Kingdom Hearts II/YMMV


  • Alas, Poor Villain:
    • The Experiment boss in Halloween Town just wanted to have a heart of its own, and it stealing presents was its desperate attempt to understand the motivation behind giving. Being forced to put the poor thing out of its misery can edge into Tear Jerker territory.
    • Several members of Organization XIII end up being surprisingly sympathetic in their final moments - mostly the less evil ones, but even Saïx gets a surprisingly sad send-off.
      • And speaking of that surprisingly sad send-off...

"Kingdom Hearts... where is... my heart?"

"NO WAAAAAAAAAAY! *Sob*"

      • Luxord.

"How could you, Roxas?"

  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Pretty much describes the reaction to Tron being in the game. Auron's announcement turned many heads, too.
    • And, being that it's far and away the most popular Disney movie ever, the announcement that The Lion King had made it into the game was greeted with this reaction. Even more so when the game came out, and the world turned out to be absolutely huge.
  • Angst? What Angst?: When you get to Olympus in KHII, Hercules denies the fact that he's exhausted by fighting all the monsters that Hades is sending topside from the Underworld. He breaks this act when he sees the destroyed Coliseum.
    • Sora. Though the further you go through the game, the more it's apparent he's putting on a brave face.
  • Ass Pull: Get back; Anything could happen! How convenient for our resident possessed-emo-boy, Riku!
    • Actually, not so much. Riku was "cleaned" of Ansem by the light of Kingdom Hearts, the same thing that destroyed Ansem in the first game.
  • Badass Decay: Many say Riku (until the end, at least) and Axel. Though Riku does, at least, have the excuse of sticking to the shadows and supporting Sora and Kairi from behind the scenes. Axel, on the other hand, is a far cry from the manipulative Magnificent Bastard that he was back in Chain of Memories.
    • Pete's former self had, even if he was weaker back then, a lot more guts than his new self. Though he does seem to regain some of his former toughness when confronted by Mickey "the boat-boy king" at the end of the game.

Pete: "What, you mean like abandon ship? I don't think so! BRING 'EM ON!"

    • Sephiroth is an easier boss compared to the first game (relatively, at least). His attacks are slower and telegraphed a bit more, making it easier to dodge them. Heartless Angel also charges slower, and the larger arena makes it easier to avoid his attacks. Add in Reflect spam and you can tear through entire health bars as if they were paper.
  • Base Breaker: While Demyx's an Ensemble Darkhorse, some fans hate him for being That One Boss.
    • Roxas. Tragic hero or biggest time-sink ever? Depends how much you enjoyed the Prologue.
    • As far as levels go, Port Royal. For every player who considers it the game's Best Level Ever, there's a player that considers it a Scrappy Level instead. Where you fall on the spectrum tends to depend on how you feel about the sheer strangeness of a live action-based world and the gimmicky fights against Barbossa's crew.
  • Breather Boss: After the water-based hell that was Demyx, the fight against 1000 Heartless (most of them among the weakest in the game) is a welcome change, even if it is rather long.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Xemnas, no doubt. As Xehanort's Nobody, he wants to claim Kingdom Hearts for himself just as Ansem did but rather than cast the universe into darkness, he wants to reduce all hearts to a state of nothingness so that from there he can build a new World order using Kingdom Hearts' power forever bonded with his own to rule like a God. Gaining a heart as means of being able to feel means NOTHING to him; he just wants power to satisfy his yearning for completeness and will use anyone to obtain it.
    • Surprising no one, Scar is this. His heart is so dark, that much like Xehanort, he looks the same as a Heartless as he did when he still had a heart, His ghosts are also made from his lingering darkness, which merges together into a HUGE Heartless, that's how much evil he had!. He also tries to force the lionesses of Pride Rock to eat lion!Sora - forcing them to resort to cannibalism, on top of all the awful crimes that transferred over from his movie incarnation.
    • Shan Yu. While definitely more of a Generic Doomsday Villain than he was in Mulan, he's still every bit the brutal, black-hearted conqueror that you'd expect. He's so in-tune with the darkness in his heart that he can control an entire army of Heartless - without Maleficent or Pete's help! Even the MCP, a fellow independent Disney villain, has to take advantage of Heartless-generating tech to pull off a feat like that.
    • The MCP is also really bad. Just like in Tron, he's a genocidal nutcase who hates Users and tries to kill everyone in Hollow Bastion - first, by trying to blow the town up, and second, through unleashing hordes of Heartless on it. He also runs the same sadistic Gladiator Games that he did in the movie, too. And while he has access to Ansem's Heartless-generating technology, the fact that he can command entire armies of them without any outside help is still indicative of how dark his heart really is.
  • Demonic Spiders: The Hot Rod Heartless is a notorious example. Besides having a lot of health, they enter a berserk mode when their health goes down, which makes them charge you at 88 miles per hour 3 times For Massive Damage. During this time, they're completely invincible, and they can enter this berserk mode over and over again if they want to. And you know the worst part? They come in pairs and along other Heartless. FUCKING CARS. The Underground Monkey version introduced in Final Mix, Mad Ride, is even stronger, faster, and will enrage early if you guard its attacks or use Magnet on it.
    • FREAKING DANCERS. They have a move where they turn invincible, slide across the floor towards you at high speed, grab you, swing you around, and throw you away. This move is completely unblockable and very difficult to dodge. The Titan Cup and especially the Titan Paradox Cup is made a nightmare because of the battle where you have to face three Dancers. Fittingly, they are controlled by Demyx.
    • The Living Bones in the Pride Lands, who are vicious Lightning Bruisers that can take off over half your health with a single string of attacks. And to make things worse, there's a stronger variant that's being ridden and empowered by a Shaman that you'll encounter later. In the Pride Lands, they're actually easier than the "weaker variant" thanks to the easily-executed Reaction Command that lets you shred their health to nothing with the rings of blue fire they envelop you in... but in the Underdrome? You've got no such Reaction Command to deal with them. Good luck!
    • Funnily enough, the Berserker Nobodies are way more annoying to fight than Saïx, the guy they serve. Being hulking giants with equally massive claymores, they deal a ton of damage. That much is obvious. But their claymores also double as shields that protect them from frontal attacks, something that Saïx's claymore doesn't do. And when they're low on health, Berserkers will shrink, grab their claymores, and viciously pummel you with a chain of attacks that will likely kill you if you don't have Last Chance and Once More equipped - or allow their friends to finish you off if you do.
    • Thankfully, Sorcerers are rare. Not so thankfully, they're every bit as strong as you'd expect the flunkies commanded by Xemnas to be. They never directly attack you, and instead command a series of laser cubes to protect them from harm and attack anyone that gets close. And their cubes are every bit as annoying as they are relentless, leaving you a sitting duck when your Keyblade bounces off of them before kicking your ass with a string of attacks that are only slightly less vicious than those used by the Berserkers. Trying to keep your distance and sling spells at the Sorcerers themselves is a bad idea, because they No Sell most spells, and the game-breaking Magnet doesn't restrain their cubes, which become even more violent as long as the Sorcerer who commands them is immobilized.
    • In the Paradox Cups, pretty much any Heartless or Nobody with an annoying gimmick or that just takes a while to kill becomes one of these, especially in the Cerberus Cups.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Every single member of the Organization. Between the Freudian Excuse and their overall prettiness, fans are quick to excuse their crimes. Though some get this more than others - you won't, for example, see many people defend Xaldin's gaslighting and manipulation of the Beast despite his rugged good looks.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Roxas was popular enough among certain fans that he got to star in his very own video game. Still, others hate his guts because of the 3 hour long tutorial portion of the game. So in short, Roxas is half the fanbase's Ensemble Darkhorse and the other half's Scrappy.
    • Jack Sparrow seems to be this when it comes to the Disney allies. Can't imagine why.
    • Auron, likewise, is insanely popular thanks to being the series' first Final Fantasy party member, and being incorporated surprisingly well in Olympus Coliseum's plotline despite his Canon Foreigner status. It helps that he was already well-regarded in his home game, and his coolness seamlessly carries over here (mouthing off to Hades, anyone?).
      • In fact, in a 2006 popularity poll held among GameFAQs users, Jack was the only Disney character who made it to the final round. Ahead of Sora, Riku, Kairi, and even other Darkhorses like Xigbar and Demyx.
    • And don't forget Tron! Thanks to its strong ties to the main plot, his world is one of the game's best-regarded Disney worlds. But it also helps that Tron's interactions with the gang are funny and touching. Since he's canonically a copy of the Tron that would become Rinzler, many fans want him to come back since he's in no danger of being Reforged Into a Minion by CLU 2.0.
    • Demyx got just TWO scenes in KH2, but you wouldn't know that looking at his fanbase...
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • Many have been inclined to believe that this Auron is not an Alternate Universe version, but THE Auron from X thanks to the fact that the words heard when Sora obtains the Auron statue are his quotes from his pilgrimage with Braska and Jecht. A joint theory goes on to say that Auron wound up in the KH universe after his death at the hands of Yunalesca in X. After dispersing into pyreflies at the end of the game, he goes on to Dream Zanarkand, effectively setting Final Fantasy X into motion. Said theory is used to explain why Auron has his youthful appearance as seen in flashbacks.
    • Fans believe the letter Squall was reading in the credits reel of II came from his girlfriend Rinoa Heartilly, due to the butterfly that fluttered out of it.
    • While it was probably just for gameplay's sake, the fact that Scar's Heartless retained its normal shape (much like Ansem above) has some fans wondering how strong Scar's blackened heart really was.
  • Even Better Sequel: Largely considered this gameplay-wise. Story-wise, it's a matter of debate. It is the best-reviewed game in the series on Metacritic and GameRankings by a small margin, if that means anything.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Organization XIII continues this trend from Chain of Memories, much to the delight of squealing fangirls the world over. Just about every member caters to those with different tastes: Big Bad Xemnas with his sexy voice, Demyx for being a quirky pretty boy, Xaldin for looking surprisingly pretty for such a rugged Hunk...
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Because of the post credit scene's Happy Ending Override as well as future games starting to amplify the Kudzu Plot, some suggest that the franchise, or at least Sora's story, should have ended here.
  • Fridge Horror: Scar, after having Sora, Donald, and Goofy surrounded, tells the other lions to start hunting for prey. They remind him that the herds have moved on and that there's nothing left to hunt. Scar then gestures at Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Horrid enough on its own, but since Sora has transformed into a lion, Scar is basically telling the other lions to resort to cannibalism.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Reflect, to hilarious extremes. Hordes of Demonic Spiders getting you down? Just pop a few Reflects, let your magical barrier absorb their attacks, and then laugh all the way to the bank when they get nuked by the following retaliatory blasts of light. When used right, it can deal multiple health bars' worth of damage, and a surprising amount of frustratingly difficult boss fights can be cheesed just by spamming Reflect and popping an Ether here and there. And the best part is that despite being so hilariously powerful, it uses very little MP compared to other spells, meaning that it's still a great tool for players who otherwise don't really bother with magic.
    • Magnet's another insanely busted spell. When you use it, it generates a magical field right next to the closest enemy and swallows up a good 90% of the game's enemies in a wide radius, suspending them in mid-air and leaving them utterly helpless. When combined with Thunder/Thundera/Thundaga, you can immediately ensnare and nuke entire groups of enemies to death before they can even have a chance to fight back.
    • Just like in the previous game, Summons are hilariously broken when you know how to use them. Stitch is particularly infamous for being a Swiss-army knife of useful utilities such as stunlocking enemies and bosses with his ukelele, instantly replenishing your MP with a single lick, and generating hilarious amounts of Munny/MP/Score orbs (the last one in particular making him a godsend for the Underdrome's journal missions). But you shouldn't sleep on the others: Chicken Little is a crowd control god who can immobilize and group up troublesome enemies with a single whistle (basically a free Magnet), Genie can deal truckloads of damage with his Limit Breaks, and Peter Pan can potentially stunlock foes with his dagger while Tinker Bell continuously heals you and can even revive you once per fight.
  • Goddamned Bats:
    • Goddamned zombie pirates. They can only be damaged by your attacks when they're standing in clear moonlight. If they're fighting you in an area with a lot of shady spots, expect a tedious battle to ensue. To make up for it, it's really easy and very satisfying to hit them with magic spells to screw around with them. The rifleman/axe pirates can also be further smacked around with Reaction Commands to certain attacks of theirs.
    • Goddamned Crimson Jazzes. They're like the other Color/Music Heartless, except bigger and very persistent. It's impossible to get clean attacks on them because they're always summoning chains of fireballs around you that explode almost immediately to send you flying. And if you try to run away, even with such abilities as Level 4 Quick Run/Glide? They'll just fly over to you so fast you'll swear they teleported, and smack you with their ass before summoning more fireballs to spawn on top of you for 10 seconds. The worst part is it's impossible to even flinch them, so you can't just interrupt their fireball attack or smack them and then run away. It says something when it's actually easier to deal with a Crimson Jazz when it Turns Red because its new attack is far less annoying.
    • Goddamned Silver Rocks... in the Pride Lands, at least. They're incredibly easy to deal with under normal circumstances since the explosive orbs they create help you way more than they hurt you. But that's when you're playing as human Sora, who can turn the explosives against the Silver Rocks and any other enemies backing them up. For whatever reason, Lion Sora can't use the Reaction Command that counts this move, meaning that fights against Silver Rocks feel like you're fighting in a minefield, with you being blasted around and sent flying with every other goddamned attack until you finally kill the stupid things.
    • Goddamned Shamans and Necromancers. The only thing stopping them from being Demonic Spiders is their Squishy Wizard status, because they're still insanely annoying thanks to the trails of magical fire they constantly lay down, the invincible masks they love to turn into, and in the case of the Necromancers, turning invisible so you can't see where they are.
    • Goddamned Runemasters. Like the Bookmasters, they fly around and sling multi-projectile spells at you, but unlike the Bookmasters, the giant book they carry doubles as a shield that protects them from your attacks. Not too much of a pain when fought alone... so of course, they're never alone and are backed up by enemies that are nearly as annoying. Trying to single out the Runemasters for elimination will often cause the other Heartless to gang up on you, while trying to get rid of them first will often lead to you accidentally targeting the Runemasters and bouncing off their book shields. Oh, and they're exclusively fought in a section of the Cavern of Remembrance that has conveyor belt floors that constantly threaten to dump you at the start of the section and pipes that shoot massive jets of steam that send you flying. Joy.
  • Goddamned Boss:
    • The second visits to Halloween Town and the Pride Lands have really annoying trio fights for you to deal with: Lock, Shock, and Barrel in the former, and Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed in the latter. The Halloween Town brats love to smack you around Santa's factory and run around like crazy, making it annoying to hit to them. And for them to count as defeated, you have to deplete their HP and trap them in a gift box that can be annoying to bat around. Thankfully, you can just beat the Hyenas to a pulp with no strings attached... but the tradeoff is that they constantly run away from you and force you to chase them around the twisty, turny, and very expansive Elephant Graveyard. Thank god for Magnega.
    • Pete in the Hades Paradox Cup. He's every bit as easy to beat as he was earlier in the game, but he's a lot more tedious thanks to the irritating Titan Cup rules being in effect during his battle. Getting hit will cause you to lose "points", and if you run out, you'll lose regardless of how much health you still have, and since Pete hits hard enough (or in the case of his firecrackers, hits multiple times) to take off massive amount of points with a single blow, you have to fight him slowly and methodically, all while he has a gigantic amount of health and a barrier that replenishes some of it that he loves to abuse.
  • Heartwarming Moments: The ending. Yeah, The Adventure Continues and all, but it's nice to see the Destiny Islands trio finally back home together, if even for a little bit.
  • Ho Yay: The weirdly intimate ballroom dancing Limit with Jack Skellington. That is all.
    • And then there's Sora and Riku's interactions in The World That Never Was, which drove many a Yaoi fangirl wild. Highlights include Sora falling to his knee, holding Riku's hand, and crying when he finally finds him, and their weirdly intimate "beach date" when they end up in the Realm of Darkness after killing Xemnas.
  • Holy Shit Quotient: Upped by many of the Action Commands.
  • It Gets Better: The Prolonged Prologue, true to the trope name, is very long, lasting around three to four hours where you're tackling boring chores, sitting through minutes-long cutscenes back-to-back, and getting maybe a crumb of combat every now and then to spice things up. But once you reach the ending, things begin to hit their stride thanks to there being no shortage of Nobodies to beat down, and Axel providing a fun and memorable boss fight to cap it off with. And once Sora finally wakes up, it's smooth sailing from there.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Present Pete, once you see the abuse Maleficent puts him through during the Timeless River scenario.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: Killing Goofy? Unlikely. Unsurprisingly, he shows up literal minutes after his "death" and laughs the whole thing off.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Xemnas, who's such a smooth and effective chessmaster that he puts Sora in a no-win scenario for a majority of the game. After all, if Sora kills all the Heartless that have been popping up, Organization XIII gets more hearts to power up their version of Kingdom Hearts with. If he doesn't, then the worlds he's trying to protect will be swallowed up in darkness. Well-played, Xemnas. Well-played...
    • Maleficent. For most of the game, she has fewer resources, is prone to emotional Smug Snake tantrums, and is handily outplayed by Xemnas... but then she pulls an Enemy Mine with Sora, and by the end, she's the one who wins something out of the whole ordeal while Xemnas... does not.
    • Hades in the Olympus Colosseum level. He effortlessly tricks Sora into unlocking the Underdrome and breaks Hercules' spirit in the process by exhausting him with wave after wave of monsters until he can't take it anymore. Bonus Points for walking away no worse for wear when he's beaten and tossed into the River Styx once all is said and done.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Maleficent manages to become this in a rather literal sense. She comes back from the dead simply by the fairies remembering she existed.
    • King Mickey is Disney's version of Yoda.
    • Auron. Carries over from the source material, but it's easy to see why. When Hades said that he was going to summon "the mother of all bad guys", many a fan intentionally misheard it as "the mother of all Badasses".
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK!
    • Sora, Donald, and Goofy!
    • "Isn't this romantic?" A Shout-Out to Seifer's "romantic dream" of being a knight in Final Fantasy VIII.
    • Xaldin's sideburns are practically a character of their own.
    • Dogstreet, by way of Pence's flashy and memorable slogan-beating jersey.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Xemnas wants to gain power to unmake and remake the universe the way he sees fit, and he doesn't care who he manipulates or hurts to accomplish this.
    • DiZ narrowly sidesteps this with his ordered execution of Namine. Had he attempted to do the deed himself, he'd have crossed right over the line, but instead he orders Riku to do it for him. Predictably, Riku doesn't comply.
    • Scar's iconic MEH crossing is shown as a flashback at the very start of the first Pride Lands scenario, where we see that Simba is so traumatized by his father's murder (and subsequent gaslighting by his manipulative, murderous uncle) that he regularly has nightmares about it.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Many. Though considering how quotable they are, they can double as a weird example of Most Wonderful Sound, of all things.
    • GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK! GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK!
    • DANCE WATER DANCE!!!
    • Please, Master! PLEASE! COMPOSE YOURSELF!
    • NOTHINGNESS IS ETEEEEEERNAAAAAAAAL!
    • Feel the HEAT!
    • I GOT IT!!!
    • BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE BE GONE -- Shut up, Saix!
    • CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS CUUUUUURSED FOOOOOOOLS
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Sora, you gotta wake up!
    • Any time Queen Minnie says the word "Light!"
  • Narm: Quite a bit.
    • When you enter the Pridelands, Simba has a flashback to himself as a cub, screaming as his father falls to his death. The emotional impact is lessened by the fact that they used his non cinematic model, which only has "mouth open" and "mouth closed" animations, and unfortunately makes him look like he's grinning like an idiot while watching Mufasa die. And it happens again when Scar admits to murdering Mufasa, putting a bit of a damper on Simba's Crowning Moment of Awesome when he finally fights back.
    • There is a lot of it in the Pirates of the Caribbean level, due to the awkward pauses in dialog that are from the movies, the fact that Johnny Depp is replaced by a not-too-convincing sound alike, the Bowdlerization of a lot of elements, and also, the sheer weirdness of seeing the quite realistic looking models for Barbossa, Jack, Elizabeth, and Will alongside the Animesque Sora, the extremely cartoony Disney characters, and the Heartless.
    • Hercules goes into a long Heroic BSOD for "leaving everone in the Coliseum unprotected" against the Hydra. This is kind of nullified by the fact that we never saw anyone in the coliseum that could have gotten hurt, making Hercules's angst come across as Wangst. Thankfully, the devs were at least savvy enough to hang a lampshade on it, with Donald being quite fed up with Herc's moping well into the second Coliseum visit.
    • Atlantica, oh boy. Where to even begin? Between "Swim This Way"'s infamously corny lyrics, the plot coming to a halt at one point because Sora can't reach through a large gap and grab a coin, and Ariel taking so many levels in Dumbass that you can't help but wonder if she was lobotomized between games, and you have a world that can't pull off a dramatic moment to save its life.
  • Relationship Writing Fumble:
    • What does Sora do when he reunites with Kairi? He hugs her, looking slightly dumbfounded all the while, and doesn't really do much to indicate that he spent almost the entire first game and a good chunk of this one looking for her. What does he do when he sees Riku? He grabs Riku's hand, falls to his knees, and bursts into tears.
    • Note that this one scene is portrayed as an odd decision by Square: There were plenty Sora/Kairi scenes in other points of the story. For example, at the end of Halloween Town, Sora day-dreams about dancing with Kairi... with her 14 year-old appearance while he keeps his 15-year-old one. The resulting image was kinda weird. Or most importantly, when Saïx tells Sora that Kairi is missing, Sora begs him on his knees to tell him where she is. Riku's moment was more due to a unfortunate misuse of climax. Another reason is because of the circumstances: at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1, Kairi was safe at the islands, while Riku was stuck in the realm of darkness. Add to this the fact that King Mickey dodged around the subject of Riku a lot, and Sora probably thought Riku was dead.
    • The reason he imagined Kairi as her 14-year-old self is because that was when he last saw her. He didn't know what she looked like at 15-years-old yet. But yeah, it still looks kinda weird.
    • There exists a very vocal portion of the fanbase that firmly believes that Axel thinks of Roxas as a lover as opposed to his friend. His death scene has quite notable I Want My Beloved to Be Happy vibes, and it's hard not to view him as a clingy Yandere ex-boyfriend when he antagonizes him during the prologue.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Kairi once she broke away from her Damsel in Distress role. Except for the people who liked her better in KH1. Yeah, the KH fandom never can agree on anything.
    • Gameplay-wise, the Gummi ship segments, which are a whole lot cooler to look at if nothing else, and also your ship gets an automatic upgrade with each segment passed, so you don't have to spend the time tediously doing it for yourself.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Yen Sid, Ansem the Wise, and Sora, all for the same reasons... "prejudice" against the Nobodies. Though to be fair, Ansem is pretty damn callous towards innocent Nobodies like Namine and Roxas, but Yen Sid and Sora aren't aware of their existence and can hardly be called bigots for reacting to an existential threat that's every bit as bad as the Heartless.
  • Saved by the Fans: Axel was supposed to die in the Prolonged Prologue, but fan outcry (including fans of his on the Kingdom Hearts staff) gave him a small part in the story and a fanbase-splitting death.

Tetsuya Nomura from Kingdom Hearts Character Report volume 2: "I didn't think he would come this far. To begin with, he was supposed to be gone after Roxas defeats him towards the start. However, the entire staff, including myself, ended up pushing it so that he would return."

  • Scrappy Level: Atlantica, which is turned into a Rhythm Game. This wouldn't be so bad as Atlantica was already quite the scrappy level. However, the Rhythm Game is extremely easy, dull, and awkward, and many find the songs to be grating. The songs transferring over from The Little Mermaid are liked better since hey, they were great songs from a beloved movie, but the original ones don't really have that sentimental value going for them.
    • Although it's a Sidequest this time around, Completing Atlantica gives you the Mysterious Abyss Keyblade, which boosts damage done by the Blizzard spell, and the final Blizzard upgrade, and an Orichalcum+. Therfore, if you want Blizzaga and the Ultima Weapon later, you have to complete this.
    • Port Royal also gets this treatment by some fans, as it is simply a Theme Park Version of the movie with Sora, Donald, and Goofy barely involved in the movie's story, plus frustrating combat against cursed undead pirates.
    • The same thing can be said with the first visit to The Land of Dragons, which has its own tedious mechanic: a Morale meter that drains very, very fast, and is especially problematic to deal with on higher difficulties when the local Heartless can easily two or three-shot you. Thankfully, the fight with Shan Yu makes up for the tedium.
    • Space Paranoids is generally well-liked... except for the Light Cycle, which is hell to go through.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The Gummi Ship levels. But not the first go-around - the revamped rail shooter gameplay makes unlocking all the Gummi routes insanely fun. But once you start tackling the optional missions with their insane S-rank requirements, that's where things go from fun to hair-pullingly frustrating.
    • You are supposed to absorb Xaldin's Jump attempts, then Jump him to interrupt his attacks. Unfortunately, it replaces your default attack, cutting into your offense spectacularly.
    • Spamming Learn may enable you to rack up multiple Jumps from one strike, and the max you can hold is 9; spamming them on Xaldin after that is very satisfying.
  • Ship Sinking: Yuna and Tidus is flushed down the toilet in this continuity, thanks to the former being retooled as a weird fairy treasure hunter and the latter just being an island-dwelling kid suffering from severe Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
  • Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Quite literally in the case of the Gummi Ship levels. Going as far as to perfect and complete every mission doesn't even do anything game-wise except give you Bragging Rights Rewards and make it slightly easier to beat the later Gummi levels. But god damn if it isn't fun to blow up at least two ships that are about 100 times the size of your own, let alone everything else.
  • Tear Jerker: Oh dear lord, so much.
    • "I guess my summer vacation... is over."
    • "My heart has chosen. Please, allow me to do as it says!" "Noooo!"
    • The end of the Hundred Acre Wood definitely qualifies.
  • That One Attack:
    • If you don't knock Xaldin out of it, he will ride his lances like a dragon and blow a massive windgust across the arena. It is undodgeable, but it is Reflectable (assuming you try to use Reflect, which is unlikely during your first time through.)
    • Demyx summons water clones. If you don't defeat them in time, this triggers a Nonstandard Game Over as Demyx walks up to an exhausted Sora and the game does a Fade to Black. When low on health, he will summon 99 clones and gives you 30 seconds to live. There is an Action Command to pre-empt his performance, but you need to be close to him, a guy whose moveset revolves entirely around flinging you across the arena and playing keep-away with you. Maybe he's playing a song that will extract Sora's heart if it's not interrupted?
    • Data Luxord's Desperation Attack, where he jumbles up all four of your command slots into a shifting mass of X's and O's, forcing you to stop them all on "O" to actually complete his fight. It's identical to the original Luxord's version of this attack, but the X's and O's change a lot faster and speed up as you nail O after O, resulting in the final command changing so goddamned fast that, outside of pause buffering, you either need frame-perfect reflexes or blind luck to stop it on O.
    • Being Final Mix's ultimate superboss, the Lingering Will has an arsenal of hair-pullingly frustrating moves to deal with.
      • That. Fucking. BIKE. If the Lingering Will transforms his Keyblade into a bike, he'll spend the next thirty seconds or so ramming into you over and over again. While it can be blocked and rolled through, there's no real rhythm to it like there is with his basic three-hit combo attack since he'll often suddenly plow through you faster and slower than he previously did. He's also invincible the entire time, and sometimes he will gladly spam the everloving hell out of it. If he starts the fight by hoping onto his bike, just do yourself a favor and reset or let him kill you because it means that he'll be using this as his main attack for the entire battle.
      • His whip attack, which has immediate priority over pretty much every single one of your attacks, stuns you, and will pretty much kill Donald and Goofy outright while leaving you on Death's door. Usually, he uses it to punish you if you play too aggressively, but he also has a tendency to suddenly use it right the hell out of nowhere, or at the end of one of his basic combo strings where he's usually safe to approach and attack. On the flipside, blocking this attack also leaves him vulnerable, but knowing when he'll use it requires knowledge of his attack patterns and in some cases, dumb luck.
      • His Command Lock attacks (oh yeah, there's more than one). Depending on which one he hits you with, you can't use your physical attacks or your magic, meaning that you'll have to beat up on him before they're unlocked again. Problem is that getting hit with this attack (which comes right the hell out of nowhere, by the way!) is devastating, because you either can't heal or (if your MP bar is empty) attack depending on what gets sealed, and the longer you spend dodging him and waiting for a safe opportunity to fight back means that you're more likely to suddenly die outright.
  • That One Boss: Reports differ widely, but Demyx or Xaldin are usually brought up, despite the former allegedly being "not a very good fighter" and the latter allowing Mickey to rescue you. And of course, Roxas in Final Mix+.
    • The final enemy in the Gummi ship levels. There is a True Final Boss that will fill the screen with hard-to-dodge attacks that will kill you in 4 hits. It takes an absurd amount of firepower to kill and will nuke your rank if you take too long. The worst part is that it's the final opponent, so you must restart the entire stage to get a rematch!
  • That One Sidequest: Some of the sidequests have insane requirements to clear with the best rating. This got so outrageous that some people find it easier to earn the Sequel Hook movie by beating the game on Proud mode (requiring just clearing all the worlds) rather than Standard mode (requiring One Hundred Percent Completion). Sadly, if you're playing the Final Mix version, these sidequests are no longer optional if you want to see the second secret movie.
    • Especially because doing that makes the Final Boss actually challenging. If you try to see the secret ending in Normal Mode, by the time you've fought enough to synthesize everything, leveled your Drive Forms and Summons to unlock all the Paradox Cups, and actually beat those and Sephiroth, the final boss is a joke.
    • Most gameplay ones are more or less passable. But, the Gummi Ship ones can very well be impossible. Example, Dreadnought Level 3.
    • Dear God, the Hades Paradox Cup! Sephiroth is NOTHING compared to it. Enemies are at a ridiculously high level compared to normal gameplay, and it's a 50-round tournament, with the rules changing every 10 rounds, with battles against Volcanic Lord, Yuffie and Tifa, Blizzard Lord, Pete, Cloud and Tifa, Hades, Leon and Cloud, and Cerberus. If you make it to round 49, you have to face Leon, Yuffie, Tifa, and Cloud all at the same time as Sora ALONE, and then if you somehow manage to win that round, you have to face Hades AGAIN, though this time with Hercules helping you. You'd better get Ultima Weapon and max out Sora's level before you even think of taking this challenge on. Oh, and battles 31-40 are a Timed Mission (ten minutes - and remember, this includes a battle against Leon and Cloud and a "survive until time runs out" round), and in battles 41-50, you can't use Drives or Summons.
      • The levels have nothing to do with them, but the ever changing rules make the paradox cups, and arguably the entire underdrome tournament not a lot of fun to play through in the first place.
    • The Mushroom XIII from Final Mix are tied to a deeply annoying questline that forces you to abuse Game Breakers to get a passing score at best and change your ability/item loadout to a stupidly unintuitive one at worst. Some Mushrooms are worse than others, with these ones sticking out as especially bad.
      • Mushroom VIII is disgusting, basically putting an unfair spin on the "Street Performance" minigame by forcing you keep the Heartless in the sky as you whale on him. The journal mission tasks you with hitting 85 times, which is already a tall order by itself. But when you factor in the random directions your attacks will inevitably fling him in, doubled with him occasionally launching himself a mile away from you after too many hits, and you've got an "enemy" that is infinitely more annoying to fight than most of this game's superbosses. While there are many strategies that can potentially net you the necessary amount of hits needed to clear the mission (emptying your MP bar with Wisdom Form's Thunder and mag-dumping Berserk Charge bullets into him, Horizontal Slash spam, timing Donald's Comet Limit with your combo attacks...), good fucking luck getting them to work consistently!
      • On paper, Mushroom X should be one of, if not the easiest: you keep an eye on her while she and several clones rapidly change places, smack her to leave her vulnerable, go to town on her before she recovers, and rinse and repeat until she's beaten. Keeping track of her isn't hard, and it's easy to burn through her HP if you're sufficiently leveled and well-equipped. But what makes this fight way, way more annoying than it should be is the fact that it's actually hard to safely hit her. Because she and her clones are all bunched up together, you're nearly guaranteed to accidentally hit one of her clones and waste time by having her shuffle everything around all over again even if you're specifically locked on to her. Consistently hitting her and only her often requires you to take advantage of your Drive Form's more obscure secondary effects, such as Final Form dealing damage if you glide directly into your target, which will count as an attack that leaves her vulnerable.
      • Mushroom XI puts a spin on Marluxia's number mechanics, where you're forced to hit him 99 times before time runs out. And the amount of time you have to win is 30 seconds, a hilariously strict time limit made worse by his love of jumping away from you. Even if you go after him with strategies that are guaranteed to net you tons of hits in short notice, you still have to hope that he doesn't hop around too much lest you miss out on the passing grade.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: They took away the ability to customize your Level Grinding speed.
  • Uncanny Valley: While the near-photorealistic characters in Port Royal don't fall into this on their own, their being alongside cartoony characters like Sora, Donald Duck, and Goofy makes the whole affair just a wee bit creepy.
  • Villain Decay:
    • Maleficent, who has been degraded from the first game's initial Big Bad to essentially a house-hunting annoyance. Justified Trope due to the circumstances - she's newly revived, and lacks the resources she had thanks to the members of her Legion of Doom being dead, unavailable, or just plain uninterested in helping her.
    • All the Disney villains can fit this except Hades, who is even stronger of a villain here thanks to his manipulations of Hercules and Sora, as well as the fact that you're fighting the God of the Dead on his home turf - with the massive advantage that it affords him.
    • Axel counts, though it is Justified thanks to Character Development in Days that led to him mellowing out.
  • The Woobie:
    • Roxas. The poor guy's life turns out to be a lie, and he's forced to rejoin his other half and stop existing whether he likes it or not. And even before 358/2 Days came out, it was already clear that his time serving Organization XIII wasn't exactly a happy one.
    • The clumsy, oft-disrespected Vivi. Yes, even here.
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