A tribute to Egoraptor

To those who don't know who Egoraptor is, I'll give a brief explanation.  He does primarily comedy videos on youtube relating to video games.  He's released two videos called Sequelitis comparing and contrasting video game sequels, he did Castlevania vs Castlevania II and Megaman vs Megaman X.  Now I would like to do a compare and contrast of Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 2.

What is Kingdom Hearts?  If I had to explain it, I'd say that Kingdom Hearts is Final Fantasy and Disney having a baby.  That's right, Kingdom Hearts is Final Fantasy and Disney.  Together.  I have no idea how this idea came to be but can such a farfetched idea succeed as a video game?  Let's see.

Pros

1. Challenge.  Kingdom Hearts 1 is very challenging which is a good thing.  You can't exactly plow through it, you have to observe your enemy's movements, dodge and counterattack.

2. Combat system.  I love the combat system of this game.  As silly as it sounds whacking enemies with a giant key (yes that really is your weapon), you equip abilities to pull strings of combos and other devastating attacks.  There's also a shortcut system to provide ease of use for magic but not items (more on that later).

3. Plot.  The plot to this game is amazingly solid.  You really want to know what happens to the characters (I won't give anything away) and it makes sense that you're traveling to different Disney worlds.

4. Enemy variety.  Every world has a few enemies (called Heartless) exclusive to that world alone (usually).  When you travel to a new world, you don't encounter the same enemies you have before, you encounter new ones! Usually the new ones offer some more challenge particularly in the late game.

5. Cameos!  Oh my goodness, the number of Disney/Final Fantasy cameos in this game are almost countless.  It's one aspect of the game that makes it so quirky but so good!  Your main character (Sora) travels with Donald Duck and Goofy (I couldn't make that up if I tried).  The three of them are traveling to find Riku and Kairi (Sora's best friends) and King Mickey.  Along the way they stop into different Disney worlds from movies such as: Alice in Wonderland, Tarzan, Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin.

6. Optional bosses: This game has a whole slough of optional bosses that are more difficult than the final boss.  This just adds another level of challenge to the game (you need to beat all the secret bosses to get the secret ending).

7. OLYMPUS COLISEUM!  My very favorite part of this game is the coliseum.  It is the most challenging part of the game (it is optional) and it's the best way to level up.  Only the first game does the Hercules world right!

Cons

Those were an awful lot of pros am I right?  This game isn't pure gold.

1. Difficulty.  You know how I said difficulty was a good thing?  It's also a bad thing!  This game is filled with normal enemies that are very difficult/annoying to defeat (and you usually face 5-6 at a time).  There are many hard bosses.  The only thing that makes the difficulty a bad thing is the next problem.

2. In battle menus.  If you want to use an item in battle, good luck, you'll probably die.  If you want to use an item, you have to basically stop what you're doing, scroll to the "item" box (this means you can no longer attack), scroll until you find the item you want, select who you want to give it to... Oh wait I'm dead already.  Sadly the shortcut system only works for spells (thank God for cure).

3. Camera. This is a minor issue but sometimes the camera can be against you.  In the middle of a boss fight, the camera will sometimes glitch out and the boss will kill you because you don't know what's going on.

4. Tricky platforming.  I know it's an action rpg game and there's supposed to be platforming but some places in the game are ridiculous.  The biggest culprits are Halloween Town and Hollow Bastion.  There are a couple of areas where you need to get on a platform, or jump precisely to an area and there's tons of enemies in the way.  Just kill the enemies right?  Not really, in these situations you're bombarded by enemies that fly, you have to jump up to attack them.  Attacking in the air makes you travel in the air, and the enemies like to float over the area you don't want to fall down to.  This usually results in you revisiting the same area several times because the freaking enemies make you backtrack!

5. Atlantica.  Underwater... Ugh.

Kingdom Hearts was a big success and it begged for a sequel.  We got Kingdom Hearts II a few years later.  It built on everything that made it good and added a few more things.

1. It was easier.  It had a difficulty selection at the very beginning, Normal mode was significantly easier than normal mode in the first game.

2. Reaction Commands.  A brand new aspect to the gameplay, in battle if you see triangle on the screen and you push it a the right time, you can do all kinds of fancy things depending on who or what you're fighting.

3. Plot.  Just, so good.

The second game had one big flaw to it...

IT'S TOO EASY!  I replayed this game recently and it was just too easy.  Granted, I was on normal mode but still it was nowhere near as hard as the first one.  It's also a lot shorter.  I cleared that game in 13 hours, I'm replaying the first one and I think I'm at the 40 hour mark and I just got to the final boss.  Which one is better?  The first one for originality and difficulty.