#34
Kingdom Hearts 2
YoY: -6
To be perfectly honest, Kingdom Hearts is quite a silly series of games. Half of the time the story is almost incomprehensible, the combination of Disney characters with Final Fantasy really shouldn't work, and the lore behind the setting is baffling to the point of lunacy, and yet that's kind of why I like the series. It's stupid, childish, and weird, but at the same time the series is also sincere and heartfelt, in a way that very few video games are, especially within the AAA side of the industry.
The best game in the series, of the ones that I've played, is Kingdom Hearts 2. It improved significantly on the gameplay from the first game, making the battle much more fast-paced and exciting, and the story hadn't quite yet devolved into the utter insanity it would eventually turn to, so there was a nice balance still remaining here. The music by Yoko Shimomura is also excellent, as her work usually is, and despite the silliness of the whole premise the characters still stay with you because they feel genuine in how they're written. These games are never not going to be weird and silly, but that's a large part of their charm.
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