KH2 = Woah

[jeriendhal]

Tracy had actually put this on order for my birthday, but it didn't release in time, so she picked it up from the store this weekend for me as an early Father's Day present.



So far I've just gotten to the point where Sora is brought out of his cocoon, gets briefed by the Wizard Yen Sid (the Sorceror from Fantasia, and yes they do mention that he taught King Mickey magic), and gets his costume upgrade from the Good Fairies. Judging from the thickness of the hint book, I've barely scratched the surface of the game, and that was after a good two hours of play.

Impressions: This is a decidedly more mature take on the KH universe. The first was a fun romp with some Miyazaki-ish musings on the nature of childhood and growing up. This time around things are more ambigious.

The first section you play Roxas, a character who exists only to be used as a vessel to complete Sora's off-screen regeneration (this whole section was making me twitch more and more as I was experiencing PTSD from the ending Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty). The main collection of villians, a group of sentient Heartless/Nobodies, actually have a fairly understandable goal. They want their Hearts back, or failing that someone else's. That and they're nicely creepy, wearing enveloping black robes that are probably going to be cosplayed the hell out of at Otakon. They're also not the Cackling Villians of the first KH, with their main computer hacker coming across as rather sympathetic (I liked his one comment to Ansem about making it up to the kids because he couldn't rez a beach for them).

It looks like it's going to be good solid fun so far. Osmet's voice is very different from the first game, but he's grown up, and fortunately it fits with Sora's growing as well. I can only hope that they got Johnny Depp to do the voice of Jack Sparrow for the PotC sequence.

Comments

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

They do -- as well as Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley, and Geoffrey Rush. Though I think they're all officially uncredited, it's them. And Bruce Boxleitner does Tron.

It's actually better explained this time.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Duuuuude! I was hoping Boxleitner would be doing Tron's voice. It sucked when the Big T himself iddn't show up in Tron 2.0

[balorn.livejournal.com]

No on the Pirates cast, just people that did a good job, IMO. But true about Boxleitner for Tron (though as I'd seen B5 a heck of a lot more recently than Tron, the experience was... odd).

Oh, and avoid full cast lists until you're very near the end of the game as they contain spoilers. ;)

Here's a partial list with the VAs for the Tron and PotC worlds -

# Crispin Freeman ... as Setzer Gabbiani, Will Turner
# Corey Burton ... as Yen Sid, Shan Yu, Dale, The Peddler, Santa Claus, Sark, MCP
# James Arnold Taylor ... as Jack Sparrow, Timon
# Eliza Schneider ... as Elizabeth Swann
# Brian George ... as Captain Hector Barbossa
# Bruce Boxleitner ... as Tron

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Bummer, especially about Sark. It isn't as if David Warner would have cost them an arm and a leg, especially since they paid out for Christopher Lee.