Kingdom Hearts II: New gameplay, character details

Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura lets out new information on the upcoming PS2 title

November 28, 2005

New information has been released about Kingdom Hearts II, the next release in the collaboration between Disney and Square Enix. Tetsuya Nomura, director of the Kingdom Hearts series, let out new details about the game in an interview with Japanese publication Dengeki.

Among the new information are details of the several worlds which make up the game. One of the recently-revealed worlds in the game, which is based on the movie Tron, will be called World of the Space Paranoids. The new world will feature light cycle battles, like in the Tron film, and will be reminiscent of an old computer game.

In Atlantica, the world of The Little Mermaid, will be a new style of gameplay much unlike Atlantica in the first Kingdom Hearts. The entire world of Atlantica will be played out as a musical. The gameplay will center around music and rhythm, and musical scenes will, or won't, be played out depending on how well the player keeps time.

In Pride Land, the world based on The Lion King, the characters themselves are transformed into animal form — or into a less-human form, in the case of the already-animallike Disney characters.

More characters from Square Enix's Final Fantasy series will be making appearances in Kingdom Hearts II. Younger versions of Seifer, Raijin and Fuujin from Final Fantasy VIII, Vivi from Final Fantasy IX and Auron, Yuna and Rikku from Final Fantasy X and X-2 will be showing their faces in the game. Yuna and Rikku will be dressed in their FFX-2 outfits.

Some previous Final Fantasy characters who appeared in the first Kingdom Hearts, including Leon (Squall from FF VIII), will also be returning.

Nomura also commented that his presentation of a Kingdom Hearts II build to his supervisors had very positive feedback — one of them reportedly said that Kingdom Hearts II contains about four games worth of content.

Kingdom Hearts II is set for release in Japan on December 22 on the PlayStation 2, and is planned for a North American release sometime in March.