overview
kingdom hearts II is an action role-playing game developed and published by square enix and released in 2005. it is the sequel to kingdom hearts and kingdom hearts: chain of memories, and like the two previous games, focuses on sora and his friends' continued battle against the darkness.sora, donald, and goofy have been asleep for the past year to regain their lost memories. roxas, sora's nobody, is trapped in a virtual simulation of twilight town created by diz to merge him with his original self and restore sora's power. diz's plans are threatened when nobodies led by axel, roxas's former friend in organization xiii, infiltrate the virtual twilight town to extract roxas. however, roxas is able to repel the nobodies and merge with sora. sora, donald, and goofy awaken in the real twilight town and meet king mickey and yen sid, who send them on another journey to find riku and uncover the organization's plans.
sora travels to familiar and unfamiliar worlds and resolves problems caused by organization xiii, the heartless, and various local villains. during a visit to hollow bastion, they reunite with mickey, who explains that the heartless "ansem" they defeated in kingdom hearts 1 is an impostor named xehanort, whose nobody, xemnas, is the organization's leader. the organization also reveal that they seek the power of kingdom hearts, seeking to create a new kingdom hearts from the hearts sora has released from the heartless with his keyblade to regain their lost hearts. sora revisits the worlds to solve lingering problems while seeking a path to organization xiii's base of operations in the world that never was.
following a lead, sora, donald and goofy enter a passageway to the world that never was through twilight town, where axel sacrifices himself because of his friendship with roxas to allow them to proceed. sora finds kairi and riku, while mickey encounters diz, who reveals himself to be the true ansem, xenahort's mentor. atop the castle that never was, sora and company battle xemnas, who uses what remains of kingdom hearts to fight them. after sora and riku destroy xemnas, they become trapped in the realm of darkness. there, they discover a portal to the realm of light in a bottled letter sent by kairi, allowing them to return to destiny islands and reunite with their friends.
ari's favorite kh2 memories
i got into kingdom hearts when my mom and i went to magic kingdom at disney world during a tropical storm because the tickets were cheaper on storm days! there was a stand at the circus tent gift shop at mickey's toontown that was advertising kingdom hearts: chain of memories for the gameboy (i had a shrek special edition gameboy) and my mom got it for me because she had somehow heard about the series and thought i might like it. i treasured that game for years!!! i think i still have my copy somewhere but don't quote me on that.i first played kingdom hearts 2 at my cousin evan's house because he was playing through it for the first time and i thought he was so cool and i thought kh2 was so cool! i didn't even bother playing through kh1 because i knew everything i needed from playing chain of memories, so once i'd saved up enough of my parents' "good behavior pyramid" points i coaxed my parents into getting me a used ps2 and a copy of kingdom hearts 2, which i then spent all of my free time playing and replaying for the next 4 years
i didn't have a lot of friends growing up, especially around the time that i was getting really into kingdom hearts, so i'd spend a lot of time daydreaming about the characters or making the 8-to-12-year-old equivalent of fanfic about the characters being my best friends if i was transported into the kh universe as a nobody :3 i'd usually just replay the prologue over and over again becuase i thought roxas and i could be best friends and i thought it was nice that he sort of understood how it felt to be sad about not having friends or having summer vacation last longer, and also because as a grumpy moody kid and so was roxas, and sora kind of annoyed me because he's the exact opposite of a grumpy moody kid.
i thought organization xiii were the COOLEST characters ever and i wanted roxas and axel to be my best friends so bad!! i even dressed as saix for halloween when i was 9 but no one knew who i was and i didn't have long blue spiky hair so everyone assumed i was neo from the matrix. for a while as a teenager i would do my hair the same way roxas has his hehehehe
ari's favorite kh2 moments
the prologue ohhhhhh my god the prologue!!! like i said above i used to start new games JUST to replay the prologue over and over and over again i love roxas so much and i relate to him and who he is as a character so deeply! give my comfort character the rest of his summer vacation!!! the mood of the prologue and the mysteries you have to find around twilight town and the slowly creeping loss of everything roxas thinks he knows,,,, it's so close to my heart. makes me cry every time.the battle of a thousand heartless oh my god can you really even have a list of kingdom hearts 2 moments without mentioning the battle of a thousand heartless? few moments feel as cool and rewarding and generally just fucking badass as literally going through a gauntlet of a thousand enemies, especially since you also have the final fantasy characters getting into it!! tifa is so cool and leon and cloud are so cool and it's even cooler when you inlay the battle into the rest of the organization xiii storyline because alll these heartless are just helping xemnas get his kingdom hearts >:) so much fun
the battle with xaldin oh man this one's so tough! xaldin and his silly little spears oof if you're not prepared for this fight coming up it REALLY kicks your ass but once you finally win it feels so good and the payoff is soooo rewarding
space paranoids, visit 1 i get that no one really likes a lot of the disney world visits (often myself included) because they usually feel like filler but this is the level that introduced me and got me into tron, so shoutout space paranoids :)
fight with roxas this one's fairly new because my most recent playthrough is the first time i've ever played through final mix but WOW what a boss fight!! this one took me forever and the amount of effort and practice it requires is insane but it's easily the coolest boss fight i've ever finished, and the fact that the music is just the piano version of roxas's theme is so emotionally rich!!
Credits
i found this layout online and decided to use it because in the peak of my kingdom hearts obsession as a kid i would've loved thisLayout · Ceres aven <3
Picture · celestial-star.net/