When making the initial leap from the original Kingdom Hearts to Kingdom Hearts 2, Square Enix took a high quantity approach to boss design, though quality certainly didn’t suffer as a result. What did change, however, is that it instead of each stage having a mini and main boss, each level received two main encounters, with a number of these fights creating some of Kingdom Hearts‘ best gimmick enemies.
Among these gimmick bosses, the Grim Reaper encounter at the end of the second trip to Port Royal stands as a strong example of how a twist on normal combat. Not only does it draw from older fights in the series to get players to engage with Kingdom Hearts 2‘s magic, but it also acts as a perfect conclusion to everything that the level it appears in had previously set up for.
The Grim Reaper enemy in Kingdom Hearts 2 appears as a flying skeleton that swaps out the scythe that similarly named specters of death wield for a large polearm with an anchor-shaped blade at the end. However, what sets this enemy apart isn’t its weapon, but what it uses as a defense to make sure that Sora’s Keyblade won’t affect it during the fight. This monster will take the gold coins from Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Aztec treasure in order to use the curse as a way of avoiding damage throughout the encounter.
As a result of this trick, the gimmick becomes that the player needs to use Kingdom Hearts 2‘s magic in order to force the Grim Reaper to drop its collected coins. The player then must return the coins to the chest in order to start damaging the enemy again, which can sometimes be easier said than done, since it will try to pick the trinkets up off the ground if it isn’t stunned. It’s a unique gimmick for this title that acts as a reimagining of one found in the first game in the series through one of the impressively difficult optional fights.
One boss from the original Kingdom Hearts that the Grim Reaper appears to call back to is Kurt Zisa, the powerful enemy that appears as an optional encounter towards the end of the game. Similar to the Grim Reaper, Sora can’t damage Kurt Zisa for the opening phase of the fight without casting some type of magic in order to break down a shield and open the enemy up for attack. There are naturally some differences between the fights, such as some of Kurt Zisa’s phases requiring the player to fight without magic and the Grim Reaper being able to fight back normally while physically vulnerable.
That being said, it’s hard not to look at Kurt Zisa as a prototype of the Grim Reaper’s design, considering the smaller details that come together to tie the two together. The mechanic of physical attacks dropping MP orbs that give Sora a boost of magic in order to speed up the process of casting this magic is one that stands out in particular. However, where the two differ is one point where the Grim Reaper shows off exactly how tied it is to the rest of it’s world in Kingdom Hearts.
The Port Royal world of Kingdom Hearts 2 is a mixed bag for friends, in part because of how it attempts to stick to the story and aesthetic of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Characters like Sora, Donald, and Goofy clash wildly in this world, and some of the sound-alikes for the major characters are less than perfect interpretations on Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. This is part of what makes the second trip to Port Royal when hunting down Kingdom Hearts 2‘s Organization XIII a much better experience than the first mission in this world.
However, the Grim Reaper fight doesn’t simply forget everything that happened when retreading the Pirates of the Caribbean storyline and incorporates concepts from the movie into it’s combat. Not only does it use the Aztec gold as a shield, but it responds to magic in the same way that the pirates had when fighting them earlier in the level, by being frozen solid from blizzard or stunned by thunder. These are small details that helps the Grim Reaper fight feel like a proper conclusion to Port Royal, as opposed to a random Heartless boss thrown into Kingdom Hearts to round out the numbers.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is available now for PC, PS2, PS3, PS4, and Xbox One.
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