Welcome back to The Game Collection! I am SuperDerek, and this is Kingdom Hearts 2!
Kingdom Hearts 2 is in my mind, legendary, in the realm of PlayStation 2 Action RPGs. It’s what essentially cemented the Kingdom Hearts series in my mind as a top-tier Action RPG series against which I would measure Action RPGs for years to come. But it’s also the first game in the series I played that helped me realize that there’s also a big problem in the Kingdom Hearts series.
In Kingdom Hearts, the story picks up with our hero Roxas, wait, what happened to Sora?! Who’s this Roxas guy? Well, whatever. The game starts up with our hero Roxas living out his life as an average adolescent enjoying his carefree summer-vacation. This proves to be more difficult to do than expected between summer jobs, last-minute homework assignments, and oh yeah, a bunch of silver Nobodies all over the place causing mayhem. Well, to cut a long story short after winning a struggle tournament, it’s revealed that it was all basically a long tutorial for the real meat of the game where you DO play as Sora. But who was that Roxas kid and where did he come from?
This is just one of many questions that Kingdom Hearts 2 raised for players like me, who at the time didn’t feel like playing a Gameboy Advance version of Kingdom Hearts, or simply didn’t have a Gameboy Advance on which to play. Sure, we all sort of know now, more or less, that there was a game that occurred between Kingdom hearts 1 and 2, and that for whatever reason it was regarded as canon, but needless to say, it was simply one of many reasons that Kingdom Hearts has built up a name for itself as being hard to follow, and confusing.
In Kingdom Hearts 2, the gist of the story is you’re still playing as Sora, who is trying to track down his friends Riku and Kairi, while at the same time trying to save the world from the Heartless, and now these new fiends, the Nobodies. And to make matters worse, Sora is starting to bump into hooded figures known as Organization 13. And they all seem to have a bone to pick with Sora. Who is Organization 13? And what do they want with Sora? These are more questions that Kingdom Hearts 2 will never really fill you in on, by itself.

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After reviewing the first Kingdom Hearts, I knew that there would be a demand for me to comment on the sequel. Here it is, my full analysis of Kingdom Hearts 2. The game was originally launched for the PS2 in 2007, presenting a top notch casting, improved gameplay mechanics and new worlds to explore, like Tron and Pirates of the Caribbean. As such, it achieved a metacritic score of 87. However, there’s a lot more to talk about Kingdom Hearts 2 than a score can say.

Given my love for the KH series, I couldn’t include nearly everything I wanted to, but I hope that this 20 minute step back in time can help holding you over until Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out.

As for the complicated story, Birth By Sleep and a few others really help to bridge it all together. I just didn’t want to spoil anything, or include other games in my review of this one. So I elected not to explain the complicated story that spans like 7 different games, some of which only came out more recently.

Enjoy the review!

Photos: Tetsuya Nomura, Yoko Shimomura
Music: Yoko Shimomura
Footage: Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts III, Kingdom Hearts 3, Kingdom Hearts 2, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep