Kingdom Hearts II shares some striking similarities with another sequel of a great PlayStation 2 game, Xenosaga II. Both feature a confusing plot and a whole bunch of pointless mini-games.

Fortunately, unlike Xenosaga II, Kingdom Hearts II is actually worth playing — it just doesn't do the four-year wait or its predecessor enough justice.

If you never bothered to pick up Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (on the GBA), you're definitely going to be confused right out of the gate playing Kingdom Hearts II.

Chain of Memories functions as sort of a "Kingdom Hearts 1.5" that is essential to bridge the gap between both games. So even if you can't bring yourself to play it, you'll find that doing a little research on the plot beforehand will greatly decrease the number of times you scratch your head in confusion during Kingdom Hearts II.

That isn't to say the story or character elements in Kingdom Hearts II aren't great. Without giving anything away, I will say that even with a full understanding of what's going on, you'll still likely feel less than satisfied with the plot of the game.

Though a Kingdom Hearts sequel was apparently in the works since the original, there just isn't enough to really capture the sense of grandeur of an epic adventure. What revelations there are feel a bit hollow. This is one area of this game that music really hurts the overall experience, since the score of the original was so good at creating an aural theme for the whole adventure (I still find myself humming those tunes at odd moments).

As for game play elements, not a lot has changed in the intervening four years. For most of the game you'll still be playing as Sora, who controls much like he did in the last game (albeit with a better camera). Interestingly, magic seems even less useful now than it did before — at least in the original you had to use a certain element to defeat a certain boss — now you could make it through the entire game hitting the X button alone.

I personally find the correlation between mashing the X button repeatedly and the deft ballad of destruction Sora weaves onscreen to be pretty hilarious. It feels like I should have to work a bit harder to totally destroy my foes.