I admit it - I really loved Kingdom Hearts I. The combination of Final Fantasy and Disney characters was really great! How does Kingdom Hearts 2 stack up?

First, with this being a sequel both to the PS2 game and gameboy game, they spent a LOT of time with quick cut scenes trying to catch you up on the story. They do it in a way that's quite cool to people who do know the stories - but would be completely baffling to anybody who did NOT play the previous games. If you haven't played both previous games - and care to know the storyline - find an online walkthrough and read it to know what is going on.

The game starts up VERY slowly. You are put into battles that you can't win because they don't give you the "correct weapon". You have to run completely mindless chores to earn money, and then it's immediately stolen. You have to go through ENDLESS days (in game time) of little quests, going up and down, watching incredibly long cut scenes.

I'm not saying this is bad, necessarily. I'm just saying that you should get yourself a large bowl of popcorn, an entire 2 liter bottle of soda, and turn off the cell phone to get through this section. It's going to be slow, before you can actually start gameplay.

Once you do, if you've played Kingdom Hearts, you know what you're in for. There is story development, character development, creatures to kill, orbs and munny to gather. Your items give you skills, you talk to people as you go.

The graphics are cute and relatively smooth for a PS2. The sound is good and there are actually some AMAZING actors here such as Christopher Lee.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Walkthrough