Kingdom Hearts 2

Kingdom Hearts 2 is a significant step up from its predecessor. Not only is the game-play virtually one dimensional as in the last game, i.e. the magic attacks were all forward firing magic attacks, the attacks were the same three combo moves and the innovation of gameplay just was not there; but the story line is also up to par.

Coming froma player who did not play Chain of Memories on Gameboy advance, I had no problem understanding the story line. It's not the hardest story line to understand, but that's not to say that you can skip over all of the drawn out and multiples cut-scenes throughout the game.

Kingdom Hearts 2 brought something that I did not expect from the Kingdom Hearts franchise. It brought the sense of a true RPG in an easy to understand module that was extremely fast paced. Take for example the triangle button. This one button, during different parts of the game, allowed you to perform various enhanced attacks that are otherwise unavailable to the traditional 3 part combo move displayed using the X-button.

Therefore this makes the gameplay much faster and interactive and less boring. It also adds the extra movie element to the game where the player feels like they are in control but just enough out of control to watch amazing action.

The teamup attacks are probably one of the best innovations of the game. Not only can you fight side by side with multiple Disney characters including Mulan, Captain Jack and Simba, but you can actually team up to control them using, you guessed it, the triangle button. This is the part of the game that makes it a lot more fast and interactive than games past.

The story line of the game follows pretty much the end of Kingdom Hearts, but with a twist. Instead of just having the heartless, there are beings known as the Nobodies. Sometimes it seems that the Nobodies are battling the heartless and the heartless are battling you and you are battling both, which can make for some extremely confusing scenarios.

Overall, the fast gameplay, the collective fighting with other disney and Final Fantasy, characters, the new summons and drive meter, and the unbelievable story line to intertwine all of this makes for an exciting game.