Kingdom Hearts 2

The following review comments heavily on the events of 358/2 Days. Beware of spoilers, for they’re coming.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is a bigger, bolder sequel that goes all out in everything it does, delivering a more complex story and an action-focused combat system. It has its obvious share of faults – at this point, it wouldn’t be Kingdom Hearts without them – but the game still has its heart in the right place: the story it tells, although bizarrely convoluted, remains tragic and moving.

The plot follows Sora’s awakening after the events of Chain of Memories, and his fight against Organization XIII, which is trying to form Kingdom Hearts by collecting hearts released from monsters. Sora will travel to various worlds based on a variety of Disney properties to help the people struggling there and unlock magical gates in the process. However, in an excellent narrative decision, the game doesn’t start with Sora, but with his counterpart, the boy Roxas.

Picking up the story from where the brilliant 358/2 Days left off, Roxas is now living in the peaceful Twilight Town, hanging out with his friends every day, enjoying his summer vacation, with no memory of who he truly is. The story begins with his group chasing a mysterious thief who is not only stealing things but also the words for them: the devious fiend will steal our           and we’ll be none the wiser. So, as you can see, much like in the first game, the world presented here is already strange and fantastical from the outset: Kingdom Hearts excels in building this haunting, dreamlike tone where the most bizarre things can happen.

In a great reference to 358/2 days, Roxas has to take on jobs in Twilight Town, and the days are counted as they pass. Yes, 358/2 Days was originally released after Kingdom Hearts 2 (so technically it’s that game that is referencing this one), but as the HD collection now also suggests, it’s better to experience its story beforehand. After all, playing Kingdom Hearts 2 first – as it was originally intended – has its benefits, creating a connection between the player and Roxas, as both won’t know what is happening, but the dramatic irony of knowing beforehand that Roxas’s life is a lie, that he doesn’t have a heart, and that he is being manipulated and used by powerful beings, establishes a stronger emotional connection with the events, imbuing them with pathos, and transforming the game in a tragedy: we start to pity the boy.

Roxas perfectly embodies the tragic nature of the creatures called Nobodies. Since they don’t have hearts, they are unable to feel love, hate, and sadness. They are mere shadows of their real counterparts, with no purpose in life: by their very nature, they’re lost beings, locked in a desperate search for direction. This is why their organization, called XIII, intends to form Kingdom Hearts, making it so they can finally be whole again.

However, as the events of 358/2 Days showed, things are not that simple. Nobodies are not supposed to have feelings, and yet Roxas was able to grow close to two of his work colleagues, Xion and Axel. They went every day to the top of a tower and had ice cream together while talking about their day. Against all odds, against their supposed blank, empty soul, they started to feel love toward each other: they became friends.

But because they are still doubles, the shadowy counterparts of “real” people, their destiny is out of their hands: at the climax of 358/2 Days, Xion not only died, but ceased to exist (much like the words that thief stole, Roxas lost the ability to even remember and reference her), and Roxas himself was captured by Riku, who needed him to restore Sora’s memories.

So, now armed with this knowledge, the events that kick-start Kingdom Hearts 2 may lose their mysterious aura, but have now become filled with pathos. Watching Roxas hanging out with his friends, Hayner, Ollete, and Pence, for hours has turned into a painful experience because that friendship – for being an illusion – is cruel to Roxas. It’s mocking his life with Xion and Axel. Roxas is an unambitious person with simple dreams, perfectly content with being close to the ones he cares about. But even that modest desire is impossible to him. People tell Roxas that he is not supposed to exist, that he’s just a part of another boy’s life, that everything he feels is a lie: they deny him his friends. And, since friendship is the core pillar of the series, that makes Roxas its most tragic figure.

And it also reinforces an ambivalent feeling toward the character: Roxas doesn’t deserve to die – far from it – but his demise will mean that our hero, Sora, will be finally able to fight once more. Whoever plays Kingdom Hearts 2 first will be no doubt yearning for Sora’s return and considering Roxas’s fate a sad sacrifice for the greater good – because they haven’t spent enough time with the character to consider him a proper person – but those with the baggage of 358/2 Days will feel the opposite.

Starting the game with Roxas is so crucial to the story that it even pushes us to feel a greater deal of empathy toward the antagonists. Organization XIII may have cold, stoic members, but that is not their fault; it’s not their choice. And they are fighting precisely to change that. Yen Sid and DiZ both claim that because they have no hearts, Nobodies are just empty shells that have no right to exist, being “doomed to fade away into darkness.” They should be purged if DiZ has any say on the matter. However, there we have Roxas feeling pain, love, anger, and loneliness. There we have Axel, wanting nothing more than to be reunited with his friend, claiming that “He made me feel like I had a heart.” There we have Xion, capable of self-sacrifice. And yet, Yen Sid, Mickey’s teacher, and supposedly a source of wisdom and knowledge, still claims that these feelings are a ruse, a simple illusion. Roxas, Axel, and Xion beg to differ.

It’s just fitting, then, that when Kingdom Hearts 2 finally goes back to Sora, the narrative loses some of its power. The Disney worlds are again wasted, having little to no impact on the main plot, although now their themes at least share some thematic resonance with the overarching story. Captain Barbossa, for example, doesn’t feel anything and seeks to change that – considering his condition a curse –, which clearly mirrors the Nobodies’ plight. Ariel has her love for a man constantly denied by her father, while Beast and Belle’s love is also put into question, both reflecting – even if a bit loosely – Roxas’ plight regarding his feelings being dismissed by DiZ. Meanwhile, Hercules, Simba, and Mulan are all struggling with their new roles as leaders, which – also loosely – ties with Sora’s journey of self-discovery regarding his role as a hero, and the sacrifices others have to make for that to happen.

The game’s story suffers from some glaring problems, however, being unnecessarily convoluted, rife with twists and turns that do more harm than good, as they make everything, well, confusing as hell for no good reason. Without being specific, it’s revealed that a certain character actually wasn’t that character all along, but the heartless of another character, calling himself by the wrong name all this time for reasons, and that the Nobody of that first character is not the Nobody of that character but of another one, although his name is an anagram of the first character’s fake name, and the names of all Nobodies are anagrams of their original counterparts. All of this made absolute sense to you and didn’t read like gibberish at all, right? And what’s the point, the tradeoff of complicating the nonsense (and only the nonsense), besides giving the story an artificial aura of self-importance?

Meanwhile, the conclusion, although emotional and effective, also suffers from being a bit artificial, since Roxas’ arc is tied with the wrong character, with an ending that feels forced and out of place. If the game had, instead, treated the character’s fate with the sadness it deserved, it would have been much more powerful.

But Kingdom Hearts 2 also has its good share of adrenaline-filled set-pieces to make up for that, with gigantic battles happening frequently, in a scope not yet seen in the series. Some scenes even manage to be hilarious, sad, and tense all at the same time, such as the “fake death” of a certain character before a climactic event: it’s tremendously funny because it’s ridiculous to think anyone would believe that said death is for real, but the scene still manages to be very emotional since the characters all fall for it and become as angry as they are allowed to be in a Disney-themed story, going to battle with fire in their eyes. The whole scene is not Kingdom Hearts at its best, but it’s definitely Kingdom Hearts at its most Kingdom Hearts: totally bonkers, but touching.

Finally moving on from the narrative aspect of Kingdom Hearts 2, it’s important to note how the combat system is revamped to be more action-oriented than the first game. Levels and stats are not nearly as important as before, since Sora’s abilities are now tied to beating certain bosses and enemies. Now, he’s also gained the so-called “forms”, which have their own abilities and combos, with the combat being all about reading our enemies and knowing when to block, when to parry, when to dodge, and when to attack. So, stats matter a lot less than the player’s ability to perform combos and understand the monsters’ weaknesses.

It’s a much more dynamic and flashy combat system, with Sora performing visually complex attacks that require quick input from us. The Final Mix version has some exclusive bosses that truly test the player’s mettle, for example, requiring a good understanding of the game’s systems, such as the benefits and disadvantages of certain forms, the usefulness of some spells, and the precise time to block and dodge.

But Kingdom Hearts 2 is still filled with questionable design decisions. The world based on The Lion King, for example, removes the complexities of the combat system and adds nothing in return, becoming a boring affair. Atlantica is now a bizarre musical minigame that is too easy and uninteresting: we only need to press the right button at the right time a certain number of times to succeed. It was a good idea to take advantage of the musical aspect of the source material, but the execution is certainly lackluster, as everything is too slow to be fun.

Keeping the Gummi Ship stages is also problematic. Shorter and more action-packed, with a rotating camera that moves like in a Star Fox game, they are certainly more interesting than before, with the added benefit of looking now like we’re driving through actual space and not in the middle of a bad acid trip about shapes and blocks, as it was in the first game. And it’s good that the editor interface for the ships is not atrocious anymore, too. Overall, it’s definitely an improvement, but scrapping the idea altogether would have been much better: the stages still feel out of place and are not nearly as polished as in a Star Fox game, for example. They break the pace of the action and are a constant annoyance at the beginning. At least, now the exploration doesn’t reward gummy parts anymore, which makes exploring levels more relevant, but also highlights how the whole Gummi thing is an unnecessary ordeal.

Kingdom Hearts has always been a series about ambivalence, and so it’s perfect that the games themselves can be so ambivalent when it comes to their strengths and weaknesses. The story in Kingdom Hearts 2 is complex in both a good and a bad way: developing tragic characters intertwined with philosophical discussions about the “self” and the nature of emotions, while also being packed with bizarre twists that turn things confusing for confusion’s sake. It has a strong combat system, but on-rails segments that have no reason to exist. It has a lot of Disney worlds, but they never matter too much, narrative-wise. In a nutshell, Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of the best Kingdom Hearts games to date – for better and for worse.

June 19, 2025.