Kingdom Hearts 2 review

The first Kingdom Hearts was, without doubt, one of the best adventure games to grace the PS2. The strange mix of Square and Disney characters created a number of lush and interesting worlds for players to explore. Now we European gamers finally get the long-delayed release of the Kingdom Hearts 2, but can it recapture that same magic, and is it worth the wait?Right from the start, the game will throw you off guard by putting you in control of Roxas, a young boy who lives in Twilight town. Never fear, Sora will appear later, but first we have a mini adventure which serves to acquaint the player with the game's controls and introduce the themes of the title.As you might expect, presentation is of an incredibly high standard, with striking representations of the Disney creations, complete with some excellent voice work. As before, many Final Fantasy characters appear throughout and, as a nice touch, most of the characters who appeared in the recent FFVII movie feature the same voice actors. While the presentation of the game may be as excellent as ever, the levels themselves are sadly a little lacking when compared to the first game.Combat is the emphasis for this title, with the many puzzles and platform sections of the original all but a memory. Difficulty has also been dropped a touch, though that is not necessarily a bad thing considering some of the insanity present before. As well as the standard physical and magical attacks available, there are now new gauge and limit attacks. The gauge allows a second keyblade to be brought into action containing a whole new set of skills (in a sort Disney version of a Chow Yun-Fat double pistol attack). Limit attacks bring all the characters together to perform a high impact move on the enemy, often with quick time event style button pushes to prolong it. In certain situations, the triangle button can be pressed to initiate a context-sensitive attack; in boss battles this is always a large and obvious 'Press Triangle' sign, but it appears fleetingly at the bottom left of the screen when fighting normal opponents and is far too easy to miss.Although having such a wide range of moves is welcome, their execution leaves something to be desired. Combat is so frantic and fast that most of the time it is completely impractical to cycle through a couple of menus in order to find the summon or limit break commands. Luckily, they are not really necessary to fight your way to victory, but you cannot help feel that the control system could have been a little more streamlined.With the puzzles removed, what's left is relentless combat followed by relentless combat, which, if played in long sessions, does become repetitive. This feeling of repetition is not helped by some uninspired level design and locations on occasion. With all the creations that Disney has license to, you have to wonder why certain locations are repeated from the first game. They do have new stories, but did we really need to go back to the Hercules level?That is not to say there is no inspiration at work - the Steamboat Willie and Pirates of the Caribbean levels for example - but you can't help but feel that Square has missed a few tricks here, with so many Disney movies not appearing in either game. That's not to mention other IPs such as Duck Tales or Darkwing Duck. For the most part, the levels are very safe choices.This is the main feeling you get from the title; there are a number of good and inspired moments, but for each one, you can think of something else that would have been better. You may end up feeling you have seen it before or that it could have been handled with a touch more inspiration. Faults aside, the title is highly enjoyable and well presented. For fans of the series, there are sections here that are worth the entry fee alone; however, there is no escaping the eventual realisation that the first game simply contains more inspiration, more variety and more magic.