And now that we’ve finished with some of the important stuff, we can do nonsense for the next 5-10 episodes.

A recurring problem we’re running into with this series has more to do with the nature of these long RPGs than any inherent flaw with Kingdom Heart’s actual story. Our objective here is to help explain the lore and story behind this franchise. That said, so much of the content, even when focusing purely on the cutscenes, has little, if anything to do with the story.

Most of this “filler” story comes from the Disney worlds. This is an interesting problem, because those Disney worlds are a major draw for many, if not most, of the people who play this franchise. A lot of the reason people come to Kingdom Hearts is to fight alongside characters from classic Disney films.

But for us, who are only interested in the overall plot, most of this is just a waste of our time. It’s almost shocking that, if you remove most of the Disney-related worlds from any given Kingdom Hearts game, and focus on the original story, without losing much. Some details are lost, but the series as a whole will still make sense.

If anything, I would want to have the main story thread woven into the Disney world storylines with much more grace than this. Considering worlds like Beast’s Castle can do that, it doesn’t seem like too much of an ask.

Then again, I wasn’t on the team for this project, so what would I know.

It’s so refreshing to have cool, interesting conversations about the story.

It’s story time, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s weird to think of how Kingdom Hearts 2 is a product of it’s time. I’m not talking about mechanics or how dark its story is (although that’s certainly true). I’m talking about how it references other media that, in hindsight, are clearly only to drum up or capitalize on hype for other projects.

We touched on that topic earlier in Port Royal. In hindsight, it’s obvious that the only reason Port Royal is even in Kingdom Hearts 2 is that Pirates of the Caribbean was taking off in a big way at the time it was being developed. This is silly, but something that one can easily look past, and is no more offensive than any other Disney-world story.

On the other hand, the references to Advent Children are some of the worst offenders in the game. It’s not just that the game is detouring to make a thinly-veiled hype piece for the movie. That could be hilarious, but otherwise inoffensive in its own way. The real problem is that the way the jury-rig the pieces together makes almost no sense. It comes off as awkward, especially when those extremely edgy looking outfits are juxtaposed to “Happy Disney Funtimes”.

Sam and I stop playing games to talk about not playing games.

Today, we start to get into some of the more confusing aspects of Kingdom Hearts.

Finally, we’re back to talking about story content.

It’s actually pretty amazing that, after the original Kingdom Hearts, Kairi has a huge problem with almost completely ceasing to be relevant to the plot. Even though she spent most of the first game in a state of limbo, she still does contribute to the story in some ways.

In Kingdom Hearts 2, her only real contribution is being kidnapped, and then not being kidnapped anymore while Sora goes off and actually deals with the real plot. It gets worse from here on. At some point, you’d be hard-pressed to remember who Kairi is. I wish that they’d make more use of her. As it stands, she only serves as motivation for the real heroes, without taking any actions of her own.

Also, points to Sam for correctly figuring out the Xehanort/Ansem family tree on his first try.

Let’s get back to that movie plot!

Not much Kingdom Hearts to talk about while we watch The Lion King…

And now, we leave the worst level in the game to go to the worst filler level in the game.

This world is another example of how the game just blatantly copy/pastes the story of the movie, and jury-rigs Sora, Donald, and Goofy into the mix as Mary Sues that solve all of the problems.

For that reason, I don’t have much more to add beyond what we said in the video.

From one of my favorite level, to what is easily my least favorite….

It’s amazing how quickly I can go from singing this game’s praises to groaning at how bad it is. Atlantica is, if anything, a microcosm for all that is wrong with Kingdom Hearts 2.

• While easy and otherwise inoffensive, there’s nothing engaging about the musical segments. They’re nothing more than fluff.

• The scenario is some of the most vapid writing I’ve seen from any Kingdom Hearts world. Not only is it blatantly coping from the first movie, but it does so in a way that almost directly contradicts the “character growth” that the people in the world underwent in the first game.

• Facts revealed in this scenario (like the world *above* the sea), make me wonder just why we needed to blend in with the undersea world at all in the original Kingdom Hearts. Why not just land above the sea and interact with the people there.

I love this world so MUCH!