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Learning how to drive
In the first few moments of Sora's awakening, the Wizard Yen Sid and his Three Fairies award our hero with a brand new attire. Thankfully, his new look is styling and much more tolerable than his Bozo the Clown-esque appearance in the first two games. Someone must have sent famed Final Fantasy VII designer, Tetsuya Nomura a memo on the Fall line of keyblade fashion.
But not only do the new threads add an extra flavor of flash and flare to our favorite keyblade master, but now grants him the magical power of Drive. Once acquired, the Drive Bar cumulates on account of damage taken and given, and once maxed out, can momentarily turn Sora into a much more formidable adversary. By merging with select party members, you can transform into several different “forms”, each merging you with either Donald, or Goofy, or both, temporarily boosting Sora's arsenal. Each form differs from the next: Goofy's Valor Form focuses on wielding two keyblades at once as well as super strength, while Donald's Wisdom form dallies more into a long-ranged, magic shooting approach. There are also Master and Final forms which allow double wielding as well as other stat bonuses and abilities. But the most curious of forms would be Sora's Anti-form. Strangely, it triggers completely randomly, turning Sora into a bare-handed Heartless with incredible speed and strength. Up to now, there is no viable explanation as to why this happens, but again, likely the cheap minimalist excuse to push a third game.
Odds & Ends
Remember that terrible gummi ship mini-game in the first Kingdom Hearts? The one you were forced to play through to reach the next stage? Well, thankfully, so did Square, because the gummi ship events were revamped for the second game and are actually fun this time. Once again, it's required to storm through a planet's orbital space in hopes to reach the door locking the world's entrance. This time around though, battles take form of something akin to the camera-rotating rail shooter, Panzer Dragoon. And when you've completed a track for the first time, your job is not done. Optional missions as well as new Gummi ship blueprints open up and add a whole new tier of fun to this mini-game. Post battle reports and letter rankings are given based on medallion collection and ships destroyed. It's ridiculously fun and strangely addictive. Thankfully, it plays no part in the main game once you're done the first time, but it's a nice side-quest to keep you busy when you have time to kill or a score to best.
Each Disney universe is portrayed as well, if not better than it was in the first game, at least to those worlds that weren't new this time around. Inclusions to the second game, such as Tron's Space Paranoids and The Lion King's Pride Lands were all brilliantly recreated in 3D. Further, NPC's as well as recruitable party members were all translated into digital form with near-perfection. Though, the same can not be said of the voice-overs. While the presentation is indeed remarkable, many times the cast of vocals simply don't cut it to said film's original actors and actresses. Some voices like the Genie's Dan Castellaneta are changes we've all gotten used to by now, but nothing is as offsetting as Jack Sparrow's bizarre new speech. It's iffy at best, and it's almost pathetic to see that Sparrow's voiceover in the Japanese version, Hiroaki Hirata, pulls it off a much better performance than the original English stand-in. It's a minor complaint, but it is very noticeable. Thankfully, Haley Joel Osment plays the role of Sora just fine, and not once do you feel as if something is wrong with Sora's stature to his voice.
When all is said and done, the main quest should take roughly 25 hours to complete, but to the hapless fool who wishes to synthesize another Ultima Keyblade, defeat Sephiroth once again and bother finishing optional quests such as Atlantica sing-a-longs and The 100 Acre Wood, well things could escalate to a teetering 50 hours like the first game. Thankfully, even though there are some minor periods of backtracking throughout the game, its presented in a way to make them enjoyable, almost as if you missed the characters and environments enough to warrant paying them a second visit.
As it stands, Kingdom Hearts II remains solid testament that a sequel is capable of retaining the core elements that defined the franchise, while completely reinventing itself without changing too much. Surprisingly, the follow-up to the 2002 hit managed to live up to all the hype it's generated over the past few years. Whether you loved or hated the previous release shouldn't be an issue. KHII is an entirely different beast from its predecessors and while it may be plagued with some eye-rolling cutscenes and simple-minded action, it's all around entertaining adventure
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