Kingdom Hearts II Why I Disliked KH2

notice i used the word "dislike" and not "hate". well, i thought that this sequel was very disappointing compared to the previous games, here's why:

1. the game was too easy. it's a button masher's dream. the reaction command feature was poorly executed, it could've been something better but this wasn't what i had in mind when i found out about it. it's just commands that require almost no timing as you can just Mash Triangle until it works and then it does an insane amount of damage with the minimum effort. also, you can block about 90% of the attacks in the game making it quite possible to get through alot of fights without getting hit. another thing, drive forms heal you COMPLETELY. using a drive form is like using an elixir but you can use it while you're getting damaged and you can easily regain Drive Gauge, so it's the easiest way to heal.

2. reflect spell. i made this seperate because this just takes all the effort out of the game. it makes you invulerable, AND it's WAAY overpowered.

3. super long animations- i thought some of the animations were way too long in this game. they drag your combo out much longer than nessacary, good lord, i'm just trying to beat the crap out of people, not impress a crowd.

4. the game was too short- i only had 20 hours on my first playthrough of the game, way too short for an RPG

5. boring cutscenes- there were quite a lot of long cutscenes that i ended up skipping, even on the first playthrough of the game. alot of these cutscenes weren't even essential to the story

6. Too many repeat worlds- i didn't like the amount of old worlds in this game, it was just uninteresting to me

7. The Big One---Too many unexplained things in the story----there were just TOO many things that were unexplained such as the whereabouts of Namine and Diz while Sora and friends were going around. why Roxas even left the Organization to begin with, the deal with Riku's blindfold (which is explained in Final Mix but not in the original release of the game). with all these unexplained things, it's no wonder Square made 358/2 Days to clean up this mess.


these are why i thought the game was disappointing, still worth playing but not as good as it could've been. feel free to disagree with anything i said.

 

I disagree with numbers 4 and 7. Completing Jimminy's journal was difficult and the plot was the best art about the game. the plot makes you want to play the game again and again just to understand what is going on in every character's story. All the other comments are true.

 

I pretty much agree with most parts, especially on number one. I loved the moving scheme and variety of buttons. KHII, the only other button I press for regular attacks was square so that kinda tells u something. =/

 

I have never really thought about those things till now.I love the game but there are some flaws.It could be a bit more challenging.Some cutscenes make zero sense but I don't care.I will always like KH2.

 

1 - Agree,though KH2FM at level 1 is really hard and fun,since it's the only mode in KH2 that actually requires skill,and i love it.

2 - Agree.

3 - Just reaction commands for me,and not all of them.

4 - Completely agree.

5 - Yeah,there are a lot of boring cutscenes,to tell the truth,i never watched a single cutscene in Atlantica and some others ramdom cutscenes.

6 - I kinda liked them,not all though,the runied Hollow Bastion quite a lot(But i still like it though) and ruined even mroe Atlantica,and what happened to my little Cave of Wonders?

7 - Well,yeah,the story from KH2 was just illogical sometimes.
I also do Hope days explain some parts.

 

OH RIGHT, i just remembered something else that makes this game worse

so many damn things make you invulnerable

 

The lack of difficulty was a letdown in KH1, it was pretty balanced and the boss battles seemed more creative, menacing and overall funner, in KH2 they just seemed to nerf most of the things I liked about KH1. The irony is that they did better with the Disney boss battles than they did with their OWN characters. Don't get me wrong I LOVE the Org13 but they were such a passive threat and the formula, save for Xemnas, and a touch of Saix was pretty much "oh hi!" *battle* and then *croak*.

Which was so very disappointing considering how the Castle Oblivion crew was (I consider CoM Marluxia a better head-antagonist than Xemnas of KH2, and if I hear a flower = OMG FLIPPANTLY GIRLY SPARKLY comment, you know you're being stupid, I'm sorry to say. People think Saix is very cruel for just capturing Kairi and ignoring her, Namine in Marluxia's control was pretty much abused every scene the whole time). CoM also had a better overall story as well which was far more consistent and had the same aura of KH1, sans silly card battle system. (Why wasn't LUXORD in there again??)

The story and characters felt so WEAK this time around, except for Olette (Bizarro Kairi aka a Kairi if she were a credible character), Hayner and Pence (the only plump human Square Enix kid in existence it seems), those were good characters and it's a shame they were used so LITTLE. Roxas's chapter was also decent but it was one very long hour that I wouldn't want to repeat.

Level design also got nerfed for almost everything, except Twilight Town, The World that Never Was and PART of Hollow Bastion, the Restoration Committee sucks if the area SHRINKS you know. And for the love of god I miss some of those puzzles, better than those damn "minigames." :\

They could have also used an editor for most scenes, I can very safely say that half the game was just cutscene, and if I want that I'll play MGS if I want long BUT enjoyable cutscenes.

So yeah I pretty much agree with you and a little extra on some points.

*Drive forms seem like a really tacky add-on, unless some people consider that Xemnas somehow accessed his OWN drive form (and was somehow pivotal to story?), in which case I found it fairly unnecessary and an annoying request just to clog the Jimney Journal. Speaking of which Jimney's descriptions of the story were MORE INTERESTING in text than the actual events themselves.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed these things although I don't agree with your third point. The only battle animations that took an unnecessarily long time were certain reaction commands. It's funny how the game only becomes remotely challenging once you slap on a no-experience code (although I took the liberty of boosting my AP) and even then, the only fights that were actually hard were Demyx, Sephiroth and Xaldin and that's because countering their extremely predictable attack patterns actually requires some timing by the player. Thankfully a level 1 Critical Mode challenge in FM+ was a bit more challenging.

My biggest problem with KH II was the bland character and story development. Sora jumped back a couple of years in maturity and intelligence between CoM and KH II, wasn't the least bit believable and was just generally annoying. Basically they decided there's no need for all the things that made Sora a good main character. Character interaction was also practically inexistent and the dialogue just seemed bland. The story was just a bunch of very loosely connected scenes, most of which weren't even interesting and once you've seen them once, you simply don't want to see them again. The scenes in both KH 1 and CoM (which I've played through 9 and 20+ times respectively) still keep my interest up to this very day whereas I already happily spammed the skip scene command in KH II as soon as on my second playthrough. There was absolutely no room for character development for any characters in the game because they were never given enough screentime. What happened to the scenes where you could see things from the villains' perspective? There are very few of those in KH II and they worked so well in KH 1 and CoM to give an insight on what's happening. The story and characters in this game were so uninteresting completing it didn't feel rewarding at all.

It's ironic how CoM is more like a "true" sequel to Kingdom Hearts than KH II even though its only purpose was to serve as a bridge between the two PS 2 games. The game was much shorter than KH II and yet, it provided a much more fleshed-out story, had some great character development, managed to give every character as much attention as they deserved and actually made it possible to relate to the characters. The antagonists in the game were so much better than in KH II. Whoever said Sai'x is cruel obviously didn't pay much attention to Marluxia and Larxene and CoM actually made Axel and Riku seem like interesting characters contrary to KH II. The R/R crew could have gotten some more attention, but R/R covered everything important from Riku's perspective so I have no complaints. Traveling through the worlds got a bit repetitive sometimes, but the between floors-scenes made up for that. And let's not forget that awesome mind-screw with the Riku Replica.

I hope I don't have to explain why the first game is infinitely better than KH II.

Can you really count countless hours of doing frustrating minigames as actual playtime? I'd rather go watch paint dry than play any of the minigames in KH II. The actual game (the part that doesn't make you want to throw your PS2 out through the window) itself is not very long at all. It only took me about 16 hours to finish it.

 

what i disliked about KH2.....was the replay valua......there is not much to do after you finished the game.......and that is why Final Mix is cool...cause you can still fight with the orginazation and you can fight with terra..........you can battle him over and over.......right???..........still love to play KH2 again though...

 

Sora felt ******ed, seriously. In KH2, it was pretty much "What did you say? I don't get it. Stop messing with my head. You are wearing a black cloak. DIE!"
Yeah... Not very good. While for KH1, it was developed. You could actually like Sora, opposed to thinking that Shock, Lock and Barrel on cocaine would do a better job with the keyblade.
In the first one, his relationships were to be admired, opposed to being a "*Groan* Sora cries on Riku but not on Kairi" plot.

Overall, the first one was better. Everything felt like it was attached directly to the gamer's fingertips, opposed to the gamer feeling that his commands go through a ton of hoops before being executed. (Gummi ship, general combat)

 

yea, Sora's personality wasn't very likable in this game. he was just too childish and he didn't care about anything for more than a few seconds. and the IMPORTANT characters didn't have enough on-screen time.

 

Oh gawd I know. And I hated how he was really ignorant at the start and took ages to catch onto stuff. He would always look at Donald and Goofy for answers; they'd all shrug and pull idiotic faces. I missed playing as Roxas for a long time.

 

1. the game was too easy. it's a button masher's dream. the reaction command feature was poorly executed, it could've been something better but this wasn't what i had in mind when i found out about it. it's just commands that require almost no timing as you can just Mash Triangle until it works and then it does an insane amount of damage with the minimum effort. also, you can block about 90% of the attacks in the game making it quite possible to get through alot of fights without getting hit. another thing, drive forms heal you COMPLETELY. using a drive form is like using an elixir but you can use it while you're getting damaged and you can easily regain Drive Gauge, so it's the easiest way to heal. I agree with that.

2. reflect spell. i made this seperate because this just takes all the effort out of the game. it makes you invulerable, AND it's WAAY overpowered.You don't have to use it though. I know that I never did. If a person wants the game to be challenging, then they should just ignore that spell.

3. super long animations- i thought some of the animations were way too long in this game. they drag your combo out much longer than nessacary, good lord, i'm just trying to beat the crap out of people, not impress a crowd.I actually liked that xD.

4. the game was too short- i only had 20 hours on my first playthrough of the game, way too short for an RPG It took me about 40 hours to beat it, not 20. I have no idea how you can do it in such a short amount of time unless you skip A LOT of cutscenes

5. boring cutscenes- there were quite a lot of long cutscenes that i ended up skipping, even on the first playthrough of the game. alot of these cutscenes weren't even essential to the story I enjoyed watching cutscenes, they were entertaining and really helped make the game great in my opinion.

6. Too many repeat worlds- i didn't like the amount of old worlds in this game, it was just uninteresting to me I liked that we went back to old worlds, it was cool to see the chemistry between characters who had already met (like Sora and Alladin)

7. The Big One---Too many unexplained things in the story----there were just TOO many things that were unexplained such as the whereabouts of Namine and Diz while Sora and friends were going around. why Roxas even left the Organization to begin with, the deal with Riku's blindfold (which is explained in Final Mix but not in the original release of the game). with all these unexplained things, it's no wonder Square made 358/2 Days to clean up this mess. Some things were annoying when unexplained, but it's not that big of a deal for me.

 

I agree with all of these, KH2 was horribly easy...

 

The only problem I have with it is some of the bosses....they were hard.

 

The only thing I didn't like was Roxas, he sucks, i hate him (and he is played by Jesse McCartney, or whatever, so he is gay too). >:[
I like how Sora acts, as he is my favorite character, but that doesn't mean anything about me liking his attitude.​

 

1. Couldn't agree with you more. They could have made it so much harder.

2. If you think it made it too easy, then don't use it. That's what I did.

3. I agree with this as well. Even though it looks cool, it's not necessarily needed.

4. I completely agree with this. I completed the game in three days. That was about 40 days shorter than for the first KH. You would think it would have been harder than the first.

5. I admit, some of them were really long and boring, but some of them were needed.

6. Yeah, some of the worlds shouldn't have come back. Examples would be Atlantica and Hundred Acre Wood. Sure they were good in the first, but there's only so much you can do in one world.

7. I'm going to comment this on Square Enix's point of view. Of course they were going to leave a lot of questions unanswered. They will make more games to answer these questions; fans will see new editions of the games come out and wonder 'will my questions be answered?' and buy the games. It's just another way for them to get more money.
IMO, the unanswered questions make the game more interesting.

 

I'm afraid I must personally disagree with this for the following reasons:
KH1 brought the entire franchise about and while it brought questions it answered most of the lesser-epic ones and gave hints to the answers concerning the epic questions.
Examples: What is the keyblade? A weapon that can destroy or save, we got to see someone who saves with it, aka Sora. Who can possess a keyblade? Anyone with a strong heart, and the irony that Riku was supposed to be the owner of the Keyblade. What do the Heartless do? Steal hearts from people and to find the Heart of the world. Who is Kairi? A princess of Heart. Who is "Ansem"? The 'leader' of the Heartless as well as the researcher of Darkness who produces artificial Heartless. Will the worlds be saved/restored? Yes, but it is a journey Sora and his party must make (Mickey as well). What happened to Riku and Mickey and What does the future hold? (Cue CoM taking the reins.)

CoM brought more loaded questions to the table and answered enough yet still left some unanswered.
Examples: What are the impact of memories to a person? Sora, Repliku and Namine's interactions in the entire game is what it is all about. What about the 'forgotten' ones? One of the most awesomely executed villain plots for manipulation...ever. Who is Namine? Namine is a part of Kairi, but in what sense is unexplained. (Loaded KH2 question) What is the Organization? They are not whole but in what sense is not fully explained (Loaded KH2 question, but can be considered the same as 'who is Namine'?) What purpose does Castle Oblivion serve? The Organization used it as a device to possibly obtain the Keyblade themselves. What IS Twilight Town? Apparently a town that Sora is supposed to know. Is there more than 'one' Sora out there? (Loaded KH2 question) Who is DiZ? A new friend or foe, it is not certain (setup for KH2 question) What is Riku doing in the Castle? He was brought there somehow by Sora. Where is Mickey? Somehow he is in the castle as well. What will happen to Sora now that his memories of Castle Oblivion are to be erased? (Setup for KH2)

KH2 brought almost NO questions to the table and the loaded questions from CoM and KH1 were still not addressed or given a rather lackluster answer or still NO ANSWER AT ALL.
Examples: What are Nobodies? The leftover shells of people with strong hearts. Organization question is answered, they exist to collect back their hearts by using the keyblade. Twilight Town is just a place Sora's Nobody hung out. (With all the importance they'd placed though, one would have thought it was Sora's somehow REAL hometown or some such, or a new sort of limbo or a base of demonic operations, but no it's just another world, what a letdown.) DiZ is the REAL Ansem in disguise, why he did it is poorly justified and makes little sense why he even hung out in Castle Oblivion instead of the OTHER Castle (not explained). The Organization also are all baddies, suck at Organizing and have practically NO backstory save for Xemnas who was just Xehanort's Nobody and Xehanort NOR his Heartless get much more new information than 'he came from Hollow Bastion with no memory, Ansem was his mentor and he stole his name for some unmentioned reason.' (This was terrible, you can still bait and have more information in reserve but they tossed out nothing, the leftover Organization never even REFERENCED the incidents of CoM despite losing a notable number of members in the process, emotions or not, that is a strategic nightmare. Ansem the Wise could have EASILY explained at least one or two new points about Xehanort aside from 'he was my student, he had amnesia, he pwnt me and stole my name. Now I explode.' ) What they did not gloriously explain is WHY THERE ARE STILL ARTIFICIAL HEARTLESS RUNNING AROUND ON PREVIOUSLY CLEARED WORLDS. The emblem gives it away that the machines on Hollow Bastion created them and those machines were supposedly destroyed -or maybe the Committee is really dumb, but I'm giving benefit of the doubt here- so why are there still endless amounts of the ARTIFICIAL ones? The only locations that still have natural Heartless are Yen Sid's Tower and understandably, TWTNW. And yet REGARDLESS Sora happily returns back home in the end, great job hero.

Also in KH2 they managed to break some plot continuity with the whole Keyblade business and who can "have one". In KH1 Riku manages to find/make/plot-device-create his own keyblade, in CoM it's his Soul-Eater Sword and *magically* in KH2 he has his own Keyblade, where he got it no one knows! He also manages to give Kairi one for one/two cutsenes and it magically dies. Kairi didn't even question it, neither did Sora, which I find very ODD.

With all these unanswered questions and character's unwillingness to even express curiosity in it, it makes for a weak addition to the story; and with only the teaser to go by (some time ago) one would expect KH3, but instead of going forward in time to explain things they are going backwards to ret-con the whole mess with the PSP and DS. Which is WHY KH2's story is not justifiable. KH3 will probably be on the PS3 and it'll be a wonder if it'll be a repeat of KH2 or if they figured out what went wrong and will *hopefully* fix it. They sort of tried to bandage it up in KH2: FM+ but anyone else notice they added in only a handful of new actually INTERESTING scenes but bumped up exponentially more mini-games and extras that were NOT plot relevant? And an extra FORM when Sora's already overpowered as it was/is? I'd trade in all the minigames for some more logic thanks. ]8

Also there is another approach to this tactic: If you make interesting characters and concepts you can still answer all the questions and still continue a franchise, look how much they milk the FFs! Each FF is a standalone game that answers it's own questions (supposedly, not a fan of FFs because I find them bland, but whatever) and has more than enough fans screaming for MORE.

In fact they are ALREADY kind of doing this with KH, just using the same universe but a different trio of people, but that just makes it all the more frustrating that Sora and Co didn't tie up the loose ends of THEIR story before Nomura decided to switch to Terra, Aqua and Ven. (It reeks of bad planning as it currently stands.)

 

meh, i agree with the BIG ONE, but not the reaction command. it can lead into harder things like luxord, he wins BAM your pretty much dead. It's not short, duno if it's because i suck but it took me 60 god damn hours to complete. and only 43 for the 1st one.