Hey again! I'm back with yet another review, this time on the game Kingdom Hearts 2, made by Square Enix and Buena Vista Games for the Sony Playstation 2. Kingdom Hearts 2 is the 3rd installment in the series, and the 2nd installment in the Dark Seeker Saga (the main series). You play as a 15-year-old boy named Sora who is chosen to wield a blade in the shape of a key, known as the Keyblade. He fights a massive variety of enemies with this blade. I'm not sure if Kingdom Hearts 2 would be classified as an RPG or not, but whatever. Onto the review! I hope you enjoy!

Graphics - 9

The graphics of this game aren't meant to be realistic. They are rather meant to be like the Mario series, where the graphics are supposed to be sorta of "toony,"  but not look like a cartoon. The graphics of this game are amazing. The shading is done very well, the objects that are meant to be more realistic are textured very well, and the effects n' stuff are pretty awesome. All the animation is near-perfect, very smooth, and very realistic (such as when your character is running). Remember how I said the effects are pretty awesome? It has some of the coolest explosions, darkness swarms, etc. I have ever seen in a video game. We'll be starting off the review by giving the graphics a 9.

Sound - 10

The sound in this game is simply amazing. The sounds fit the event they match with very well, and sound pretty cool sometimes. The music, though... Oh dear sweet baked potatoes. The music tracks are amazing. I mean seriously, it's made by Square Enix, what do you expect? Some of the music is beautiful, and wants to make you cry. Some of the music is sad, and makes you feel a sorrow in yourself. Some of the music is epic, and makes you feel awesome. One of the enemy types in this game has some totally awesome organ music to fit all of its... everything. I wrote myself a list of best music tracks from the series (most of which comes from this exact installment). You can find the list here.

Gameplay - 8
Addictiveness - 10

The gameplay of this game is simply amazing. I mentioned earlier in this review, at the introduction, that you play as a 15-year-old named Sora, who wields a "Keyblade." In Kingdom Hearts II, your objective is to travel across multiple worlds and destroy enemies known as Heartless and Nobodies, with the help of Donald Duck and Goofy. There is a massive variety of Heartless, and a fair-sized variety of nobodies. Basically, you mash the X button on the controller when you're next to an enemy to defeat it. But here's a surprise - they attack back. Some of them are easy to defeat, some are hard. The Nobodies are normally tougher to defeat, though. They have more health, deal more damage, and have more annoying attacks and features (such as the Dancer nobody, who picks you up, dances around, and throws you the other direction, dealing large amounts of damage).

Then there are the bosses. They can definitely enhance gameplay and make it more entertaining. There are reaction/limit commands, which make you use special attacks if you press triangle quick enough. Each of the bosses have multiple ways of attacking, and each of the Nobody bosses have special attacks that deal more damage and stuff.

There are also many abilities you can equip that make you stronger. Speaking of abilities, there are Limits, Summons, and Drive Forms in the game. Limits are abilities that set off a volley of attacks to your enemy, costing all of your magic points (MP). Summons are self explanatory. You summon a character from a Disney movie, which helps you defeat your enemies. This costs part of your "Drive Gauge," which allows you to use summons and Drive Forms. Speaking of Drive Forms, this is what they are. Drive Forms are special modes you can put Sora on, which makes you more powerful. The forms are as follows:

Valor Form

The first form you receive is Valor Form. This Drive Form gives you a 2nd Keyblade of your choice, and makes your strength much higher, allowing you to deal much more damage. However, it prevents you from using any magic. The special ability you get from this is High Jump.

Wisdom Form

The second form you receive is Wisdom Form. Wisdom Form only gives you 1 Keyblade, but makes your magic much more powerful. Instead of hitting Heartless and Nobodies with your keyblade, you rather shoot laser beams at them. The special ability you get from Wisdom Form is Quick Run, which lets you dash away from your enemies.

Limit Form

This form is exclusive to Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix +, which is the Japan-exclusive release that has more features. Limit Form transforms you into how you were in the original Kingdom Hearts. This allows you to use limit commands, which are the special attacks you can use in the original Kingdom Hearts. The special ability you receive from this is Dodge Roll, which, yeah, rolls you away from your enemies. You are invulnerable when you use Dodge Roll.

Master Form

Master Form is the 3rd (or 4th, if you have KH2:FM+) form you receive. The other 2 are activated a different way. Master Form makes both your Magic stat and your Strength stat much higher, resulting in massive amounts of damage. Master Form is the form you want to use before you get the next form on the list. The special ability this gives you is Aerial Dodge, which is basically a double-jump used to get away from enemies in the air.

Final Form

Final Form is the ultimate form. It is unlocked randomly by using Master Form. When the rare chance that you unlock it comes, it will be added to your Drive Menu, so you can access it whenever you want. This makes both your strength and magic stats MUCH higher, and gives you some totally awesome combo finishes, dealing incredible amounts of damage. You unlock Glide from this, which lets you fly around, making a very fast way to travel and get to places out of reach.

Anti Form

Anti Form is the only form that you cannot access by will. It has a random chance of occurring (Well, maybe not so random. http://www.khwiki.net/Antiform#Mechanics) when you use a Drive Form. This removes your Keyblade, and turns you completely dark, so you deal minimal damage. However, you attack really fast, so you do deal a nice amount of damage. There is no special ability obtained by this form.

This game is really fun to play, even though it's pretty simple. I give the gameplay a great rating of 8.

Seeing as I gave the gameplay an 8, I'm probably gonna give the addictiveness rating either a 7, 8, or a 9, right? Wrong. Normally I would give it an 8, but depth and the story keep bringing me back for more. I could play this game hours and hours on end, without getting bored. I give the addictiveness another perfect 10.

Story - 10

The story of Kingdom Hearts II is extremely deep, and extremely awesome. Every game in the entire series/franchise is related to each of the others, though only Kingdom Hearts II, and III really matter if you didn't play the previous. One of the most interesting and important factors is that most worlds are based off of Disney movies (such as The Land of Dragons, which is based off of Mulan, or Agrabah, based off of Aladdin).

The game starts out where you play as a kid named Roxas. Basically, Roxas is a Nobody. He was never meant to be born. When Roxas discovers this, he joins an organization that controls all of the lower Nobodies, named Organization XIII. When Sora finds out about Organization XIII, he sets out on a long journey to defeat them once and for all (Organization XIII is dark). After you complete almost all of the worlds, there's 1,000 Heartless you have to defeat. After you defeat all of them, you discover that (spoiler alert) every Heartless defeated releases a heart (yeah, Heartless have hearts), which builds Kingdom Hearts. Once Kingdom Hearts is complete, all Nobodies turn into real beings (Somebodies). But Sora, for some odd reason, doesn't want the Nobodies to become real (sounds rude, doesn't it?), so he has to defeat less Heartless and defeat all of the Organization XIII members, all the way up to Xemnas, the leader.

That's only a fraction of the story. There are many cutscenes (at least 100) that explain the story. I give the story another incredible perfect 10.

Depth - 10

This game is really long. After you spend, what, 20 hours completing all of the worlds, you discover that the main "Hub world," Radiant Garden, is surrounded by darkness. After you defeat all of the 1000 Heartless, you have to go back to each of the worlds (excluding Atlantica, The Pridelands, and Disney Castle) to defeat most of the members of Organization XIII. Once you do that, you discover a pathway to The World That Never Was, which is the main Nobody world. There are also 2 optional worlds: The Pridelands and Atlantica. Also, there are a couple cups you can win in the Underdome (The Underworld's coliseum), all of them being 10 rounds of different enemies to defeat, except the Hades Paradox Cup, which is 50 rounds. I give the depth yet another incredible 10.

Difficulty - 8

This is the last part of the review before the "Overall" section. This game isn't really too hard. In fact, I might have even given it a 6 if it weren't for Organization XIII. Most of the bosses and enemies are pretty easy, though there are a few tough ones. However, there are some really tough bosses from Organization XIII.

The first one of Demyx, who forces you to do stuff like defeat 50 enemies within 30 seconds, or defeat 10 enemies within 10 seconds. Those can get pretty annoying to do, since if you fail you die.

Then, there's Xaldin, the Organization boss of Beast's Castle. This guy has a bunch of spears that he likes to beat the crap out of you with. He's pretty hard. Blah blah blah, all of the bosses are pretty tough.

I'd have to say the toughest of all, however, is Xigbar. First of all, this guy is nearly impossible to attack. He teleports all over the place, and the only chance you have to attack him is when he teleports away and reloads his gun. Second, he has a lot of health, so this combined with the first reason makes it so it takes a very long time to defeat him. Third, he shoots a bunch of lasers at you that deal large amounts of damage. And fourth, his special rage attack thingy... He shoots a crapton of homing lasers at you, dealing lots of damage each. If you fail to dodge even one, all of them keep attacking you, completely draining your HP. Yeah. He's friggin' impossible.

There's an optional super-tough boss (there's 2 in the Japan version), who happens to be Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. He has an extremely long range, deals more damage than any other enemy in the game, is really fast so he's extremely hard to dodge, has more health than any other enemy in the game, and has an undodgeable attack that reduces your health to 1, and drains your magic so you can't use cure. Yup.

Anyhow, the game's fairly easy, but the bosses can be really tough. For that, I give the difficulty an 8.

Overall - 9.5

Overall, Kingdom Hearts is truly an incredible game. It has incredible graphics, a completely amazing soundtrack, and it's extremely addictive. The story is amazing, too. The game is really long, so you have lots of bang for your buck, and the difficulty is fairly easy, but there are some challenges for the tougher gamers. Overall, I give this game an extremely impressive and unbiased 9.5.

Thank you for reading my review! Feel free to gimme Viz for criticize my review. Seeya!

Ah, so this was your big post for today, impressive. I think you did an excellent job on this review man, you really broke it down nicely and you had a lot of detail and great organization, not to mention it is very lengthy and detailed beyond measure. You clearly are very thorough  and detailed with your review as well because you took the time to add in all that information in the gameplay/addictiveness part. 

So overall I think this turned out to be pretty great and also professional, you are definitely going to get some red jersey points for this. I think you have great potential and skills to keep making more awesome reviews. Keep up the awesome work as always and keep making more great reviews! And happy new year! 

TheFadedWarrior : what i have to say is that i think you got every nook and cranny of your mind to make this review and i think you did great so good job.

great job this went well

TheFadedWarrior : Great Review. It tells about everything about Kingdom Heart 2. 

TheFadedWarrior :

I agree with everything you said almost completely, except that I would probably give the story a score of 9 or 8.
While the overall plot of the game is undeniably great, it has the same problem that every single Kingdom Hearts game I've played has.
Some of the world stories (krhm Atlantica krhm) are kind of stupid. 
In the long run it doesn't really matter but I most certainly didn't care about the sing and dance based story at all, and just for that I'd have to take just few point off.

Otherwise a great review and a great game. I still haven't figured out how to dodge Xaldins whirlwind attack when he makes a dragon out of his lances and I've played the game more than a few times .