Kingdom Hearts II

The Good
Kingdom Hearts II brings back the set of playing characters that made the original fun. The story line fits in well with what happened before, but if you have not played the original, the story seems to run all right on its own (more or less).

The battle system and controls are pretty much just like before with a few new add-ons. This makes it fairly easy to get up-to-speed.

The new worlds are probably the best new thing in this game. As can be seen from the square soft website, you'll get to see some new characters from Disney movies pop up. There are some surprise worlds and new villains to cope with that definitely made me smile.

Traveling between worlds on the gummi ships is a lot more fun this time round. There are a lot of challenges and rewards that are associated with traveling through the asteroid fields multiple times. Plus you can now zoom between unlocked worlds which decreases one of the biggest pains in the original Kingdom Hearts.

The CG cut scenes are really nice and quite well done.

The Bad
Where the game falls short is that it just seems to play very sequentially. You kind of get to a world and follow on a more-or-less well defined path.

Absent are really spatially challenging worlds where getting to treasure chests takes a whole lot of careful planning and maneuvering. There just isn't the same level of challenges in this game. You don't get to fly around or really swim that much.

Battles are pretty much unchallenging IMHO. You sort of get in one, mash the X button until you get the job done. And unlike the original, most boss battles and level clearing challenges are pretty easy to get through the first time.

Also the new add-ons don't seem that useful. I only used a summon twice in the game, and that was only to figure out what it did. Team-ups tend to be annoying because you tend to call them up accidentally when you meant to do a reaction command on the same button.

The Bottom Line
This sequel is something a lot of Kingdom Hearts fans will jump on. I just had to have it. If you are like me then you'll like some of the new things but also feel like you aren't challenged enough for most of the game.

It's fun, yes, but it just feels like a bit of a drop. Not as bad as FFX to FFX-2.

Nice CG, okay story, fun worlds with some nifty surprises, boring challenges and battles.

The Good
Like the first game, there is an ensemble cast that includes singer Jesse McCartney, actor Christopher Lee, and Haley Joel Osment returning as Sora. There are many Final Fantasy characters including Cloud, Sephiroth, and Auron. Many of the Disney characters from the first game also return, and some new ones make their video game debut. Again, there were many hidden secrets which made me want to replay the game.

The Bad
Kingdom Hearts II has the same ending problem as the first, with the completion of the game being unsavable. I also didn't like idea of playing as Roxas for the first part of the game. I also wasn't happy with the completely redesigned Hallow Bastion (a level from the first game).

The Bottom Line
Kingdom Hearts II is a great game, but is inferior to the first one.

The Good
For a Disney and Final Fantasy fan, this game caters well to both audiences, and brings those fans into each other's worlds in an epic package that make most big-budget films cringe.

The game addresses the most serious issues from the first game: Namely the clunky Gummi Ship scenes, which were more of a tedious chore, and replaces them with a fast-action shooter that actually makes it worth the time to go through. It also makes the side-quests more appealing to spend the time and complete, as they are fun in their execution.

There's so much to cover in the game: The beautifully rendered CG intro which recaps the elements of the first two games, is definitely important to understanding where this game begins, as the beginning hours of this game are played with an unexpected twist. When Sora does make his appearance, the game begins to really take off.

The worlds in this game are stunning. The new worlds add so much life and depth to the stages that you can't help but feel like you're walking on a virtual set of the movies.

"Pirates of the Caribbean" was a surprise world, but works with the story it lays out. Same for worlds like "Steamboat Willie", which is utterly charming in presenting itself as a 1920's cartoon, complete with mono sound. And "Tron" is simply the game that you always wanted to come out when the movie first appeared. It captures the essence of that world so well, that I spent a great amount of time just staring at how pretty the world was.

The same could be said for other new worlds, like "Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast". And even the revisited worlds are by no means rehashes of the original game. New areas, new missions, new story... familiar characters. And the reunions between Sora and the inhabitants of that worlds generate a feeling of sincere familiarity. Long-time players of the series will be pleased.

The story is larger than ever, and finally, a lot of the questions from the last few games are answered. The plot never keeps dropping surprise twist and turns until after the final battle, but it doesn't come off as forced or contrived. It's a smartly written story, and it's interesting to see characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy handled with a sense of maturity, but never losing any of their personality traits in the process.

The Heartless return, and so do many of the Disney Villains, but the Nobodies add something extra to the mix. A deeper exploration into the abilities of the heart. The Kingdom Heart series main story point is that nothing can match the power or strength of what comes from the heart.

Sound is a no-brainer. The game makes more use of the music from the films, and a staggering amount of the movie voice casts return to reprise their respective roles. Some like the "Pirates" crew are missing, but the sound-alikes are decent.

The game build up to a very long climax and the ending uses the strong story-telling pull of Square's writers combined with the emotional pull of Disney films that provides.... The ending rewards the players who became so emotionally invested in Sora and company. The ending itself is long, but the final moments are satisfyingly simple, and memorable.

The Bad
I've read comments that players do not need to complete the Game Boy Advance Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories to understand the story. To save you the trouble, that is the biggest falsehood you can ever be told about this game.

The GBA interquel introduces so many characters and certain plot points throughout this tile, there will be times that you will be utterly lost if you don't know that story. Without the GBA game, you will only get about 80% of what is going on, and even less if you never attempted or completed the first game. The three games in the series are too intertwined. You have to play it as one, as they act more like chapters of a much larger story. The recap at the intro will only give you so much background.

The character of Roxas is a mixed view for me. One one hand, he does have his part to play in the story. On the other hand, I wanted to get through his parts to see the continuation of Sora's story. In a lot of ways, Roxas' part plays like a very long tutorial, and his story only becomes relevant when Sora becomes prominent again.

I was sorry to see that the "Tarzan" "Pinocchio" and "Alice in Wonderland" worlds were gone. Tarzan seems lost due to possible licensing issues, but it would have been interesting to visit all the worlds again. The new worlds introduced, however, were more than satisfying.

The "Little Mermaid" world was a bit of a disappointment. It has changed from a fully playable world, to a series of rhythm/music games similar to Bust-A-Groove. It wasn't horrible, but certainly not as entertaining.

Also, combat has been perhaps a little too simplified. Pressing "X" will get you through just about any battle, and as long as you are powered up, you aren't going to have any issues.

The Bottom Line
I was skeptical about "Kingdom Hearts" as a whole when it was first mentioned. I enjoy Disney Animation, and I enjoy Final Fantasy titles, but how could the two work together and be a serious title. Then again, with Square's work on Super Mario RPG, I knew they were capable of making an effective crossover.

The game still reigns as my Top Game of 2006. It is a virtual Disneyland, where players can visit their favorite characters and ride their favorite rides, and it makes for a stunning package.

The biggest flaws from the first game are cleared up in this title, and so many of the things you wanted to do in the first game but couldn't... you definitely can now. And for the characters that were taken away this time, Square and Disney added more than a fair share of new and familiar faces.

Kingdom Hearts 2 makes for a satisfying conclusion to a four-year old series... with hints that the story may not yet be over. If the story does continue on, fans should expect something no less than magical.

The game is as good as it gets. Recommended.

The Good
Kingdom Hearts 2 is amazing - over 30+ of game play (and that's without all the hidden stuff, side-quests, and maximum stats), this game is quite huge. It takes what was good from Kingdom Hearts 1, turns it great and places it into this new game. Almost everything from the previous game has been improved, upgraded and extended. The great massive plot, with lots of twists to keep you guessing, lovable characters, "Drive" feature, dozens of combat combinations and abilities, a huge range of extra characters, great detailed worlds and the graphics are simply awesome, and all this is topped off with a cool theme tune, cool weapons and the movie-stunt-like "Reaction" feature.

The Bad
I can honestly say that there was only one thing that needed to be improved on; the Gummi Ship quest. You build your own ship (which is hard if you don't read the boring tutorial) and fly out, destroying other ships that get in your way - which, with so many things going on at once, is extremely annoying until you get the hang of it. That was the only downfall. Luckily, the Gummi Ship wasn't a big part of the game, and there are hardly any good rewards for it, so this isn't really important.

The Bottom Line
This game is probably one of the best RPG's out for the PlayStation 2 at the moment, with it boasting some of the best graphics for the console - When I first saw the trailer for this game, it looked like the graphics for the PlayStation 3!! If you have some cash left over for Christmas, or an upcoming birthday - treat yourself to this gem. In terms of gameplay and storytelling, this game is quite revolutionary for the action-RPG genre. No doubt, this is a modern-day classic and a jewel for gaming history (at least, in the RPG genre).

The Good
Let me start off by saying that the first problem I mentioned in my review of the first game, has been fixed. Back then I addressed that I was not really a fan of young characters and even though Sora, Kairi and Riku weren't that bad, their childish behavior sometimes ticked me off. In this game all the main characters are slightly older and let me just say that they aged well. The best part are their voices, which are now fantastic and really professional. The design is a lot better too: Kairi now wears some more decent clothing and Sora no longer looks like he got his clothes from the bin outside the circus tent. To summarize it: This was a very minor detail, that vastly improved the presentation for me.

Also quite enjoyable is the fact that while the first problem I addressed was solved, the first praise I handed out is also still present. The fighting in Kingdom Hearts 2 is simply fantastic, it's fluent, fast and just a lot of fun. The addition of "Reaction Commands" is also very nice, the idea is that by pressing the triangle button and the correct time (such as in the middle of a specific enemy attack), Sora performs a cinematic ability that does a lot of damage. The best part about this quick-time event, is that you are not severely punished for messing up. You take damage instead and only rarely does it instant-kill you.

The biggest selling point to people however is likely not how fluent the combat is or how the characters have improved slightly, but the fact that there are a ton of new and nostalgic Disney movies to visit. The level progression is also very nice, instead of starting with old familiars, you get to do some completely new worlds first. Eventually you do find your way back to Agrabah and Halloween Town, but there are completely different stories going on there, so it feels a bit fresh again.

Aside from some levels you might have anticipated, such as Ancient China from the Mulan movie and Beast's Castle from Beauty and the Beast, there are also some levels that came as complete surprises to me. I was, for example, completely shocked when I suddenly found myself walking around the freaking Pride Lands as Lion Sora. I'd love to go into more detail, but hey, they wouldn't be surprised if I'd spoil them.

Graphic-wise the game has also improved, which is especially sweet since I already called the first game "one of the best, if not the best, looking game on the ps2". The most notable update are the faces, which on reflection looked kind of uncanny in the first game. The HUD is also a bit different and by default it changes in theme based on the level you are in, which is a nice little touch. There were also some levels that had a different kind of animation than the standard Disney style, one of which was originally live-action, and these were also neatly presented to us.

KH2 also provides us with a good update to the enemy roster. Not only do the ever as lovely Heartless get a lot of new units, but there is also a whole new faction to fight. "The Nobodies" might not have as much charm and variety as the Heartless, but they are still fun to fight in a different way and their more Humanoid leaders proved to be intriguing villains. Unless you plan to grind, you won't find yourself killing a lot of the same enemies over and over again, and that is a real good thing.

One thing that Kingdom Hearts 1 never managed though, was to provide me with scenes that genuinely got my adrenaline pumping. Some parts were frustrating and the final boss had me quite tense, but I was never really 100% immersed into the game. While Immersion is definitely not the strongest part of this series, there were a few moments and the Battle for Hallow Bastion in particular, where so much story-events were happening at once that I lost complete awareness of my surroundings and could only notice the game itself and my heart pounding with excitement.

The Gummi flights which earned some vicious beating from me in the past, have really been improved in this game. In the first title, they were just kind of bland and thoughtless. You just had to go forward in your insanely slow ship and hold down X to kill everything. This time around however, the flights are fast, filled with different enemies and even challenging. Flying around feels more like Starfox 64, but mixed with the races from F-Zero. I also like how you unlock new blueprints by doing well in these flights, so you don't have to make your own ships or buy blueprints if you don't want to.

Unlike the flying sections though, the overall gameplay had its difficulty turned down a notch, which is an improvement you can only grasp if you actually played the first game. KH1 was plagued with some downright insane boss-fights that were preceded by long cut-scenes that you had to watch every time you died. I managed to beat this entire game and every main boss by simply going through all the story missions, I never had to stop and grind for hours on end or waste brain cells trying to comprehend the Synthesis mechanic.

Finally, I'd like the praise the journal in this series. I never really talked about it before, mostly because I forgot it was there in the first game (as with Jiminy as a whole), but this time I did stop and take a look every once in a while. The book nicely records your overall progress in each world, which is especially useful after picking the game up after a long break from it. The book is also slightly out-universe, so it describes events and characters in more detail than you actually discovered and in some cases Sora didn't even discover at all (such as some things that Roxas did).

The Bad
Let's start off where the game does to, the opening cut-scene. Seriously Square Enix (and Disney), these opening songs are starting to get booooooooooooooooooooring. I am not a big fan of JPop, but I could respect the opening montage in the first game to a certain extent. Now that i have played every single game in the timeline (up until KH2 and with the exclusion of Birth By Sleep), these songs are starting to get incredibly grating. I just want to start playing and seeing as how these scenes have little to no relevance to the actual story (though this around they do show some scenes from Chains of Memories).

After that we open the game with Roxas and boy does this mean the start of the four most boring hours of your life. As Roxas you don't really get to do much, you are no longer a badass member of Organization XIII, you are a boy on summer vacation. While there are a few scenes where you fight stuff, the three and a half hour that are left are spend doing chores for some money, making homework and learning just how much Twilight Town sucks (if that wasn't already apparent after 358/2 Days). And after four hours where does all this stuff lead to? NOTHING, you just trade Roxas with Sora and only two or three events you took part in are ever addressed in the rest of the game.

I am sorry, but I just can't get over it how much this game made Roxas suck. He has some scenes after the opening hours, but the damage was long done. I also warned people back in my review of 358/2 Days that I was going to bitch like hell if Xion was not addressed anywhere in the story and 'lo and behold, she is nowhere to be found. The series has this weird habit of making the entire universe forget about characters when they die under certain conditions and this is just shooting yourself in the foot because characters having to deal with the death of a friend is much more interesting than characters not remembering a fellow character and therefore not giving a damn.

Okay, so you might wonder what, besides the first four hours of the game, is wrong in Kingdom Hearts 2. The answer is: Relatively little, but let's go over it anyway.

Story inconsistencies are nice to start with because there are a lot of these. I won't go over all of them, but the one that bothers me the most is how Maleficant is brought back into the story. She is dead at the start of the game, but then she is brought back because. and I am serious here, some people remembered here. This wouldn't even be catastrophic if she wasn't mentioned and thus remembered a hundred times before this happened. Another thing that doesn't really work me is the Destiny Islands because now there is suddenly a whole mainland just off-shore, granted this was mentioned briefly when Sora sees Kairi's and Riku's boat, but give me a break, the world was called "The Destiny Islands" and everybody referred to the world as an island. Finally, there is the "Proof of Existence", which is a room that shows which members of Organization XIII are still alive. A nice idea, if it wasn't for the fact that it was a big deal that some members MIGHT have died during an operation in 358/2 Days and nobody knew who.

Whoever is in charge of designing the weapons and armor also needs to learn how descriptions work. The statistics of all the items are there, but most weapons have a side-effect that is often more important than the actual strength and magic points. However, these descriptions are just too ambiguous to help you decide which one to use. Quick lesson here: "Activates during a critical moment", among a lot of other similar statements, means absolutely nothing. If it is open for interpretation, then you have clearly failed describing such an essential part of the game.

Early in the game and quite a few times afterwards, there was the tendency to throw a lot of tutorials at me, none of which I ever remembered. Not only does a pop-up filled with text take me out of the experience, but it's also a terribly way to get me to memorize it. Throw in some visual hints during gameplay and let me play out the tutorial instead. I was just very annoyed when I wanted to do something like switching the magic spells on my quick-select and not knowing how to do that, or having to shut off the system in the middle of a boss-fight because I needed a character I didn't have in my party and I couldn't remember how the swap characters mid-battle.

Organization XIII is an interesting group of characters and because they are so colorful, it would have been a lot more fun if we got to battle all of them in one solid game. Some of the really cool ones, like Marluxia and Vexen were already taken out in Chains of Memories, which is even worse because Chains of Memories is barely playable. However, I would not have minded if we didn't fight them at all either. What I mean is that I never really figured out how the Organization is in any way evil, they are just a group of people with a common problem, working towards fixing it and improving their lives. Their methods might not always be very ethically correct, but nobody is going to tell me that Demyx and Luxord were genuine bad guys. I also never really saw where Sora made the connection that XIII is bad and judging by some of the lines, it seems more like unintended racism to me (as in the writers accidentally wrote out racist scenarios).

The Bottom Line
There is a lot to say about Kingdom Hearts 2, but in the end I can only say that it's a really solid game. While the game has a really tough time getting started, once it's moving forward, it becomes a very enjoyable whole. The overall story and the stories in each individual world are really interesting to follow, gameplay has remained just as fluent as the first game and has even improved slightly and graphically its all very good. There are some nitpicking issues with the story in the game and series as a whole, but most people will likely ignore or not even notice these.

While a lot of people might be attracted to a story about travelling to different Disney Worlds, the audience for this game is cut down severely due to the fact that the game is fairly entrenched in the Kingdom Hearts lore. Some themes get barely any explanation and Jiminy's journal doesn't have any sort of summary for the previous games in the timeline. However, if you liked the first game, then you will almost certainly like this one. I can practically guarantee that!

The Good
I love the free-roam RPG gameplay and detailed level design. I love no text boxes and an option for subtitles and Japanese voice acting. Character development is a big plus since there will be a third game in the making. Also, the game wouldn't have been a success if it wasn't for all the original cast voicing all the Disney characters which really boosted the popularity of the game.

The Bad
The agonzing prologue to the actual game. I know you need to know the back story but it least cut it down to an hour. I thought a lot of levels making a second go around was kind of pointless. I thought they should have gone a different way of introducing the villians. The last thing was the amount of unlockables in the game was way too few. A trailer for the new game was great and all but they could have at least have thrown in some concept art or some alternate endings if you completed certain mini-games.

The Bottom Line
A great wholesome game for everyone. Disney fanatics is a must buy and also for RPG fans. Even people how didn't particularly into this stuff should play the first just to play the second because its that good.

The Good
The "sophomore slump" is a colloquial term used to describe works in media which do not live up to previous debut work, either in the same franchise, by the same author or artist, and in many cases, both. "Kingdom Hearts II" is a perfect example of the "sophomore slump". It is not as fun, charming, or epic as its predecessor, and in many ways feels like a step back compared to the original "Kingdom Hearts".

"Wait a minute" , I hear you cry, this can't be a sophomore slump because it's the third Kingdom Hearts game. And you are correct: A "bridge" game was released on the Game Boy Advance in 2004 titled "Chain of Memories", which was meant to link Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. However, COM follows a different style of gameplay compared to the console games, so technically, KH2 is the second game to have the gameplay style of KH1. I would still have to consider it a slump, regardless if it's a sophomore or junior slump.

Anyways, back to the game at hand. Kingdom Hearts II, at first glance, seems like the perfect sequel. You have more characters, new worlds, a brand new story, and even some new gameplay features to spice it all up. However, a closer inspection of all of these elements reveals that they aren't as perfect as you would want them to be, especially if you were a fan of KH1.

Let's get the positives out of the way: the production values are still as good as they were, and in some areas, even better. The graphics are more detailed and fleshed-out this time around, and the game can have much more enemies and characters on-screen than before, as demonstrated by a mid-game battle sequence where you fight 1000 creatures at once. Again, the voice acting and music is as good as it ever was. Finally, I absolutely loved the Lion King themed world. In this world, Sora is, for some reason, transformed into a lion cub and holds the Keyblade in his mouth in order to attack. In lion form, Sora can run EXTREMELY fast, and can even drift around corners as if you were playing an arcade racing title. This is a great twist on standard KH gameplay.

The Bad
Where did this game go wrong? Too many areas, but I'll start.

The story is incredibly confusing. The player doesn't even start off as Sora, they start off as a character named Roxas, who is voiced by the pop star Jesse McCartney (no relation to Paul). In these scenes, you will do such fun things as work random jobs and explore a boring city that's always at sunset. Then, in a "Matrix" style plot twist, you find out that none of what you are playing through is even real, but rather a computer simulation. The reason that you actually were in the computer is too confusing and unsatisfying to even remember. When you go to Hollow Bastion, there's a little town there that wasn't even mentioned in the original game. The game's ending is extremely unsatisfying. The story overall lacks the charm and joy of the original game.I will say, however, that the story did "get" me for one brief moment when it appeared that a major character had accidentally died, but the darkness of that moment soon, and suddenly turned back to light far too quickly.

There's more. For gameplay, a new mechanic called "Reaction Commands" was added. Basically, a Reaction Command is a context-sensitive special attack that is activiated in battle by pressing the Triangle button. You then execute the attack, by watching the cutscene of Sora attacking and pressing the Triangle button when the game tells you to until you are done. Here's the problem: That's all you do. All you are pressing for the entire duration of the event is Triangle. You can't screw up the event by pushing something else, but you can miss the cue and press it too late. Had they programmed the events to where you were forced to press different buttons at the correct points in time, then there would have been an element of risk and strategy involved in using the commands. Instead, you'll end up mashing the triangle button as much as the X button. This "feature" makes the combat almost insultingly easy compared to the first game.

Finally, the level designs have seriously gone downhill. In the first game, the levels were more explorable, and you had to look at the map in order to figure out where you were supposed to go next. Here, however, there's rarely any places where you can branch off of the beaten path and explore on your own. It is essentially a straight shot from beginning to end, and as a consequence, the worlds feel smaller than they were in the first game. This, combined with the combat, makes the game an absolute push-over in the difficulty department. I could probably count the number of times I died playing this game on one hand.

Finally, I absolutely hated the POTC themed world. Not only is it based on a franchise I don't particularly care for, it's based on a live-action movie as well, which causes the visuals in the world to take a dramatic hit compared to the more animated areas in the rest of the game. It's just so uncomfortable to see Jack Sparrow realistically rendered alongside a cartoon Sora and Goofy. There was also a world that consisted entirely of rhythm-based minigames, and while I LOVE rhythm games, the reward for completing this world was pretty useless.

The Bottom Line
KHII ultimately is not as good as the first game. The first title had a freshness about it, a certain "magic", if you will, that this followup, try as it might cannot capture. With its poor level design, easy gameplay, and lackluster story, I'm honestly surprised as to how anyone could see that this sequel is better than the original game.

The Good
WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS

What happens when you mix Disney characters like Micky Mouse and Donald Duck with characters from one of the most famous RPG series ever, Final Fantasy, while adding characters of your own (Sora, Riku, Kairi, ect.) and having a story about evil shadows called Heartless who feed on the darkness in people's hearts and can only be stopped by the "Keyblade"? Well, you would think the end product would be a confusing mess. If you still think that, you must be a FPS fan boy (no offence to people who like Half-life or Team Fortress). But SquareSoft (now SquareEnix) and Disney Interactive had made undeniable proof that complete opposites can coincide peacefully with Kingdom Hearts. Well... "The story is not over"... and thank god because this game out-does the original by far. Not that the first installment was bad, it was just missing something. And this game, in my eyes, has just that.

The story continues from the second installment of the series, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (which I've never played at time of review). Namine has made Sora and his friends fall into a deep sleep, along with erasing everyone's memory of him. We start the story off with a boy who lives in a town called Twilight Town named Roxas, who's seemingly normal life shall soon reveal secrets that perhaps should of stayed secret... The story is very well made, and flows quite smoothly with the rest of the series, give or take a few plot holes.

The gameplay is a greatly improved version of Kingdom Hearts'. Almost everything has been improved: Fighting system, camera system, menu operation, synthesis, magic, summons, everything! And things such as Drives and a Shortcut menu just makes it all better. One of my favorite additions is Reaction Commands. These let you execute actions that shows Sora's true skills of combat. There are also mini-games that you can play. And the boss battles actually make me want to fight them (and that doesn't happen often)! All of the bosses give some moderate to extreme challenge, and most are really just a lot of fun! I can say absolutely nothing bad about 95% of the game. And the other 5%? Well... we'll get to that later.

The graphics are absolutely amazing. Some detail is so extreme, I wonder sometimes how Square could push the boundaries of the system so much. These graphics are one of the best examples of what a PS2 can really do! The cutscenes have specials "movements" for the characters in 60% of the shots. Let me explain: Sometimes in cutscenes, the models just talk like they do in game. But most of the time, their movements are exclusive to that cutscene, and their mouth syncs with the words almost perfectly.

The music is one of the best game tracks I have ever heard in my life. Some songs, such as "Vim and Vigor", give a sense of an evil aura surrounding the area, while "The Encounter" (one of my favorites) pumps you up for fight and gives you a feeling of "I'm ready to kick some ass!!!" Other music tracks in the game are also worthy of praise. The music will definitely fit the situation, whether walking in the mystic tower of Yen Sid, or getting one step closer to the final battle in the World That Never Was. The theme, "Sanctuary", is also a great song. As for the voice acting, it is wonderful. Not only do the original characters have good actors/actresses, but they have done something that is almost impossible: having almost every Disney character have their original actor. Obviously, Mickey, Donald, Goofy , and every one voiced by Jim Cummings (god-like actor) have their voices, but most of the others do to! Hades, Maleficent, Oggie Boogie, Ursula, Daisy, Minnie, Merlin, and even the freakin' Emperor from Mulan (I'm pretty sure)- ALL have their original voice talents. That, my friends, is commitment. The FF cast is good, too.

So far it sounds like the perfect game, right? Well, about that other 5%...

The Bad
...there are somethings I can't forgive.

Most of the Disney characters retain their original actors (amazingly). But, obviously, they couldn't do this for all of them. The worst cases are Nala and Scar. Nala's "new" actress is very bland and dull. I can't hear any emotion in her voice. It's almost like GLaDOS is voicing her- no, GLaDOS can actually out-perform Nala's actress. And she's a computer! And Scar's biggest mistake: he's not voiced by Jeremy Irons. Without him, Scar isn't Scar in my opinion. Instead of going the 2nd best option, Jim Cummings (see "Be Prepared"), they go with some one who does a TERRIBLE job being Irons. At least he's better than Nala...

Also, some classic moments (Scar's "little secret" to Simba, Hades's so-called "death", ect.) are completely butchered. For example, in the "final battle" at Pride Rock, there is no fire at all. It doesn't even take place at night. In my opinion, this brings the awesome-ness of the whole thing down immensely. Perhaps that would be too "dark", but if they did it in the 90's, they can do it now!

On one last note, I kind of liked the Trinity mark stuff. But that's not to serious.

The Bottom Line
Overall, this game is a must buy for any PS2 owner. Even if you don't like RPGs, buy it. You will not in anyway be sorry for that purchase.