Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX Review

In a perfect world, a review of anything should be completely unbiased, with the reviewer having little or no contact with the product being criticized. In a perfect world, I should not review Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX, as Kingdom Hearts II is my favorite game. This world is not perfect and I figured if I'm already going to devote an extreme amount of my life to this game, I may as well add it to my review list as well. Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX contains HD ports of both Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, the first time it has been released in the United States, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, not contained in this review due to time constraints, as well as an HD adaptation of the cinematics of Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded. I'll be handling both reviews of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix and Re: Coded separately and Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix will be treated more as its own IP rather than just an HD port as it is the first time the game has had a proper release in North America.

Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix:

Originally released in 2005, Kingdom Hearts II did a lot to further the Kingdom Hearts series and increase the fanbase of the series. Now released for the first time in North America is Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, a sort of director's cut for the game. Final Mix is a flashy game with beautiful presentation and animations that make it hard to believe the game is nine years old. The game's super slick combat is fun to play with, but a lenient difficulty ends up making the game a breeze to just button mash through and negates a lot of the features the game tries to emphasize the use of.

Continuing immediately after the events Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, KHII continues Sora, Donald, and Goofy's quest to rid the world of the Heartless, one world at a time, and adds new foes to the series in Organization XIII and the Nobodies, a group who strives to once again have a heart and hopes to achieve this goal through Kingdom Hearts. The story is an elaborate tale that is difficult to understand based on cutscenes alone and the game does a good job of filling in gaps or things the player may have missed with optional dialogues and text notes received by completing story missions. Once things become more clear, the player will find themselves speculating on what each character's role in this whole mess is and it is hard to not think about it even when your console is turned off. There's no guarantee you'll understand all of it at first, but half the fun is wondering what exactly is going on and what will happen. The story is elaborate, but it never feels like a mess of broken plot- points. Things that are confusing in the beginning, or seem unnecessary are explained over time and each piece of the sweeping puzzle eventually fits right into place. Aside from that, the game puts a large emphasis on friendship and the importance of personal relationships, and it is hard not to smile and be moved at Sora, Donald, and Goofy's friendship as it really seems that these three need each other. There are times when the script can be cheesy, but as far as the main story goes, everything feels necessary for furthering the plot as well as developing the characters who players will have no choice but to love.

The story does have several moments where the pacing becomes choppy or secondary stories get in the way of the main tale. Without giving too much away to the few who may not have played KH2 yet, the beginning of the game does not initially give you control of Sora, rather a character named Roxas. Roxas has his own very important role in Kingdom Heart's lore and his story, as it unravels, is one of the more emotional aspects of the game. But, Roxas' story is introduced during the tutorial, which drags on far beyond an enjoyable time. A lot of time is spent explaining Roxas as just a normal kid and insists you spend hours doing jobs for local townspeople and read countless dialogues between his friends and him about school, all without actually telling the player his role in the story and constantly removing the player from gameplay for another cutscene about the annual “Struggle.” I understand the need to introduce both an emotional appeal to the character's story and game mechanics at the same time, but this portion of the game took me well over three hours to complete and only at the end did the game start to give pertinent story information on Roxas or the story in general besides small glimpses here and there. The original Kingdom Hearts did the exact same thing in a much better manner, introducing the story, character's, and mechanics all within an hour or so. It's unfortunate KHII decided to abandon this formula for a mind-numbingly boring alternative.

As always, the vast majority of the game is spent traveling to different worlds, most of which are based on the films of Disney, to take on the Heartless. The game includes many of the actors from the original films and almost all are terrifically voiced. As are most of the characters in the game, despite a few exceptions that border on laughably bad. Each world is fully realized and unique to the movie it pays homage to. Some of the worlds like Timeless River, based on Steamboat Willy, and Halloween Town, based on The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as non-Disney worlds such as Hollow Bastion, which returns from the first game in the series, for example have interesting stories and are fun to be in. But, a few of the world's individual stories fall completely flat of anything close to interesting and feel like they are just taking time away from the main story. A few worlds just assume you have seen the movies they are based upon and leave it up to you to fill in the blanks of what is going on. Also, Atlantica, the world based upon the Little Mermaid, is a musical level that consists of nothing but quick time events. Now, I am a huge Kingdom Hearts fan and I have been very willing to accept some bizarre things in the series and appreciate them, but I can not imagine anyone of any age enjoyed playing through that world whatsoever. But, I digress.

The design of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix is one of the best aspects of the game. Even if their stories aren't all equally enjoyable, the individual worlds are all unique and feature their own characteristics. If you're visiting Captain Jack Sparrow in Port Royal, expect a level that is dark, dingy, and fit for Pirate activities. On the adverse, when you meet Tron inside a computer in the Space Paranoids level, everything is bright, polished, and obnoxiously 80s-esque. Enemies vary drastically in appearance and size and no two enemies, whether Heartless or Nobodies, behave the same. Boss design is also a main draw as each of the numerous bosses is completely different than the last . A lot of care was taken to make the worlds of Kingdom Hearts II a joy to be in and the upgrade to High Definition makes it hard to believe that this game originally came out nine years ago. World textures and character models have been improved, making this game look just as good, if not better than games that came out years after it. Other than Atlantica, when I had to visit and revisit worlds, I never felt disappointed. Each world is a breath of fresh air from the last, so even if you do grow tired of one world or one type of enemy, the next world is so different that it doesn't allow you to become tired of the game ever. The pacing of your visits to each world is perfect, never allowing you to feel that you have been in one for too long. As you jump from place to place you start to lose yourself in the sights and battles and lose track of how much time you've spent playing the game and in that moment it doesn't matter because you're too enthralled in the game's charm.

KHII is a flash of color and action. Far more fast-paced than its predecessor, an emphasis on combat is put in this iteration rather than magic or skill. Where other Kingdom Hearts titles made using magic a necessity, I found myself rarely using it during my thirty-two hour playthrough and just mashing X for almost the entirety of the game. Since you can just button-mash your way through nearly the whole campaign, it feels unnecessarily easy, especially compared to the original Kingdom Hearts which at times could be soul-crushingly difficult. Within the first half of the game, I had only been defeated a handful of times, definitely less than ten, and it wasn't until the game hit its second half that only a slight increase in difficulty was noticeable, only noticeable in boss fights though. None of the fifteen worlds make you feel a necessity to change up your strategy of mashing your thumb into carpel tunnel, and while enemy health bars get larger the farther in the game you go, defeating them never increases in challenge. For the first time ever, I welcomed the frustration and high blood pressure that comes from becoming stuck in a game, because in the rare instances it happened in KH2, I finally felt I had to think to progress. Leveling up happens extremely fast and you rarely find a world's battle level higher than your personal level. Leveling up leads to upgrades, which in turn make you more and more powerful over your foes. That's not to say that the combat in the game isn't fun. On the contrary, it's a blast to fight through the waves of numerous enemies the game constantly throws at you and there are different combinations of melee moves to discover to deal more powerful blows. But, when the game never poses much of a challenge for the player, it begins to feel unfair to just be able to plow through everything given to them. I never felt I was working for the upgrades it gave me, I just had to walk into a room, press X a couple dozen times and then reap the benefits of my fourth level up that hour (and that's not exactly an exaggeration).

KHII includes in extensive upgrade list that provides bonuses to combat, platforming, and magic. With a few upgrades, Sora's combos can reach well over ten hits and the upgrades to platforming come in extremely handy when trying to traverse a world quicker and more efficiently. KHII also includes “forms,” that enhance Sora's strengths and abilities for a limited time. Unfortunately, since most of the game is very simple, I rarely found myself using the forms, as I had no reason to. The use of Forms are a cool and flashy edition, and leveling them up leads to upgrades such as a high jump and a dash ability, but I was able to get through the entire game with only leveling up one Form twice. Once again, the game's difficulty makes the entire campaign accessible from the get go and it's unfortunate that its lenient difficulty allows for players to negate some of the more interesting features in the game.

Released for the first time in North America, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, is the same Kingdom Hearts II released in the States in 2005, just with a slew of new additions and features. The game now includes collectibles that form puzzles to be solved, entire new areas of the game, and new cinematics that further the plot of the game and fill in some holes from the standard edition. If you were a fan of the original game or the series in general, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix is a must have, as it expands upon and includes many features that serve as fan service and increase replayability for fans of the series. I'm still finding myself putting the disk back in time and time again, even after over thirty-five hours, to try and get each last thing I can in the game.

Kingdom Hearts II is a game that many people hold dear to them and Final Mix does a good job of giving them reason to relive their nostalgia. A beautiful, charming, and more importantly, fun, game, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix still feels nearly the same as it did nine years ago. Unfortunately, poor decisions early in the game lead to a rocky beginning and a rarely-changing difficulty is unable to justify the rewards player's are inundated with the entire game for minimal effort. What the game does perfectly though is revitalize fond memories and nostalgia all in preparation for Kingdom Hearts III. All feelings that are welcomed almost a decade later.

4 out of 5

Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded:

 

Originally released as an episodic puzzle game between 2008 and 2010, the Japanese exclusive, Kingdom Hearts Coded, is included in the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX box set as an HD cinematic movie. While the movie looks great and starts out entertaining enough to grab viewer's attention, its nearly impossible to follow story and lackluster voice acting ultimately lead any interest to dissolve to boredom. And when the only pertinent information doesn't come until the end, it is hard to justify watching the entire thing if you're not a devoted fan of the series.

 

Set after the events of Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded tells the story of a sole entry in Jiminy Cricket's journal from the original KH game that says, “Thank Namine,” an entry players of KHII will remember from being briefly mentioned early in the game. Without any further explanation of what this entry means, Jiminy and Mickey Mouse convert the journal into data to send a version of Sora comprised of ones and zeros through the worlds of the original KH game in search of what this cryptic message could mean. Despite a bizarre plot, Re:Coded starts off campy and entertaining, allowing the player to excuse a loose premise. It doesn't take long though for this loose premise to buckle under its own narrative. The story quickly becomes disjointed and repetitive, seeing Sora going to the same worlds over and over and giving the viewer nothing but more questions and a bigger headache. It doesn't take long to forget the enjoyment from the beginning of the movie as hour after hour pass with little to no explanation of what the hell is going on. The movie even seems to know what little sense it makes, because repeatedly through out it Sora will remark on how confused he is or how what he's being told doesn't make sense.

 

Re: Coded serves to fill in holes from the Kingdom Hearts lore and when certain questions are finally answered after hours of waiting, it is gratifying to finally get a slight explanation as to some of the mysteries from previous games. Unfortunately, these answers don't come until the very end and have nearly nothing to do with the bulk of the game. If you must watch this movie, watch the first thirty minutes and the last thirty minutes, as they are the only satisfying parts of the entire film and will give you satisfying answers. Everything in between is just fluff that didn't make a graceful transition from game to film.

Re: Coded looks great, nearly up to the same caliber as Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. One of the only drawbacks is that the lip sync seems off nearly the whole movie. Mouths will move in a completely different shape than the syllable being spoken and often move too long or too short for the sentence the character is speaking. The voice acting also falls very short in this entry. Even characters voiced by series veterans sound tired and uninspired. A lot of the acting during tense moments is dull and monotone and do nothing to heighten the suspense of the moment.

Unless you are wanting to fill in some plot holes from the other Kingdom Hearts games, I can't recommend sitting through the multiple hours of this movie. It's boring, confusing, and just not very good at all. Though the end does a good job of answering some questions from the first two games, the over all product does not justify sitting through from start to finish.

2 out of 5