Kingdom Hearts 2
Publishing House: Square Enix
Rated: NONE
List Price: 49.9900
WorkNameSort: Kingdom Hearts 2
ESRBRating: Kids to Adults
Platform: PlayStation 2

Having recently emerged from a week at the Magic Kingdom, awash in several double-shot pixie-dust cocktails, I have to say: Donald Duck never seemed like a badass. Goofy looked like a likable fool, not a wise philosopher. And who knew that Mickey Mouse was so freakin’ swift with a sword?

Square Enix and the suits at Disney, that’s who. After a four-year delay, Kingdom Hearts 2 has become the third game to prove that Final Fantasy and Walt Disney World are the unlikeliest pairing ever to produce an amazing video game experience.

The action picks up not after the original Kingdom Hearts, but Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, a little 2004 Game Boy Advance release that PS2-heads may have missed entirely. Thanks to some amazing cutscene work, enjoying and understanding Kingdom Hearts 2 isn’t dependent on having played either of the games before (although it sure helps). Suffice to say that Sora, our keyblade-wielding main man, has had his memories zapped. To get ’em back, find Riku and Kairi and restore order to the game’s multiple universes, he’ll hook up again with Donald, Goofy and an exhaustive roster of Disney and Final Fantasy characters, all while avoiding the shady, hood-cloaked Organization XIII, Maleficent, and those shadowy Heartless that seem to pop up everywhere.

Confused? You won’t be while playing. Kingdom Hearts 2 is an immense adventure that builds in deliberate, satisfying fashion. You’ll play for nearly four hours before you even get to control Sora or encounter your first Disney character in something other than a memory flashback ‘ and you won’t even care. The game parcels out information, special abilities and magical attacks slowly, like a sweet allowance you’ve earned through hard-won experience.    

 As you gain that experience, you’ll journey to some startlingly unexpected corners of the Disney universe. A black-and-white level based on ‘Steamboat Willie,â?� the first cartoon ever to feature Disney’s front-mouse, even features the flickering sounds of a film projector whispering in the background. A world based on The Lion King is obvious, but giving players the chance to troll through the techno world of Tron on a lightcycle and hang with Capt. Jack Sparrow? That’s inspired.

So is the feeling of having jumped into the middle of an interactive Disney movie marathon. If the actor who voiced the original Disney character (James Woods as Hades, Ming-Na as Mulan, Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa) isn’t on hand here, the stand-ins are such dead ringers for the originals that you’ll never know the difference. That’s less true for the Final Fantasy characters like Setzer and Seifer, who cameo but make a weaker impression.

Additions like the ability to turn Sora into a dual-weapon-wielding hurricane and briefly borrow the powers of your new Disney pals add up to a vastly improved combat system, but it’s still far too easy to pummel everything in sight on the game’s standard difficulty setting ‘ particularly when the game’s new ‘reaction commandsâ?� clue you in to which buttons you need to press and when. Timing-based combat cues work well in small doses (see God of War for an example of how they’re done right), but not in a 40-plus’hour game.

Luckily, there are enough new attractions, tricks and combat transformations to try here that you may not even notice how easily you’re winning. When you’re fighting alongside King Mickey, Stitch and Simba, a little button-mashing among friends is no big deal.

This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2006.