Three things that sucked:

1. Not enough Roxas and Naminé

No you’re not

During the early part of the game, you couldn’t take five steps without being forced to sit through a cut scene about Roxas sucking an ice pop. You’d think all that actionless character development would eventually pay off, but no, Roxas and Naminé got completely ignored until a brief scene at the end of the game. Roxas and Naminé should’ve been the focal point of the story, but most of their background was relegated to the Ansem Reports, which you have to READ. Reading sucks. I’m surprised you made it this far into the paragraph. Why not animate the Ansem Reports at fixed points throughout the game? That way we get a steady dose of of Roxas and Naminé, and the plot won’t feel disjointed.

2. Cure Magic and Limit Attacks consume all your Magic Points

“I need to cure myself. Oh shit, I just blew all my magic points using Twin Howl with The Beast. I’d better run around like a scared little pussy until my MP restores.”

The worst is when you’re trying to use a triangle command and accidentally blow all your MP on a limit attack.

3. No Dodge Roll

Dodge Roll in the original Kingdom Hearts kicked ass. I Dodge Rolled more than I walked. Without Dodge Roll, you’re stuck with Guard. Guard blows. It’s too slow to be useful unless you memorize the enemies’ timing, which never applies to me, because I never die (except against Sephiroth and the Tron light cycle game), so I don’t see enough repetitions of enemy attacks to memorize them.

After beating the game and heading off to get humiliated by Sephiroth, I learned that you could level up your Wisdom form to get a dodge technique. Great. Why didn’t anybody tell me about that earlier?

“Sephiroth is a weak-ass baby in Kingdom Hearts II. If he pulls a Sin Harvest on you in KH II, it’s only because you’re deaf, blind, mentally retarded, and have no arms.” – My old roommate

Yeah, except you can’t even touch him if you don’t level up your jumping ability through your Drive Forms. My roommate definitely had the abilities, because he beat the game at 100% completion (which he regrets as a total waste of time).

Three things that rocked:

1. Auron

If you haven’t played Final Fantasy X, you might like to know why Auron is such a badass: show

Go get your copy of FFX before the price gets jacked up. I recently saw a used copy of FFVII going for $70 at a comic book store, which I thought was their joke tribute to the game until I saw it going for $83 on Amazon. The dollar is really getting weak. Screw gold, invest your money in video games.

2. Tifa

Cloud, stop being gay for Sephiroth and settle down with Tifa. Also, give up on Aeris/Aerith. Remember that scene where she lectures you about the dangers of running off alone? Hmmmm….

Besides, Aeris/Aerith looks good with Squall/Leon.

3. Time Travel

Time travel kicks ass.

Three things I’m indifferent about:

1. Triangle Commands

It was a nice concept, but what you gain in versatility, you lose in predictability. The necessity of noticing and timing certain triangle commands made some battles more frustrating than they had to be.

2. Mickey coming to your rescue

Similar to some of the problems I mentioned earlier:

• He only shows up when you get killed, which doesn’t apply to me
• When he does show up, you have no experience using him (unless you die a lot)

Mickey stepped in during a legitimately tough battle against the wind-using member of Organization XIII. Although Mickey died almost immediately, he still got credit in the final battle report.

3. Summons

Summoning is for girls. As you saw in the battle report, I only used one summon, and that was completely accidental. There’s no way I’d intentionally summon a geeky wuss like Chicken Little.

FINAL SCORE:

Characters: Why else would you play the game?	20/20
Plot: Too much happiness, not enough Roxas/Naminé, worlds often felt disjointed from the big picture	10/20
Battle System: Awesome except for the MP system	19/20
Sidequests: I didn’t do any until I was preparing to beat Sephiroth. The mermaid world was crappy but amusing. Some gummi routes were pretty cool.	8/10
Graphics: Excellent. Noticeably better than the original.	10/10
Sound: More or less the same as the original.	8/10
Options: Plenty of customization, three levels of difficulty, level order flexible	5/5
Intangibles: First a Disney crossover that didn’t suck. Now a Disney sequel that didn’t suck?	5/5
TOTAL	85/100