Game: "Kingdom Hearts 2"

Console: PlayStation 2

Developer/publisher: Disney/Buena Vista Games/Square Enix

Genre: Action/role-playing game

Number of players: 1

Rated: E, for everyone

Premise: In the sequel to the smash hit Kingdom Hearts, you join Sora, Donald and Goofy as they battle the Heartless, the Nobodies and the mysterious Organization 13, all the while keeping the worlds from disappearing.

Game play: Things haven't changed much from the first game. You fly your gummi ship to assorted worlds in the Disney universe, from Hercules to the Nightmare before Christmas. To tell of any other worlds might give up the new places to explore.

Like the previous game, you find the world's keyhole and use your keyblade to lock the world and prevent further harm (i.e. dis-appearing completely) from befalling it. Also like the first game, all the battles happen in real time (remember the "Zelda" series?) as opposed to the turn-based fighting so popular in role-playing games such as "Final Fantasy."

Good and bad: The creators elaborated on some of Version 1's good elements. For example, random, seemingly useless items are turned into useful pieces. And this time there are premade gummi ships that you earn as you pass through levels. (Last time around you had to build your ship piece by piece from scratch, which could get confusing.) However, the fighting gets reduced to mindless button pushing, a lot of the worlds from the previous game are back in the sequel but with different places to go, and the number of summons are reduced to only three.

Tips: Here are two ways to figure out where to go next. Check the level number of the worlds, go to the level that has the lowest number in a sequence of levels, go there next. Also, if the game focuses the camera on a world and states "A new event is available" — well, that's where you go.

My take: I wish I could say that I enjoyed "Kingdom Hearts 2" as much as I enjoyed "Kingdom Hearts," but that's just not the case. As I stated earlier, the mindless button pushing takes away from the game play. Another thing was the reduction of summons down to three, not to mention the fact that the Stitch summon makes no sense.

With the huge success of the first game, there were extremely high expectations for the sequel — and it falls a little short. If you're a fan of the first one, chances are you already have a copy. If not, definitely pick it up or at least rent it. Like I said before, it would be a good idea to play through "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories" first so you don't get lost. Oh, and say hi to Mulan for me.

Jeffrey Davis of Maui is a video-game enthusiast.