Sora also boasts a newfound ability to literally merge with Donald and Goofy to take on different forms. Among them: the brawling, dual-wielding Valor Type, the skate-footed, spell-blasting Wisdom Type, or the better-than-both Master Type. These are timed gigs, but the forms' enhanced firepower has the potential to satisfy in a big, bloodthirsty way.

The final new spice in the combat stew is a very heavy dose of enemy-specific special attacks, which crop up at the proper time and which Sora can trigger with a quick press of the triangle button. These are the moves that enable you to take a ten-foot-tall knight's massive sword and clobber him with it, or to run up the leg of a King Kong-sized monster and stab the freaky dude sitting between its shoulder blades.

The amazing thing is that Kingdom Hearts II also does all sorts of things that would earn any other game a good kicking. It's just that you don't care.

You don't care that the story starts with a huge swerve (see our giant preview), stalls almost completely for a good 20 hours, then comes back with a hopelessly convoluted vengeance in the last ten action-packed hours of the game. Because when it does come back, you may have no freakin' clue what's going on, but the few things you do understand get you all misty-eyed.