Game Progression
The game progresses fairly non-linearly after the opening. You’ll get to choose in what order you explore the different worlds. The first time you enter a world, you won’t be able to fully complete it. Even if it seems like there’s nothing more for you to do there, you will have to go back to every world at least one more time in order to fully complete its story. Along the way are some major plot events that, no matter what order you’ve been playing in, you’ll end up witnessing. Once you reach the final world, the game goes back to a linear progression until the ending, though you are always free to leave the last world and finish side quests. You’ll always have access to a journal which tells you what happened in each world and what’s left to do in the world in case you forget or feel lost.

Gameplay
The fighting in Kingdom Hearts is real time, not turn based like many other RPGs. You also won’t enter a separate battle screen for fights. In this way, it plays as an action game, though the controls are much simpler. In a fight, you hit X. That’s the basic gameplay. But it’s actually pretty cool. Seriously, simply by hitting the X button over and over you will do some amazing combos. I’m talking hitting guys into the air, then leaping up and smashing them several ways to Sunday as you use their quickly dying body to stay afloat. It’s somewhat like the Dynasty Warriors series in this respect, but it looks cooler. This may seem like overly simplistic gameplay to some. But remember the early days of gaming, when there was but one button for attack, and one for jumping? I would argue that Kingdom Hearts attempts to recapture that simplicity. And there are some things thrown in to make it more complex, which I’ll now cover.

First of all, magic. Magic is basically an attack that you make separate of your normal attacks, but which can be worked into combos. There’s also a couple protective spells. You’ll find cure, for instance, to be indispensable. Using magic takes up MP, which recovers slowly over time, and faster as you defeat enemies.

Then there’s the Summon and Limit abilities. These are abilities that use up all of your MP in order to either summon a powerful helper or unleash a powerful attack. These are good for turning the tide in a hard fight, or for just annihilating normal enemies.

You can also enter what is called Drive Mode. When you enter Drive Mode, your friends literally combine with you. Your costume will change, and you’ll gain a ton of new abilities depending on which Drive you use. For instance, one Drive lets you float around the battlefield, shooting constant beams of energy at your opponents, while others give you the ability to take control of two swords at once for some truly devastating and awesome looking combos.

But the thing which really makes the game exciting are the reaction commands. Those of you who have played God of War or Resident Evil 4 should be familiar with the concept. Basically, at certain points during a battle, a signal will go off telling you that you can perform a reaction command. If you hit the triangle button at this point, you’ll start a special move that generally requires you to hit the triangle button either as fast as you can or at certain points during the move in order to pull it off. But whereas Resident Evil and God of War had them only in very specific situations, Kingdom Hearts 2 has one for nearly every enemy, and one or more for each boss fight. This is what keeps the fighting interesting, as you keep an eye out for the commands, and eventually try to learn what triggers them so you can use them as often as possible. Plus, like every other attack in the game, they look really really cool. This makes the boss fights especially entertaining, as you’ll be constantly repositioning your character in order to try to get the most out of the commands.

Also, one can’t forget about the computer controlled NPCs which fight alongside you. Aside from the coolness of being able to fight alongside Auron or Jack Skelington, the AI for the NPCs is well done. They attack when they need to attack, and heal when they need to heal. Often times, it is the NPCs who will save you when you’re on the brink of death. And if there happens to be something you want to change about their tactics, you can do so. You can even change how often they use individual attacks or items. NPCs can’t fall into pits and die, nor can they hold you back from advancing. They’ll always appear in the next room with you, no matter how far behind they were when you entered it. The only thing the NPCs are not good at are dodging. Sections which require you to jump over, say, a rolling spiked log will obliterate your NPCs. Fortunately, their performance won’t affect yours. They don’t need to survive these sections in order for you to pass them. And NPCs will recover from unconsciousness on their own, coming back to full health when they do, so don’t worry about having to play the medic of the party.