Ugh, they're taking too long to make this! I can't wait!
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May 18, 2005 - Square Enix's E3 build of Kingdom Hearts II was both familiar and different. This latest version of the game offered the same level I had previously seen during a Squeenix office visit a few months ago, while also boasting another new stage that was unveiled for the first time. Between the two levels, they were further broken up into two sub-stages for the mission and its boss correlating boss fight (Impressions of the stage I had seen before, The Olympus Colosseum, can be found by clicking here).
The new stage in question, known as "Land of Dragons," was based on the popular Mulan feature films from a few years back. Interestingly enough, Ming-Na had already voiced her character in this build of the game -- giving Mulan a pretty authentic representation (James Woods lent his voice to Hades in this version as well). Made up of several beautiful snow scenes, the Mulan area was definitely more interesting to play with because of its more diverse environments and heavy amount of enemies.
My favorite bit of the Mulan stage, though, was the boss battle against a gigantic winged dragon. Flying around the skies like a snake, the oversized serpent not only attacks with its extremities, but also with powerful breath strikes. Acting like napalm drops from fighter jets, the breath attacks do an exceptional amount of damage and are extremely hard to evade. To combat this, various little whirlwind squares are located throughout the level and Sora can use them to "ride the wind" to jump up into the hair and land on a dragon's back. Once landed, Sora can then chop and slash the beast away until it drops. It's pretty epic, and a lot of fun.
New to the build that wasn't available previously, was the all-English interface and deeper combo system. For the unfamiliar, one of Kingdom Hearts II's biggest features is an expanded combat engine that emphasizes team and fusion attacks. The fusions, known as "Drive Mode," allow players to merge with other characters to form more powerful versions of Sora. While merged, Sora has additional powers unique to that form that range anywhere from specialized magic attacks to more powerful keyblade strikes. Unfortunately, the only Drive Mode available to me in the version I played was the same one that Square Enix showed off a few weeks ago (a cool red-cloaked mishmash with Auron). The tag-team "Bushido" combo attack, however, was both new and cool.
Interestingly, the control scheme of KH2 has slightly changed since I last played it as well. This was so it would match the original Kingdom Hearts in terms of functionality. This meant that the game was now enabled with the magic shortcut menu used in the first game enabling Sora the ability to cast Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, and Potion with the push of a button. The final game will offer more magic spells in addition to those, but for demo purposes they worked just fine (they were needed too, as the AI was a lot more aggressive compared to the first time I played it).
I don't have much more to add to add, but with an expected release date of late 2005/early 2006 Kingdom Hearts II is still a long ways from completion. So you can bet that we'll be back again over the next couple of months with plenty more impressions and details. Check back with us then, for more.
