someHermit

kingdom hearts is a franchise with a lot of potential even if the overall concept is a bit childish. however kingdom hearts 2 falls short of this potential. It improves on a lot of kh1's problems (as any good sequel should) the combat is no longer clunky, slow, and just generally unpleasent but instead is more fast paced and just feels more satisfieng, your magic now cools down instead of just depelting, and the drive system can help you get through stickyer situations (when the game lets you use it). however there are numerous problems that hold kh2 back mostly stemming from the dev's strange disire to mix actions games with turn based RPGs in ways that don't mesh well. first off in addition to the core games' awkward menu system, dodge rolling (arguably the most useful ability in the franchise and the staple of a fair action game) has been locked behind a drive form thaat can only be accessed late in to the game which only lasts untill the drive gage runs out and isn't always avalable to use leaving you with just your block and parry (when you actually have an opertunity to perform one successfully) and different "action commands" (that only work on certain enemies at specific times) the problem here stems from the fact that you blocking can't cancel other actions meaning that enemies can whale on you while you sit slow and helpless to retaliate because you attacked 2 seconds too soon or the enemy attacking you isn't in your line of sight. action commands are just as useless. they require you to actually be able to use them which unless your fighting a dusk you can never do because you'll almost always lose the oppertunity before the command is finished loading due to the fact that you controls lock up when ever your hit. the next point of falure is the worlds. in a misguided atempt to make the game more "interesting" the dev gave each world unique mechanics most of which are utter **** an olny amount to annoying mini games that don't actually test what you've learned about the game and only serve as stumbling blocks to pad out the game with artifical challenge which it doesn't need give the the fact that not only is kh2 already a pretty long game but also that player can select all diffuclty levels right out of the gate. the worst part of these inane mini games it that they bypass difficulty selection since they follow their own special rules that for the most part are never seen again making me think that the devs may have been paid by the hourconsidering how much time must've wasting programming one-time mechanics. and finally the moment i'm sure a lot of you dear sobered-up readers have been waitng for... THE PLOT! kingdom hearts 2 takes place after the events of 358/2 days (a game release 3 years after kh2) and chain of memories (a wierd virtual card game no one played) meaning by this point the plot waters started to get merky. it also doesn't help that the secret ending (which is the games true ending) is locked behind difficulty dependent secret challenges which in this day and age you can find on gamefaqs or youtube however the internet was just starting to come into popularity and youtube was in it"s infancy when kh2 was release leading to the plot of the kingdom hearts franchise to become too metal gear-esque for it's own good leading to a plot that feels more like a janky puzzle many of the pieces of which are not avalable (or haven't been pulled out of the dev's ass) yet. to summarize calling kh2 good yet flawed is being too generous in all honesty it's the worst kind of slog: a game with shoe-horned in artificial difficulty in the form of inane one-time-only mini games and is rife with lost potential. i pray to god that kingdom hearts 3 reverses kingdom hearts 2's awful gameplay descisions but i'm not getting my hopes up

This is one of if not the worst game(s) I've ever had the displeasure of wasting $60 on. The only reviews i found for this game before purchasing it were written by die hard fan boys how would gladly **** this games **** for days at a time if it possessed one calling it a "stunning master piece" while only really going into depth on the environments and nothing else. Speaking of which, the environments are needlessly big and that coupled with a way-point system that is vastly inferior to other such games more than a decade it's senior ( Ex. Borderlands 2) and if that weren't bad enough there is an area in one of the games maps that it totally inacessable unless you manage to fall down there and miraculously not die whivh i managed to do and i found just as filled with enemies as anywhere else and that moment was when it became clear to me that most of this games develpment was completely focused on its environment which explains the severe lack of polish the game so clearly suffers from. The combat system while i will admit is extremely satisfying (far more so than xenoblade Chronicles. X) most of the necessary combat mechanics are left up to figure out for themselves as the tutorials are just long and drawn-out bricks of text that: do a poor job explaining how battle is to be conducted efficiency, do not test out your understanding of said mechanic unlike many other games in the same genre (ex. Southpark: The stick of truth, Persona 5, etc), and unlike these games the tutorials are not rereadable AND on top of that the A.I. for both friends and foes is totally incompitant with me being able to sneak past many foes who were practically stairing me right in the face and with my healer barely doing her damn job. The voice acting is some of the worst i've ever heard in a video game with performaces ranging from mediocore to down right awful with the english script not being much better awkward-lines-a-plenty and the absolute butchering of even the most common of englsh phrases however there is a free japanese voice pack that clears this problem right way. The story i'll admit is VASTLY superoir to that of the previous xenoblade instalment with the sound track along being leagues better as well as far less anoying with the sound actually being adjustable this time around. Another thing i'll give this game is the design of the games many blades with even the lower quality blades all feeling unique much like the plethera of guns in the Borderlands games and the higher quality blades all have very unique and creative designs, however even with all this in mind and the fact that i was just literal inches away from finally completing the story i couldn't stop myself from become fed up with the sheer wieght of this game's flaws (many of which i have not listed here due to the fact that i'd rather put this disappointment behind me as fast as i possibly can) which like many other games of its sort only grow worse and more apparent as the story progresses and promptly wiping every last trace of this abortion **** from my switches harddrive including the save data as i have no intentions of ever returning to the world of alrest and if im being honest this game just seems like it was designed by pretentious art student who really just wanted to make an anime (which i would totally watch if they obtained better voice actors and a better translator).