Okay, I may be stepping on some toes, here, but at this point, I could are less.

Bottom line: Kingdom Hearts is getting freaking ridiculous.
Lets think back to the first game. The game was a lighthearted fantasy adventure featuring the bright, noble and overall good-hearted protagonist, Sora, who lied on a peaceful island with his two best friends, a sweethearted girl named Kairi, and a spunky young boy named Riku. When the Heartless invaded his home, Sora's calm life is turned on its head, and his main goal throughout the story is to find his lost friends. The storyline had a lot of heart, with a colorful and humorous cast of wily characters, including Goofy, Donald, and a majority of all the Disney classics. It was a wonderful game, my favorite from the moment I started it. It captured your attention with a strong plot, kept you on your toes with interesting and curious villains, and sustained a smile on your face the entire time with silly characters an situations.

Now let's take a look at Kingdom Hearts 2.
The games starts out in a new place, with a random new blonde kid named Roxas, and for while there seems to be no correlation with the original game. You basically are stuck in this town with these memories of Sora's fluttering into Roxas' subconscious and these weird guy running around in black hoods. After a while you get the keyblade to ward off some bizzare floppy white things, and after a lot of pointlessness, you come to find out that this girl Namine' put Sora to sleep which is when Roxas somehow popped out.
I really hated this element to the game to be perfectly honest, because even for veterans of the original game, for those of us who weren't fortunate enough to have played of the GBA inbetween game, Chain of Memories, the whole ordeal is extremely confusing. All you get out of the first bit of the game is that for some reason Sora and the gang are sleeping inside a big white shell, Jiminy's journal is pretty much whipped clean, there's a bunch of nobodies that look, for some reason, more human than the others that make up the organization, and for some odd reason one of them has the ability to create and destroy memories.
…okaaaaaaaay…
So now you finally have your boys back, and you're thinking, "Alright! Back to old times!" But no. The game 's old joyous and lighthearted feel is constantly weighed down by these sappy, depressed Organization members, there are now nobodies thrown into the mix with the heartless.
Also, the game's combat sequences have suffered. What was in the original game a real-time combat have been warped into simple button- mashing. All you have to do to win virtually every battle is lock-on to a target, and focus on hitting 'X.' You don't even have to worry about dodging or getting near your opponent. If you're locked-on, a simple press of a button with warp you toward your enemy and unleash your attack. And the ACTION COMMANDS? What the hell kind of bullshit is that? There is absolutely NO FUCKING SKILL involved in the action commands. All it is, is hitting a button when it tells you to, and watching a little clip that is oddly powerful. There is no reason or excuse for this. It is LAZY gameplay!
The magic use, to me, was pointless. With the exception of healing abilities, you could easily glide through battles without use of your magic. In fact, smashing 'X' and triangle (as instructed) is usually faster and easier.ck to so many of them.
As far as the worlds go, I feel they could have been more creative. Don't get me wrong, here, the characters and worlds themselves were marvelous, as always. But in every honesty, with all the Disney movies there are, did we really need to travel back to so many of the previous worlds? And what the hell was up with Port Royal? It was just so awkward there, darkly as it is, thrown into the mix with all the happy-go-lucky kid's movies. Donald and Goofy particular looked totally out-of-place there.

But as much as I hated the second, the failure pales in comparison to what's yet to come.
The new game features three new characters and there are no heartless or nobodies.
And our ever-hopeful, virtuous, kindhearted and hearty adventurer, Sora? He's not even a main contender.
As hinted by Nomura, the story will NOT revolve around Sora, as he wants to leave Sora ‘on a break’ for now. WHAT THE HELL?
They might as well not even CALL it Kingdom Hearts! Sora's not in it, and the Heartless aren't in it!
Also, there is a supposed Keyblade WAR proceeding! What in God's name happened to Sora being the Chosen One!? That's Chosen ONE! One! Not Chosen One of a Bunch of Others!
One of the key elements to the game is that Sora is the one that the Keyblade chose, above Leon or Riku or any of the other obvious choices. Now Sora isn't the one that the Keyblade chose to protect and save the worlds, he's just one of a handfully that the Keyblade decided was good enough. It's all just so lackluster. But, you know how it is, with good graphics you can sell just about anything.


All-in-all, I think the games have been on a downhill spiral since the premiere of the 2nd game, and if they got any sense, they'll end the series and start anew. Fresh characters. Fresh plot. Fresh…everything. Just stop ruining what was an amazing game!