Drive Wild
At its core, Kingdom Hearts really wants to be a shounen manga in playable video game form. It wants to fly around at high speeds, clashing with villains at high speeds with crazy over the top powers and absurd weapons. It wants super power-ups and fights won through the power of friendship. It wants a massive sprawling storyline that takes years to complete. And it wants the deepest lore so that it can be taken somewhat seriously.
It wants to be Dragon Ball. It wants to be One Piece. It wants to be Naruto and Bleach and so much more.
Kingdom Hearts II was the first time in my series crawl that I think the series started coming close to that.
Compared to the basic friendship story of Kingdom Hearts I and the simple but more focused story on memory in Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II comes out guns ablazing with an “epic” storyline seemingly ripped straight from the pages of Weekly Shounen Jump. Starting with a simple theme of Promises between friends, Kingdom Hearts II bloats the series story more than any other entry in the series percentage-wise.
It complicates the previous stories by introducing the concept of Nobodies, and adds further wrinkles by showing that Ansem was not “the” Ansem but instead a nutbar named Xehanort who stole Ansem’s name. “The” Ansem does get to show up, but much like a shounen series making it up as it goes along, it doesn’t feel like a reveal so much as a stakes intensifying ass-pull, with series reshaping consequences.
If story relevant titles being split between handhelds and consoles are one of the reasons it makes sense people describe Kingdom Hearts as convoluted, another is all the lore that Kingdom Hearts II injects in to the narrative, muddying up what is otherwise yet another simple story about friendship and promises.
But that story still holds its weight.
Full disclosure, while this essay comes in release order, and I’m saving talking more about 358/2 Days for last, I played (well, watched) 358/2 Days before playing Kingdom Hearts II in this series crawl. If you’ve already played Kingdom Hearts II, I highly recommend you do the same, since it provides enough context necessary to truly appreciate the story of Roxas and Axel in this title.
I distinctly remember not caring as much about Roxas and Axel on my first playthrough of II. I also recall not thinking much about Naminé, which makes sense seeing as I had not played Chain of Memories either.
358/2 days and Chain of Memories, acting concurrently in the narrative as dual-prequels for Kingdom Hearts II, make those three characters each show stealing pieces of brilliance in this work. It helps that scenes are added to Final Mix to better emphasize their roles in the story, especially an absolute barn-burner of a boss fight against Roxas at the start of The World That Never Was (but more on that later).
Before I set out on this journey, I thought I would be able to appreciate Kingdom Hearts III without playing the side games. My opinion of Kingdom Hearts II being substantially augmented by Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days made me think that was mistaken, and had me redouble my efforts to complete the series crawl before next Tuesday.
But enough about that, let’s talk about that combat system.
How on earth did a game as rough as Kingdom Hearts I give way to such a smooth, clean, exciting, transcendental combat system as Kingdom Hearts II’s?
Everything in Kingdom Hearts II’s combat system feels vastly improved over Kingdom Hearts I, with two frustrating exceptions I will get to in a moment. Sora’s attack animations feels smooth and responsive, his jumping doesn’t feel cumbersome, and most importantly of all, the way weapons and abilities work have been overhauled, making for a combat system that isn’t merely stellar as an action RPG, but possibly one of the most interesting and flexible systems in JRPGs on the PS2.
At the core of the combat system is Sora’s basic combo, a simple one-two-three hit. The first two hits are normal moves, and the third hit is a finisher.
This is important for the feel of the combos, as it turns out.
See, Sora can add both normal moves and finishers to the chain with Combo Plus, Air Combo Plus, and Finisher Plus abilities. Further, aspects of normal moves can be changed and modified by other useful abilities. Adding Upper Slash to your ability set lets you use a normal move to knock an enemy in to the air, where you can chain in to an air combo. Adding Explosion to your ability set turns one of your finishers in to a large blast around you. There are so many abilities and ways to modify your combo that it feels like the best possible way for a character action game to teach you how to play: give you pieces of combos at a time and letting you work them in to your repertoire as you learn the game.
I played Final Mix on Critical Mode, which gives the player far more ability points from the start in exchange for enemies doing more damage and Sora having a lower max HP cap, and it was a truly rewarding experience. Having the freedom to use as many abilities as I saw fit made the challenge all the more enjoyable.
While the choice of paths at the start of the game again felt superfluous to the overall growth of Sora, the game is now more willing than ever to encourage the player to attempt a No EXP run, with most major battles giving some form of skill improvement instead of experience points. Level ups now give stat boosts, but no hit point boosts. Hit points are relegated to battle bonuses, along with a number of useful Abilities.
The MP system is overhauled, and the result is so perfect I can’t imagine anything else for how Kingdom Hearts wants the player to use magic. Rather than MP regenerating slowly as the player chains combos, MP is a single bar that allows the player to pop off a number of small spells for offense, defense and crowd control (reflect and magnet spells being most valuable spells), and then a heal spell can be used that instantly uses all remaining MP. Once MP is spent, the player enters a recharge mode that will automatically bring you to full MP once it’s done.
This MP system gives combat a strategic flow and encourages the use of magic in strategies as you alternate between spells and offense. The Berserk skill is particularly fun, removing finishers and allowing you to perpetually stun lock targets so long as your MP is spent.
There is even an ability called Negative Combo which reduces the number of normal moves in a combo. Sora learns one naturally and can receive the other from a weapon earned from one of the toughest bosses in the game. Put those two together with no combo plus abilities, and Sora can use combos that contain only finishers. It’s a fun parlor trick and can create some incredibly spicy bursts of damage.
Summons are also more useful in this title, with four options that I actually felt the desire to use, rather than the summons of the first game that I forgot existed both during play and in my essay. By sending away two party members, a buddy can fight by your side for as long as your drive meter holds out, doing cool moves and providing special backup for Sora that Donald and Goofy, bless their hearts, can’t provide.
Oh right, the Drive Meter!
Drive forms are another excellent addition to the title, with Sora starting with the melee focused Valor form, which removes Goofy from your party but enables a fast paced dual wielding combo. Later, Wisdom form provides a fast ground speed as Sora skates along, shooting magic blasts from the tip of his keyblade. Limit form gives Sora a suite of powerful moves. Master form is another dual wielding form, but focuses on amplifying magic and has one of the most fun combos in the game, Over the Horizon, a gravity warping spin move that pushes the game ever further in to the shounen nonsense it desires to be. And the Final Form goes one step beyond Master, turning Sora in to the Dragon Ball Z character he deserves to be.
Unfortunately, the Drive system is also the source of my only two frustrations with this combat system.
The first is Sora’s Anti form, which is a harsh punishment randomly imposed upon the player for using Drives too much. The chance increases the more forms are used, and is amplified when facing off against the numerous Organization XIII members. The form feels powerful but is wildly uncontrollable, and worst of all has the defense of a sheet of paper. Pulling the Anti Form against a boss is essentially a forced loss, and it detracts from the enjoyment of using these forms against bosses.
The other frustration in Drive forms is, well, Grinding. JRPGs have a reputation for being grindy, but I find that is largely unearned. Good JRPGs can be beaten without grinding, and Kingdom Hearts is no real exception.
Except for the fact that multiple useful movement abilities, such as dodge roll, high jump, and glide, are locked behind obtuse grinding mechanics for the special forms. It takes far too long to max out the forms, which shouldn’t be necessary. But it turns out it is, when you tackle the Cavern of Remembrance, an extra dungeon added to Final Mix and one of the nastiest challenges in the game as well as one of the only true platforming sections of the game.
Platforming is largely de-emphasized in Kingdom Hearts II, as the focus was clearly on polishing the combat. This is a welcome change, as the platforming in the first title was spotty and unfun. But the Cavern of Remembrance shows that Kingdom Hearts II could be a better platformer than Kingdom Hearts I as well, offering clever challenges that make use of extra form abilities, which would be great if it wasn’t so tedious maxing these forms out. It’s not a frustration, but it is worth mentioning.
On the whole, though, the Combat alone is worth visiting Kingdom Hearts II for. Even with Birth By Sleep’s superior story and Dream Drop Distance’s highly improved platforming, Kingdom Hearts II has probably my favorite play feel in the series, and I’m happy to see it forms the basis of Kingdom Hearts III as well.
❤ Touhi
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