the other organization members. The game kind of just
does a half ass job of explaining it saying something like “Hey remember when—
oh right you went to sleep for a year and forgot everything, no worries though
teleport through these randomly placed data portals and you will get to fight
the people you’ve forgotten.” It makes no sense what so ever but it’s hell-a
fun to fight them. In this game you are
also given a new form, which is supposed to be Sora remembering his past or
something ridiculous. Really, it’s just an excuse to let you use some of your abilities
from the first game. In all honesty though, Quick Run makes Dodge Roll
obsolete. In Birth By Sleep Quick Run was changed to Air Dash, but whatever,
it’s the same thing. Probably my favorite part about this new game is the
Cavern of Remembrance. I love that place. It is so fun and so vast and so hard
and just great. The main reason for this is because in order to survive you
have to utilize all of your skills. I don’t just mean fighting either. One of
the other things Kingdom Heart 2 lacked was in making the player use the cool
skills they learned in their drive forms. High Jump, Ariel Dodge, Quick Run and
Glide were all great abilities but not at all necessary to learn in the whole
of the game. Yeah, sure they helped in the final battle, but still, I never
really felt like I needed them. The Cavern of Remembrance amends that entirely.
Not only do you need to learn all of these abilities, but they have to be
leveled up to the max. If not, then you will find yourself stuck in certain
areas. Oh and not mention the music in here beautiful. Then the caves open up to
a long white hall reminiscent of Castle Oblivion. I have no problems with this,
not really. It can be quite challenging trying to get through this part of the
game, but it’s also a phenomenal place to level up your characters, especially
when you can get upwards of 25000 experience with both experience boosts
equipped.
The
only real issue in this game is the enemies. It’s a shame that Square couldn’t
do something to make them a bit more fun to fight. Half of them just annoy the
crap out of you while the other half make you want to break your controller.
Sure there are some fun enemies to fight, but they are so few and far between
that I can scarcely remember them. Also I’ll admit, playing on proud mode
doesn’t help either. The only reason I did it though is because I knew that, in
doing so, I wouldn’t have to deal with the utter bollocks that is Jimminy’s
Journal. Seriously, that little bastard just makes me want to step on him over and
over again. The mushroom quest is a great example of this. Some of the quests
are easy, while others jut suck. Trying to land a hundred and fifty hits on one
mushroom is just stupid and time consuming and not fun at all. Knowing the
‘secret’ on how to do it doesn’t make it any less tedious, and that goes for
all the other ones as well. Once I learned that the mushroom in Christmas town
would give me one of every item I opted only to do that one. 
Now,
this game also came with a Birth By Sleep hd remake, which happens to be the
Final Mix version of that as well. As far as I can tell there wasn’t a whole
lot added to this. There are some re-colored enemies. I think there might be an
extra keyblade somewhere. There are some new abilities and finishers. Ventus
has the coolest one called Skydive or something like that. He rains down like
comets from the sky. Aqua’s teleport has her moving around the enemies shooting
spheres of light around them. Terra’s meteor is the hardest to pull off, having
to position where you want it to land while the enemies are still moving, often
resulting in hitting nothing. The other thing this game has is a second secret
episode. In it we travel the realm of darkness with Aqua until we meet the
Behemoth in the world. After that the game flashes Birth By Sleep 2.0 on the
screen.
The last thing I will talk about is
the much better, and very long, recoded movie. After watching the movie I
almost wanted to play the game again. Then I remembered how awful it is and it
makes me glad I opted to watch the movie instead.
The only games I have left to play
now are Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, which I really want to play, and
the mobile version Kingdom Hearts X. I suppose I really should get back to Kingdom Hearts Unchained, but I kinda
got stuck in the Hercules world and just haven’t bothered with it since. I have
played Dream Drop Distance and Birth By Sleep 2.0 but it’s been a while and I
want to play them again before I write about them, so it’s going to be a while.
