Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix Disney Castle Puzzle Pieces

I've been playing the original kingdom hearts II ever since it first came out when I was little and absolutely loved it and still love it, it's definitely one of my most revisited games ever. I've played all the other games now but none of them ever surpassed 2 in my opinion so I was excited when I was finally able to play kingdom hearts 2 final mix in the 2.5 HD Remix collection not too long after my birth by sleep playthrough.

I'm not going to go into everything I love about this game because I love it all, just the stuff that was added to final mix so let's begin.

More Abilities, Weapons, Etc

I gotta say, I really enjoyed a lot of the new abilities like vicinity break which starts your combo slashing around your body to hit all enemies around you before going into the rest of your combo was great. Limit form was also fantastic and became the most useful form in many situations because it didn't require Donald and goofy to activate it, plus all of its moves such as final arcanum and sonic blade from the original game were great additions. Leveling up limit form helps you obtain "Dodge Roll" which was very helpful in certain optional bosses. I also liked the new keyblades such as the "two become one" made it very easy to unlock final form among other things. All the new equipment and things that affect Sora himself are all great and is hard to imagine Sora without them.

Puzzle Pieces

This may be a relatively small change but I liked it a lot. The puzzle pieces in this game added to the much needed exploration that was missing from the original release making the world's the game just that much better. These gave you more incentive to want to level up drive forms since most of them require the use of growth abilities. As I said before, it's a small little addition but I really enjoyed going around the world's collecting and exploring. Speaking of Exploration...

The Cavern of Rememberence

Man did I absolutely love this place. The cavern of rememberence is a completely new area added to Radiant garden that is one of the greatest challenges in this game to complete. I'll split this area into 3 different sections and discuss from there. The first section is all about using your growth abilities to get through the cave while fighting super difficult versions of heartless you met earlier in the journey. This is the only area in this game that you absolutely need to use your growth abilities to get through making you high jump and glide everywhere which is very different to the flat structure of most other areas of the game. I loved this section so much because of the exploration aspect to it and how much fun it is to use Sora's abilities to scan the environment. The second section of this area is the hardest enemy gauntlet I've ever done in kingdom hearts with a constant onslaught of the toughest nobodies. This part is so satisfying to get past because of just how long it takes to complete and how bada-- you feel for finally finishing.

The third section of this area is known as the "Garden of Assemblage," aka the organization XIII Data battles which I'll discuss in the next section which is...

Added Boss Battles

This is the section the everyone's been waiting for and its gonna be a long one so let's begin with the only story boss that was added...

Roxas

...I'm so glad they changed his fight with sora to being an actual boss fight as oppose to just a cutscene in the original game. He's relentless with his attacks and rarely leaves openings making it a pretty tough fight, especially for a story boss. If final mix only added one thing to the game, I'd definitely want it to be this boss battle. Now let's move on to the optional boss fights starting with the Absent silhouette which allow you to fight all 5 fallen members from chain of memories in unique ways that doesn't involve cards. You encounter these fights as you go along the story and they are super fun challenging breaks from the story that are super satisfying to beat.

The Absent silhouettes

I won't go into detail about every fight because you probably all know these fights already and just how much fun they all are. Now let's

Backtrack to the third section of the cavern of remembrance which is the Data battles. These fights are all super duper hard versions of all 13 members of Organization XIII, and I'm not joking when I say super duper hard, these guys are all very difficult to overcome. These are great because they make previously easy fights such as Axel and Luxord some of the hardest in the games make already hard bosses such as Xaldin and Xigbar even harder and require more strategy. This was the main reason I got final mix so I can experience these fights and to my surprise I've beaten most of them except 3, Luxord because his mini games are just the worst, Vexen because I haven't tried him yet, and Xemnas because doing two extremely difficult fights back to back is just insane but I'll try to beat these guys eventually. Now onto the elephant in the room...

This guy

...yeah, that one. The Lingering Will, the hardest boss in any kingdom hearts game according to many fans and I can definitely see where everyone is coming from. His fight is just insane, all of his attacks drain your HP a ton, don't know how anyone can do this boss without once more and second chance equipped. His attacks range from a punch to 2 different kinds of curses that either locks your commands or makes you unable to attack/Use magic until you drawn a small health bar as well as many more. And in his second phase he gains a new move that absolutely destroys you if you don't block and glide properly. It took me over 6 HOURS worth of attempts to finally beat him and I was so happy when I finally beat, I literally got up and started dancing to the Disney castle theme for like 5 minutes out of pure joy.

Despite all the hardships of this battle, I still really enjoyed it, you are forced to learn his attacks and react accordingly instead of just mashing the X button like in a lot of other bosses (not any of the optional ones). He is just so much fun to fight and everyone should at least attempt to fight him, he's definitely the hardest thing I've done in any video game in a very long time.

Conclusion

So yeah they added a lot of great things to this already fantastic game and I love every single one of them. I might need to give it some more thought but this game could quite possibly become my favorite game of all tims just because there isn't really a part of it that I don't like except Data Luxord. I'm sorry I didn't go into the Mushroom XIII, I haven't done any of those yet, sorry. I'd like to thank you for reading this review, I know it was very long but I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix Disney Castle Puzzle Pieces

Source: https://aminoapps.com/c/kingdom-hearts/page/blog/my-thoughts-on-kingdom-hearts-ii-final-mix/w84M_jPiourNkP408bV4VzwdX846RrVEDk

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