What Did Kingdom Hearts II do wrong?

[agreatflood2121]

In your opinion...

Where did Kingdom Hearts II go wrong?

 

[Orion]

Difficulty, pacing, gameplay, writing, plot.

Pretty much everywhere that mattered it screwed up to some degree.

 

[billyzanesucks]

I don't see what was wrong with the plot. The script, maybe, but I didn't notice anything terrible about the story itself. The game was too easy, but I still enjoyed it a lot when I was playing it. It seems like others being so cynical that screwed it up for me. Oh, and it lacked side quests and secret bosses. That and the difficulty would be fixed if we just got FM over here.

 

[agreatflood2121]

First Of All I still love Kingdom Hearts II

In my opinion Kingdom Hearts II : Final Mix fixed a lot of the problems regard KHII's gameplay.
- The need for greater difficulty.
- More bosses, especially the other Organization Members.
In terms of design.
- You should have been able to do and get everything before you visited Twilight Town for the last time to get to TWTNW.
In terms of Story
- Most of the story bits felt unconnected to the main story.
- The ones that didn't were all to brief to feel relevant.
- You didn't even get a glimpse of the actual plot until you were half way through the game, and by then their was nothing left. You had it all.
In terms of Presentation
- It was painful watching some of the cutscenes try to mimic the "movie moments" of Disney. KH1 didn't even do that. They could have at least done a more faithful job at it since they bothered in the first place.
- More of the music from the Disney properties for their respective worlds.
- Some scenes like the one with Shan Yu on the mountains; you needed the actually hun army in that scene.

 

[ROXAS_32]

Mainly imo it was the difficulty which for the most part was corrected in the final mix.

Pacing was alittle off but i only really noticed it with the Twilight town intro which took like a forever to complete. ( this is also times when you feel like you are visiting worlds for no reason to further the story.)

overall i still think it is the best kh game to date... Bbs final mix is tied with kh1 in a close second

 

[Gram]

Difficulty, pacing, gameplay, writing, plot.

Pretty much everywhere that mattered it screwed up to some degree.

this^ pretty much i mean 3/4th's of the script is "Sora, Donal, Goofy!" :/ and even its hard mode was a joke also....Atlantica...like what the fuck?
and the worlds stories didnt seem to contribute to the over all plot as much like in kh1.
one other thing (tho this is probably just me) is the censorship the US version got, in the final mix it shows such things like Will pointing the gun to his head in Port Royal.

First Of All I still love Kingdom Hearts II
In my opinion Kingdom Hearts II : Final Mix fixed a lot of the problems regard KHII's gameplay.
.

to me the only things the final mix fixed was the difficulty and it had more to do after the story (with all the bosses and such) also goofy's christmas town form~

 

[Mite]

Pretty much the difficulty was my main issue. I didn't really bother with the Drive Forms on my second playthrough except to get their support abilities. I didn't have a problem with the overall story, but the pacing was off (prologue was way too long), and I hated that useless Atlantica level.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Everything Orion said. Sometimes the game dragged on with periods where the overall plot didn't advance at all. There isn't much to tie the beginning, middle, and end together. We start the game with some plot concerning Roxas, Namine, DiZ, Rikunort, and Axel and we don't hear anything about them during most of the middle part of the game until we visit some worlds for a second time near the end of the game.

The game went from difficult in KH1 to too bonking easy. Also, most (if not all) platforming was removed which eliminated the ability to explore like you could in KH1. It was far too linear in that respect. FM+ "fixed" both of those things with the Cavern of Remembrance and all those high leveled Heartless and Nobodies but it should have been in the game to begin with and not isolated to two hidden areas in HB/RG.

The script wasn't strong at all. Sora was dumbed down way too much even though it was revealed that it was all just an act on Sora's part, but that is still no excuse for the stupidity that left Sora's mouth every moment. Like I said earlier, things just didn't connect from the beginning, middle, and end. Worlds felt more disconnected than ever and were hardly relevant in the long run. Nothing like KH1 where the villains of each world were working together and the plot was about the Princesses of Heart.

Then the lack of exposition on the Organization XIII members and the dehumanization of them. Despite how many times in KH2 they tried to show [weakly in the very last (30) minutes of the game] that good and bad does not equal Light and Dark and that even Nothing is not inherently evil. Even so, Sora just went around killing the Organization XIII because he was told to and multiple times we had to see each member fade away with their last words being in relation to their heart (minus Xigbar who probably could have cared less about his Heart because he probably knew the truth)

EDIT: In no way am I praising KH1, though. The game had its own problems but I'm just using it to show how I felt at the end of KH2 and the hype faded away. Going from KH1 to KH2 is a pretty big difference.

 

[khphantom97]

Now, in no respects is KHII a BAD game. It was the game that got me hooked to KH. However, now a serious fan of the series, it does have flaws:

-Story began the convalutedness that is the KH plotline
-The script was a little cheesy at times
-Disney worlds really have no affect on the plot. When explaining the plot of this game, I could say, "They go to some Disney worlds, then..." They weren't relevant
-Second visits. It really was just filler. The irrelevant Disney worlds became so much more boring, I didn't why I was going here
-Atlantica. God, need I say it?
-Music in certain scenes. Like, in the ballroom in Beast's Castle when the couple was dancing, no music was playing. It was one of the most memorable scenes from that film BECAUSE of the music. Plus, in the Pride Lands, the gang is doing the Hakuna Matata dance, and NO MUSIC IS PLAYING

I could go on, but, I'm getting tired. Sure, KH1 had some flaws. And, KH2 did fix some of those flaws. But, overall, people just don't seem to like KH2.

 

[blueheart]

For me, it had a good bulid up, even though it was pretty long. Climbing up the stairs in Yen Sid's tower really made me excited. But by the time Riku and Sora were going towards the portal of light in the end, I felt sort of empty and disappointed. The beginning part gave you a bunch of questions and mysteries you felt like you had to know about, but they aren't revealed until the last hour of the game, and it was frustrating to not figure at least some of them out sooner during the middle of the plot.

Another thing was, as Ethnic Woman said, they made Sora just.....dumb. Just because he's a playful person doesn't mean he has to act like a little kid. HLO didn't help sometimes either. Though at times Sora did act like a teenager a bit. Just a bit. They also didn't show much of the organization, except when they said they wanted hearts. This made Sora look like a jerk at times to some people, just blindly doing what he's told and blindly following nothing but light. But it looks like the FM fixed this, they showed more of the organization, which probably made you side more with Sora. I haven't played it, so I'm just guessing.

Another big thing was Kairi. Since she was comatose during the majority of KH1, this game could have been a real chance to show her character more. Even on the little we saw of Kairi in KH1, KH2 could have shown more on how she's grown up since then. The first couple scenes of her were okay, but after that, they painted her as just annoying. Her voice didn't help either, but I know that's not really HP's fault. The scenes of her in TWTNW were just the worst...


I'll probably say more later. I'm getting tired.

 

[D.D.D]

Another thing was, as Ethnic Woman said, they made Sora just.....dumb. Just because he's a playful person doesn't mean he has to act like a little kid. HLO didn't help sometimes either. Though at times Sora did act like a teenager a bit. Just a bit.

I agree with this. But-

just blindly doing what he's told and blindly following nothing but light. But it looks like the FM fixed this, they showed more of the organization, which probably made you side more with Sora. I haven't played it, so I'm just guessing.

I think it was more the fault of misdirection than blind hatred, in Sora's defense. Yen Sid told him that the Organization was BAD BAD BAD, and it didn't help that the Organization was using the shat out of him like they did Roxas. Plus Xemnas was set on doing bad things for power, so what else could he do? Besides, getting the Keyblade was never something he wanted in the first place. All these things get dumped on his lap, without him deserving it, and he has to go fix it. On top of that, he rents out his heart for anyone who needs a place to stay.
I think that his happy-go-lucky, goofy personality was exaggerated a bit, by Sora himself. He had to keep making everyone, who had put their faith and lives in his hands(purposely or not), think that he was okay.
And by the end of KH2, Sora realized that there needs to be a balance of light and dark, not just light, so I think that was one big lesson he needed to learn and therefore didn't understand that concept, until the end.
But the dialogue sucked, I'll admit.

 

[MATGSY]

1. The more important a character was, the less screen time he had. Riku, not seen until the last world. Diz, disappeared after Roxas prologue. The Organization for being the main antagonists, were barely there for most of it.

2. The main plot was dumped in 3 large chunks with looooong stretches of filler in between.
2.5. The filler of course being the Disney worlds, all of which except for maybe Tron were irrelevant. Nomura got too carried away with his new vehicle for his creativity that his priorities got mixed up.

3. Combat was still too repetitive, new additions like drive forms come off more as gimmicks than substantial features.

4. So much of the story & terminology is self-contradictory & more convoluted than it needed to be. Ansem wasn't Ansem, Hollow Bastion wasn't Hollow Bastion, NObodies are made of bodies, heartLESS are made of hearts, nobodies can't express emotions except they always do. The game does a hell of a lousy job explaining of it.

5. Too many unanswered questions that are left for later games to answer. People expect a game to be fairly self-contained, KH2 is so not self-contained.

 

[Wehrmacht]

I don't see what was wrong with the plot. The script, maybe, but I didn't notice anything terrible about the story itself.

Well, yes. The overall story isn't necessarily bad, but the execution was just so poor it killed the game plot-wise.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

4. So much of the story & terminology is self-contradictory & more convoluted than it needed to be. Ansem wasn't Ansem, Hollow Bastion wasn't Hollow Bastion, NObodies are made of bodies, heartLESS are made of hearts, nobodies can't express emotions except they always do. The game does a hell of a lousy job explaining of it.

The whole "Nobody" = "Person with a body but no heart" and "Heartless" = "Person with a heart but no body" is a play on words. It is a pun on how they do have Hearts or Bodies. And Nobodies don't feel emotion, but they remember how they felt and try to mimic that as a way to cling on to their memories of the days when they had a Heart.

 

[Sacred X]

Difficulty, pacing, gameplay, writing, plot.

Pretty much everywhere that mattered it screwed up to some degree.

Strongly disagree here. KH2 may have been flawed in more ways than one, however it still has among the best gameplay of all the Kingdom Hearts games. Granted the true potential of the gameplay isn't realized too well until KH2FM, the gameplay was still amazing.

 

[αsiя]

The fucking two hour tutorial.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

The bonking two hour tutorial.

Oh god. I remember that.

Strongly disagree here. KH2 may have been flawed in more ways than one, however it still has among the best gameplay of all the Kingdom Hearts games. Granted the true potential of the gameplay isn't realized too well until KH2FM, the gameplay was still amazing.

...Best gameplay? I guess it is a matter of opinion but after BBS and Re:coded, I think they have the best gameplay. It built on existing styles and made something new and enjoyable.

 

[rokudamia2]

Pretty much what everyone else said.

KH1 and coded are the only games that use the disney worlds well.

 

[Arimith]

...Best gameplay? I guess it is a matter of opinion but after BBS and Re:coded, I think they have the best gameplay. It built on existing styles and made something new and enjoyable.

While I feel you there, as lame as it sounds, KHII gameplay did LOOK the best at least. Though BBS felt the most tight, to me.

 

[rokudamia2]

I dislike BBS's plot but it was at least fun to play.

Can't say the samething about KH2.