Same here! In all seriousness, I'm not the biggest KH fan, but I really, really liked the first game. Most of the game was pretty meh, but about when I got to Hollow Bastion the game suddenly seemed a lot better to me. Just how easy it was to fall, how you didn't have your keyblade for a bit... the game just felt more challenging in a good kind of way. HB was freaking huge too; it took me forever to navigate that thing, and just discovering the little surprises everywhere in it felt fun.
...oh yeah, overrated games. KH2. 358/2 Days was pretty good in the long run, Re:coded is really fun, but KH2 was so boring! You almost never had a hard time to find chests, virtually no puzzles in the environment to solve, and you just mashed X and /\ the whole game (especially that battle where you had to kill 1000 enemies... what a chore). The game was fun as a whole, I liked battling Sephiroth and some of the other bosses, but everything besides boss battles was a chore compared to the first game. And I beat KH2 on both Standard and Proud difficulty with 100% everything, so I should know if the game is easy relative to the others or not.
Regardless of all of the above, the music, art, cinematic-ness/etc. of KH2 was awesome. I still listen to the credits music sometimes <3. Oh, and the gummi ship in KH2 was better than in KH1 (though easier).