Why is Kingdom Hearts II So Popular?

kukyfrope writes "The long awaited sequel to the popular RPG Kingdom Hearts finally hit North America late last month, and in just those few days easily outsold all other games in March. GameDaily examines why nobody can resist the magic of Disney and Square together in Kingdom Hearts II and why the Kingdom Hearts series has been so successful."

OMGBISHIES

For kids you have the familiar, lovable Disney characters. For the grown-up crowd you have Nomura's familiar smooth-faced, spiky-haired girly men. Never underestimate the power of bishies and hinted-at shounen-ai when targeting that oh-so-important magnesium-panties fangirl demographic.

Good question

The game is just cutscene after cutscene linked together by linear hallways of tiled textures and featureless surfaces. Marketting goes a long way for people who don't know what makes a good game. It doesn't matter that it's complete tripe, just that it's Mickey and Donald and all the bad Final Fantasy game characters.

It has a surprisingly complex and mature story

Sure, the gameplay is simple, the point of "Go from world to world" is a little pointless - but there's an interesting story at work here, and it's actually kind of sad one.

**SPOILER ALERT!**

Basically, you have really the story of two people - Roxis and Sora, one of whom only exists because of a mistake from the other one. So right there you have the question - who am I? If my memories and self are absorbed by another, what point does "me" have? And when I choose to give that up for the greater good, will "I" be remembered - or am "I" just a shell, with no real identity of my own?

So, sure, it's simple and silly and rote at times, but there's actually some good gameplay here (I think the action commands are cool when boss fighting). Not "game of the year", but "pleasant low calorie diversion".

It's the pokemon effect

you hit every market. Boys like the figting, girls like the pastel collars and disney characters, hardcore gamers dig square and the graphics, it's easy enough for casual gamers. Pokemon did the same thing, that's why it was such a phenomenon. If you can make something that appeals to everyone (not po'ing your hardcore fans is an added bonus), you'll make money hand over fist.

Becuase of Marketing?

I'm thinking because kukyfrope is just some industry blogger.

Reviews aren't everything... the game is fun

I loved the first KH, and was really looking forward to the second. After reading the IGN review, I was somewhat disappointed becuase they only gave it a... 7.something. Not a great review for a highly anticipated game.

I still decided to pick it up. Now, while there are a LOT of cutscenes which can get annoying, I actually enjoy the gameplay. Sure, it isn't the hardest game in the world, and a lot of it is just mashing of the X button, there's still something satisfying about going into battle with 20 enemies and taking them all out.

Now, while the stories for each of the "sub worlds" (Agrabah, Halloween Town, etc) technically just follow their particular movie, it all ties into the story fairly well. Now, I am a Disney fan, but as a 24 year old I don't exactly go out and buy every piece of Lion King memorabilia or see every new Disney movie... so I definitely didn't buy the game based on the fact that Disney characters are in it. But the story is enjoyable.

So, put a good storyline, great characters, and fun, simple gameplay together and you have a quality game IMO.

Not sure but...

I'm not sure why it's so popular. I just finished a four hour session downstairs working on it too. But I think part of it has to deal with the friggin two year delay. As Ctrl+Alt+Del [ctrlaltdel-online.com] put it.

Easy ...

The reason KH2 is so popular is that there hasn't been a decent RPG out for almost a year -- not one that I've wanted to buy, anyway. More, there won't be another big-name RPG out until FF12, which is supposedly delayed until Thanksgiving.

That said, it's a very great game in its own right. But it's arriving in the middle of a giant drought for the RPG market.

Errr...

I have no urge whatsoever to play it.

Marketing

1) It's a sequel from Square/Enix and Disney, two well known brands

2) The actual gameplay of the game and the level design received hardly any coverage prior to release

3) Most fans pre-ordered to make sure they received a copy, not knowing what the game was like

4) EB and other stores received bonus gifts for employees if they sold enough KH2 strategy guides and games

5) The game appeals to many, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tron, and many other popular franchises are featured in the game. Every level is an advertisement, but also relates to something that even one who hasn't played the game may already be familiar with. They may just want to live out their Tron fantasies, or see such a world realized in a video game, even if they have no idea how such a game would play. Movie-to-games sell well for this reason.

Childhood Dreams, Bought And Paid For

It's popular because the Walt Disney Corperation has a monopoly on childhood happiness. The hopes, dreams, fond memories of your most cherished time were all provided from the sterile bosom of a soulless incorperated fantasy factory. Your aspirations, your comforts, the very roots of your being were all, almost without exception provided in the form of a one size fits all childhood, carefully scripted by that organisation.

This game is simply another act, shamelessly tacked onto the prostituted play that is your emotional life. You love Kingdom Hearts because it is Disney, and without Disney, you know no other happiness. Outside the warm succor of your donald duck duvet and mickey mouse pyjamas, joy, contentment and love are cold and distant concepts which you cannot hope to achieve alone.

So come! Gather once again to suckle and the great and monsterous teat of one of the most terrible enterprises to have ever existed. Let Kingdom Hearts II once again show you the pleasures of being a shallow false happiness junkie. All the while Mother Disney will smile with her sweet and duplicitious grin.

You have to love Slashdot users

Most of the replies here are trying to work out some conspiracy theory or Grand Unified Theory of Marketing to answer why it's so popular.

Anyone stopped to think that maybe Kingdom Hearts was just a lot of fun to play?

Tron

My theory is that people are sincerely starved for anything Tron. They just can't help themselves.

The power of love and hate

To answer the question as simply as possible...

Everyone can relate to love and hate. Someone above also put it very well in saying that there's something for everyone in this game.

In addition to that, this game is being judged with great intensity... only games that have the power to incite this kind of adoration (or in the case of a few people, loathing) are truly timeless.

Being able to get through the game by mashing X? I call it the "Street Fighter effect" - you certainly could do this if you wanted to and still progress through the game, but you will do it with greater difficulty and much less style than anyone else will. This is also not to mention the complete inability to even touch Sephiroth with mashing (in any difficulty).

The story of Kingdom Hearts 2 is magnificent, the gameplay is top notch, and there's even a completely seperate game inside of itself (the Gummi Ship shooter stages). This is all done despite how amazing the first game was, and how incredibly difficult it was to improve upon!

This, Nomura's masterpiece franchise, will indeed go down in history.

It don't need to be perfect

I admit, I'm a Disney fanatic. I'm sure the 90s produced more than a few of us. It's so rare to find a Disney game that's not borderline unplayable. Kingdom Hearts has its fault, but I'm willing to ignore some just so I get a chance to play with some of my favorite characters.

Why is it popular?

Because it's FUN. Wonderful, sweet, funny, uplifting fun. Something that the market tends to lack 99% of the time.

In a Nutshell...

1) It's a sequel to Kingdom Hearts that took years to come out. So that gives you those who liked the original.
2) Square Fanboys + Disney Fans adds some more to #1
3) OMGMINIGAMEZ!!! For the ADD crowd (disappointing to at least 1 member of group #1)

It's all in the name.

Put "heart" in the title of any game and it will sell.
Look at the kind of music that sells. It's all "I love" this and "lady lumps" that.

The PS2 is so last Gen

I dont get why KH2 is doing so well, guess there are so many PS2's out there people have to buy something. My PS2 has not been hooked up for a long time now. Too be honest it hurts my eyes to play PS2 games.

KH2: Not a Good Game

I really do wonder how people love it so much. Let's go over this. Graphics: Graphically, the game is only so-so. In actual cinema, the game is beautiful. Gorgeous even. Outside of that, characters' mouths move like robots, hands are made of four giant polygons and textures are bland. Sound: Shimomura's done some great work. This isn't part of that. Low quality resamplings of Disney songs are not fun for everyone. Atlantica has one of the worst songs in gaming history. Voice acting is good and some places and godawful in others. Aeris and Cloud are particularly bad. Story: Bland and short overall. Making something question what "me" means is not good story. It does nothing. I spent 30 hours reliving a bunch of Disney scenes that acted as fluff and did absolutely zero to further character development, mostly because you can't develop Disney characters. So in the end, you get a bunch of bad guys with absolutely zero motivation for anything (oh man, we're NOBODIES LET'S FIGHT) and they die and nothing is said about them. Who cares? They don't have hearts. The endings do nothing to make up for any of it. Gameplay: I played through the game on the default difficulty and I never died once. I just jumped at enemies and mashed either x or triangle until they were dead. Later on, I didn't even have to move towards the enemies because they give you skills that do this for you. Oh boy! The camera still goes extremely erratic and is very touchy if you so much as twitch the right stick down or up. Drive forms quickly become overpowered and Limits mean you don't take any damage at all while the bosses/enemies take a ton. Of course, this only affects 5 hours of the actual game because that's all you really play. You usually spend your time fighting 6 enemies and then walking into the next room and listening to 10 minutes of cutscenes. Then you walk out of that room for more cutscenes. Then you fight and then you watch more cutscenes. People call Xenosaga bad on cutscenes? KH2 beats it by a LOT in terms of sheer talking and very little of it is actually relevant to the main story. The reaction commands in the game aren't even that cool. Just like in God of War, they're good the first two times but then you realize that it's the exact same scripted attack as the last one and it becomes no different than mashing x, except the triangle commands do a TON of damage. So yeah, you guys tell me, why is this game good? I'm really not seeing it. I spent $8 and 40 hours getting through it and what I got out of it was a generic action-rpg with a bunch of characters I didn't care about and a bunch of bad guys with zero personality. Got it memorized? Ugh. Axel's the only one out of the entire group that gets some sort of development and he just ends up bland and lifeless like the rest of them. OH man...you...make me feel like I have a heart. So why did he do anything? I dunno. He never said and there's no clue left to think about to figure that out. I'd have given the game a 6 at the most.

Re:I wonder the same thing.

I know, I know. Don't feed the Trolls. Since when did I follow the rules? I review games, as a matter of fact, and I enjoy KH2, simply because it's a goofy, fun game. I enjoy the, often, light-hearted antics of Donald and Goofy, but I also like how the story has gotten a little darker. It's hard to make a truly dark game when you're playing along side of Donald and Goofy, but they do a pretty good job. I bought it, and I enjoy it, and I'll also be buying the Wii and new Zelda games (both for GCN and DS) when they come out. Not everyone hates nintendo as much as you love it.

Re:I wonder the same thing.

O RLY? All the reviews [gamerankings.com] I've seen are pretty positive. Or are you one of the folks who still think McIGN has objective review staff? After a 45 hour play through on Proud Difficulty, I thouhgt it was a massive improvement over the first.

Also, the Tron world kicks ass!

Re:I find the popularity of Kingdom Hearts II...

The joke is...

Micky goes to see his lawyer.

His lawyer says to him, "I'm sorry Mickey, but you can't divorce your wife because she's insane."

Mickey says, "I did't say she was crazy. I said she was fucking Goofy."