The enemies in the game, while they don’t level with you, will increase in power the further you progress. This means that you won’t be stuck fighting enemies so weak that they die at the sight of you, and you’ll always have to pay attention. Despite this, I want to stress that this is not a hard game. While some bosses can be a bit tough, I encourage everyone who buys this game to play it on Proud mode (Hard mode). The learning curve for this game is so simple that you’ll be an expert at it by the time you’ve done the first couple worlds. Proud mode will keep things challenging enough to keep you interested and you should still be able to beat the game with a minimum of leveling.

The leveling system is fairly simple. Near the beginning of the game, you’ll choose to specialize in magic, attack, or defense, and that will decide how your stats are raised each time you gain a level. Characters also learn new abilities as you grow in power. Abilities, or skills, are equipped on your characters and take up skill points to equip. Thus you have a limit on how many abilities you can have at a time. Some abilities are combat oriented, adding more moves to your combos. Others do things like increase the amount of money and treasure enemies drop. You’ll choose your abilities based on how you want to play the game.

Another gameplay element that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the gummi ships. Before those of you who played the first Kingdom Hearts groan, I’ll tell you they’ve improved on the gummi ship to the point where it is playable, though perhaps still not a huge draw. Basically, the gummi ship is a space fighter you will design yourself and then fly between the worlds in sequences that mimic Starfox. Some people will like it, some people won’t. I personally found it to be unexciting, since it’s nearly impossible to die in these levels. Fortunately, you don’t have to do each level more than once, if you don’t want to. And for the people who do enjoy it, there are extra missions for each sequence that you can go back and try to complete.

Controls
Never once in Kingdom Hearts 2 did I ever throw the controller down and scream “It was the control’s fault! Cursed game developers, why do you hate me so?” I’ve done this recently with other games. But then, I’ve seen some god awful control schemes in the last couple years. Especially amongst action RPGs and adventure games where players are expected to keep track of and control in real time their magic, items, abilities, and allies while doing regular attacks and brushing up on their cooking, all while not trying to get pummeled into the ground by enemies seven times faster then themselves. Kingdom Hearts 2 does not fall into this trap. Not even a little bit. The controls are simple and easy to learn, and better yet, easy to use.

The item and magic menus are very well done, especially for a system which could easily feel clunky. You get a quick menu (activated with one of the trigger buttons) which can hold four commands, relating either to items or magic. Generally, you’ll want to fill this with one powerful curative, and the rest of the slots with the offensive magic you use most often. The ability to heal yourself and cast your more desirable spells is something you’re going to want to be able to do with a minimum of button pushing. The quick menu makes this possible, and the limited space on it means you don’t have to scroll through pages of spells to find the ones you need. Magic and items not on the quick menu take a bit longer to access. You’ll have to use the control pad to navigate a command window and manually select the item or magic you want. This isn’t difficult, though I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t cause some tense moments during boss fights, where you’re scrabbling to get to that one item before the boss gets in a final hit. But these moments are good ones, where the challenge is fun and exciting, not hard and frustrating. Drives, Limits, and Summons are all accessed via the command window, as is the option to switch NPCs in and out of your party during a fight. The command window is always onscreen, by the way, large enough to be easily read, but not large enough so that it gets in your way.

The only trouble I had with the controls was with the targeting system. During battle, you can hit one of the triggers to lock on to your nearest target, which will concentrate all your attacks on that enemy. However, there is no way to switch targets once you’re locked on. And since locking on always locks on to the nearest target, it can be difficult in a large battle to lock on to the target you want. Fortunately, this doesn’t affect the game too much, since your character will move as you attack so that they are always in a position to hit the enemy, but there are some boss fights where it would have been very helpful to have (for instance, when fighting the three headed Cerberus). Anyways, it was a a feature I missed.