I'm not "with you" per se, The Dude Abides. Well, actually, I'm not at all if you think KH1 is terrible. But I think some know me here as a defender of KH2, something I gave up on a long time ago. No sense in even bringing it up when frankly, it never ends well.
Let's put it this way, I've always said that the second KH was on par with the first, and I still stand by that, though I absolutely disagree with you that the first was "terrible."
Plain and short, KH1 is put on a pedal by nostalgic apologists, and there's a deep-seated hate of KH2 (for multiple reasons, some valid, some not so much) to the point where it is regarded as an absolute shit fest. While I can certainly believe the view that KH1 is superior to KH2, the stark contrast that has been painted between the two installments is so striking, it's ludicrous. That much of a gap, to me at least, is impossible when the titles are so similar. The hate was generated in part by the anticipation. The longer it took for KH2 to come out, the more excited people got and, conversely, KH1, which had never really had any hype surrounding it in the first place, became more ingrained in nostalgic memory.
In its defense, KH1 holds a place in my heart that KH2 could never reach, but that is entirely an effect of nostalgia. Even a quantifiably "better" Kingdom Hearts game in the future could not be as special to me in that regard (an example of this would be in the Pokemon series, where in my head I know that Heart Gold and Soul Silver are all around better games, but in my heart I like the original gold and silver better because they can't evoke the same sense of wonder that they did when I was younger. Incidentally, the same applies to Chain of Memories and Re:Chain of Memories).
That said, I'm not in the slightest bit trying to deny the validity of disliking KH2. To be sure, there were various reasons to be disappointed. I just find a sort of double standard about the hate, examining KH2's faults in detail while glancing over the mistakes of the previous titles and glorifying them.
When the first Kingdom Hearts was being developed, every last ounce of effort was put into it in order to make the game as perfect as it could be, because they only had one shot at making a good game.
Uh, let's not give it
that much credit.
You really think they put less effort into KH2 than KH1?
If you're going to argue in that manner, go for criticism of execution, not effort. An equal amount of effort can be put into two products with vastly different results.
