LogFAQs > #875062073

4. Kingdom Hearts II (PS2)

I love the lore in this series, as well as the origins and motives of its original characters. It's why I think Birth By Sleep is a great game, and it's part of the reason why I think Kingdom Hearts 2 is the best game in the series, and one of the best games of all-time.

The first game will always have the nostalgia factor going for it, but if I look past that, I can easily say that Kingdom Hearts 2 is better in almost every way. The combat is still there, still great, and the addition of different limit forms added another aspect of strategy to it. My one gripe with the combat in this game, however, is how magic and MP were handled. In the first game, you had multiple MP bars, with spells costing anywhere between 1-5 bars of MP. The second game gave you one singular bar, and a Cure spell cost your entire bar of MP. Magic also felt weaker in general in the second game, and with so many new moves to use, it came to the point where I only really used MP for curative or defensive reasons.

Other than that, though, everything about this game is better, and great. The series came into its own here, and the original characters and story were brought to the forefront, and were the main focus, whereas the Disney characters and worlds seemed like the vessel that brought you to your next story point. The Disney stuff is great for the nostalgia, but I was always interested in seeing and fighting the next Organization XIII member, or learning about their history, and I'm glad that the game went in a direction that facilitated my curiosity.

Speaking of Organization XIII, as cheesy as "We want to collect hearts" is as a motive, I think there is something really interesting about the design of the characters, what it means to be a Nobody, and how they eventually would end up fitting into the grander story. Kingdom Hearts is a complicated series with a lot of spin-offs, and games like Chain of Memories and Birth By Sleep, which delved deeper into the Organization and its history, gave me a greater appreciation of this game on subsequent playthroughs. Before BBS, I also had a lot of fun trying to figure out the Organization members' real names as kid.

This series is great, and probably my favourite behind Final Fantasy. As I've said before, I've never outright disliked a Kingdom Hearts game, but Kingdom Hearts 2 has always been the peak for me. New combat systems, characters, and ways to play are cool, but at the end of the day I want to play as Sora, Donald, and Goofy. I've been waiting for Kingdom Hearts 3 for a long time, and I'm hoping it contains even some of the magic that this game has.
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https://psnprofiles.com/Simmons-94