Video Game Review: Kingdom Hearts 2

Kingdom Hearts II is a new game from SquarEnix. It continues the story of young Sora, from Kingdom Hearts, and his pals, Goofy and Donald, as they search for their friend, Riku, and King Mickey. If you enjoyed the first game, this is definitely a must play.

You begin the game playing a Roxus, a young boy living in Twilight Town, near the end of his summer vacation. Roxus wants nothing more than to hang out with you friend, Hayner, Pence, and Olette, but fate has other plans for him. As their vacation is coming to a close, mysterious thefts around Twilight Town begin to happen and Roxus' gang is blamed for them. In order to clear you name, you begin to investigate and are sooned entwined in events outside of you control.

The game is packed full of fun min-game (from delivering mail on a skateboard to racing in a computer world) and a relatively twisted storyline. Playtime runs at about 30+ hours, which isn't much for an RPG with so much potential. However, there are some drawbacks in this game.

Throughout the game, you are given a large range of tasks with various conditions attached to some of them. These conditions are not all bad, but most of them are. For example: when in Mulan's world, you are given a Moral meter which you must concentrate more on then the actual fighting (if it hits zero, game over) and is a real pain at times.

Another drawback are the summons. Taken from Final Fantasy, summoning allows you to call a creature into battle to help you fight, cool, right? Well, yeah, but who wants to summon Chicken Little into battle. Why not make it actual creatures which might actually be able to do some damage? Also, the list of summonable creatures was far too small in comparison with previous Final Fantasy games which feature over ten different summons, unlike the three to four of Kingdom Hearts II.

Another drawback is the lack of a proper fighting arena. in the first game, you could participate in tournaments at Olympus Coliseum, but in Kingdom Hearts II, the only tournaments you can participate in are either too easy or don't reward well enough to even fight the first round.