Kingdom Hearts II: Why all the hate?
 

I got to play Kingdom Hearts I and II recently. I didn't complete them, but I got pretty far on both of them.

My question is: why does everyone cherish the first KH but absolutely hate the second KH? I ask this because I personally enjoyed both games very much. Of course, I am a whore for most Disney movies, so I might be biased, but honestly, I liked the two games equally. I don't consider them to be classics, but they were still a lot of fun. The only thing I can find wrong with KHII is that the tutorial at the beginning drags on for too long.

What I want to know is, why is it that everywhere I go, (anywhere that's not GameFAQs anyways.) whenever KHII is mentioned, people start to cut themselves? Enlighten me.

Shitty level design, really badly paced story, the Disney levels have next to no plot significance, Org XIII are a pretty lame set of bad guys.

Horrible storytelling that went absolutely nowhere. Fifth can word it better than anyone, so you should wait for his post. The gameplay was nice though, and is the only reason I'm curious about the shitload of sequels that are coming in the future.

The plot for KHII just wasn't as good. It was basically Square saying, "You know what would be great? If we add MORE long-haired pretty boys whining about hearts and the power of friendship!" And then Disney said "Yeah okay, but we want more useless summons so we can push the upcoming Chicken Little movie and oh by the way, lay off the violence." So as a result we have Organization XIII and a world of Pirates where absolutely nobody uses a gun-- They have crossbows and Will Turner threatens to kill himself by waving his empty hand around vaguely.

And then Square says, "OH! You know what else would be cool? Let's give another Disney child star a voice acting role by giving Sora a NOBODY!!! Then we can get into even more philosophical stuff like Darkness and the question over whether we really exist! Just like in 85% of all other Square games!"

And lo, KHII was born.


Don't get me wrong; it had its fun parts. The end battle was fantastic, the light cycle races were fun, etc. But it just lacked something. To me anyway, the fighting, the plotline, the summons, the special moves (I MISS FLYING DAMMIT!!) and the side-quests / minigames just weren't as good as those in KHI.


And then there's the "fixing up" of Atlantica, which was a nightmare in itself.

If I may argue, Mauve, Roxas was one of those things that could've worked magnificently if only Nomura had some decency to explain and expand it in a satisfying way instead of making it a complete melodrama at the beginning and the end, without actually caring to make him develop a bond with Sora. Of course, Nomura did so to force all the interested people to buy Final Mix+, where the explanations are actually existent and somewhat gratifying.

And Atlantica was fucking awesome, shut up.

Hmm, I really thought KHII was KH except they slathered great-spice over everything after doing a weaksauce-ectomy.

I thought that the game itself was pretty fun, but there were a couple of problems:

1. Filler, KH1 was bad, but at least you were going to each of the levels for a reason. I mean seriously, singing?!

2. The levels were easy, linear, and the second you try to explore the game says "No, no exploring until you have beaten the level", it didn't help that there really wasn't much to explore.

3. What exactly was it about OrgXIII that was so bad, aside from the fact that they were long haired people in black robes, which obviously makes them bad and evil. (I haven't played Chain of Memories, but it doesn't matter, Sora doesn't remember them anyway).

4. FFX-2 should have never been brought up again.

Things I thought that were good:

1. The gummi ships this time around were really fun, I liked the old system, and the new system was even better, it's what was fun after the rest of the game got boring.

2. I loved running around with 2 keyblades while Donald and Goofy disappeared, it was liberating.

3. The 1000 heartless battle, it was so much fun.

I haven't played it in a while due to someone screwing up my disk, but I have mostly good memories of playing it.

...I honestly thought it was complete awsome.

Maybe that's just me. <<

Mauve, I really like you, so I'm not going to hold that against you. Everyone else sucks, though. Except for Mirai, I like him.