Kingdom Hearts II — I Ain’t Got Nobody

Kingdom Hearts II.  Here’s where things begin to get complicated.  I will say one thing, though, before I begin.  While Chain of Memories was a largely unnecessary chapter in the overall story, it did heavily insinuate that Riku wasn’t a pure good character like every other major protagonist that has ever been in Final Fantasy or the Disney Animated Canon, or a pure evil character like every other major antagonist in Final Fantasy or the Disney Animated Canon (with the possible exception of Iago from Aladdin).  If I interpreted it correctly, Riku exists in a grey area, and it’s kinda refreshing to see shades of grey in a video game that Disney helped to create.

Right away, the game begins in a different manner than the first two.  Instead of controlling Sora, you meet and control a character named Roxas for about five hours.  A five hour prologue is a little long when you just want to see what Sora and the gang are up to, and it did get a little boring since nothing was known about Roxas at the time (it takes a while to find out what his story is all about in this game, and 358/2 Days wasn’t even announced yet, either).  But once the prologue is over, we meet up with Sora again fresh from his experiences in Chain of Memories, which he has forgotten about.  He seems to do that a lot, lately.  Are we sure he’s a reliable hero?  The important thing is that he does remember his previous adventures again, the ones chronicled in the first game, so Chain of Memories must not be important, right?  Oh yeah, and he probably still doesn’t remember Tarzan’s world either, but that’s not the only world to completely disappear from the series.  References to Dumbo, Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, and others have been completely dropped from the series.  In their place, Kingdom Hearts II adds some of Disney’s live action movies into the mix.

Unfortunately, while the first game contained plenty of references to the Disney Animated Canon, and it got to the point where Traverse Town was packed with characters and references from many other movies (not to mention a portion of the plot focused upon some of the princesses from various Disney movies), the second game settles for just visiting a few worlds instead.  Characters summoned in the heat of battle, a feature that was present in the first two games, make a comeback in this game and are as unique and varied as the ones in the first games.  However, it seems lazy to use a few characters as summoned help and then ignore their worlds entirely.  Chicken Little makes his only appearance in the series as a summon in this game, Stitch appears as a summon and it wasn’t until Birth By Sleep that his world was explored, kind of.  This is also the only time that Port Royal and the world from Tron are visited.  Yet the gang keeps on visiting Hercules’s damn world.  (Brace yourselves.  When I get around to reviewing the other three Kingdom Hearts games, I’m probably going to have even more harsh words for Hercules and his world.  Must there always be a tournament going on while I’m visiting there?)  Although some worlds return in this game, not all of them do, and I have to assume that for some reason, certain worlds shift position or something, and they’re suddenly out of range of the gummi ship?  I guess that’s as good an explanation as any for why you can only go to certain worlds in each game.

Not only that, but all the fun stuff to find from the original game is gone.  There aren’t any hidden Mickeys anymore, and most of the other hidden objects are treasure chests.  You still keep track of them all in a journal, but hidden Mickeys were a perfect excuse to go back and revisit worlds.  Instead, after you help your friends in one world, you have no real incentive to keep going back there until the plot demands that you return.  Each world is visited twice.  Once, to fix whatever’s wrong, and once to deal with whatever new problem arises.

Like before, the basic plot of each Disney movie is followed as you make your way through its world.  This time around, some of Disney’s sequels are touched upon as well as more original worlds.  The animated shorts of old are introduced in such a way that they seem to represent the world of Disney Castle, many years ago.  In Agrabah, given that the original game pretty much followed the plot of Aladdin to completion, this game has you play through The Return of Jafar.  When you visit the Pride Lands, you’re pretty much playing through some of the major scenes from The Lion King, but when you return to the Pride Lands later, the action takes place somewhere between the first and second movies.  The ghost of Scar is still around for some reason, and it’s up to you and Simba to defeat him once and for all to ensure the future of his pride.  In the meantime, Simba has knocked Nala up and she’s currently pregnant with their son Kopa.  It would be interesting if any of the upcoming Kingdom Hearts games let us go back to the Pride Lands because Zira was nowhere to be seen in this game, for they didn’t bother to retcon her into the continuity of the first movie.

Atlantica didn’t fare so well this time around.  Apparently, things are alright there, the Heartless and the Nobodies and the Organization decided to leave them alone.  Instead, I was treated to a rather horrible rhythm game which featured songs from The Little Mermaid as well as original songs written for Kingdom Hearts II.  The only original song worth any mention is Ursula’s Revenge, which is pretty much the only brand new Broadway style song of the bunch.  If not for the fact that I’ve seen the movie many times, I’d probably say that the song does exist in the movie.  Then again, I might’ve accidentally visited Castle Oblivion recently and just forgotten about the song.  The other new songs… the less said about them the better.  They seem like they would’ve been written for the Little Mermaid animated series instead.  I wish I could just Castle Oblivion them away.

By the time I finished this game, I’d begun to grow tired of the fact that the only portions of each world visited were the portions shown in the movies.  You don’t get to explore Simba’s world beyond the pride lands or the jungle.  You never left the ocean when visiting Ariel.  And despite the Aladdin and Herc
ules crossover episode made for the Hercules television series, both Agrabah and Olympus are treated as separate worlds here.  I don’t think that what happens to the heroes is the only interesting thing to happen in each world, and I highly doubt that darkness will gather around potential heroes on purpose.  If so, it’s like the bad guys want to be defeated.

Speaking of the bad guys, a group of thirteen bad guys were introduced in Chain of Memories that you’re supposed to defeat during the course of both that game and this one.  I’m alright when there are one or two bad guys in a game, because there’s something to focus upon.  But the Organization seems a little like overkill to me.  Not to mention that the game also muddies up the waters when it comes to the mythology behind the series.  Suddenly, there aren’t just the Heartless, there are the Nobodies, too.

Although I didn’t have much to complain about regarding the battle system in the first game, Kingdom Hearts II adds Reaction commands to your arsenal.  Pressing the Triangle button during these special moments in battle will cause Sora to use a special ability against the enemy or enemies he’s currently fighting.  Anything to help me kill enemies is alright with me.  One thing I did notice when trying to kill enemies is that the camera doesn’t randomly decide to focus on walls like it did during portions of the first game.  An actual, working camera is the biggest improvement this game has to offer, and it helps quite a bit, trust me.  It still sucks that you have to gather up your experience points and Munny, but what can you do?

This time around, there seems to be more original tunes used in the game.  I admit, I don’t remember much of the music from some of the worlds, but I do remember music from The Lion King and it seemed like Yoko Shimomura went with her own original music there, rather than just a straight remix of music from the movie.  It was like that for all of the worlds whose music I remember.  Sometimes, music from the movie would play, and sometimes an original tune would play instead.  There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for such.

Now that the series is getting complicated, it’s hard to keep track of everything without playing through each of the games multiple times.  The first game is worth it and despite what I said about it, game is especially worth it.  At the time, it was hard to see where the series was headed, but with three more new games already out, a fourth one on the way, and the eventual Kingdom Hearts III on the horizon, it’s clear that there’s something very big being set up.  It’s kind of good that most of the backstory that’s probably going to be required for Kingdom Hearts III is being explored in a series of games rather than a lengthy prologue, because I know I wouldn’t want to spend the first thirty hours (or more!) of III just trying to find out what’s going on.