Review
If you had asked me a few weeks back to tell you which of the portable Kingdom Hearts titles I was more excited for, I probably would have went with Birth By Sleep on the PSP. It looks better, and it seemed more like a traditional KH title (with Sora!), while this game, 358/2 Days, seemed like more of an odd spin-off than anything else. So imagine my surprise when I found out that I actually enjoyed 358/2 Days, hell, I actually ended up really enjoying it.
It does have a slightly different structure to it than the previous main Kingdom Hearts titles (I don't think it compares at all to Chain of Memories, other than running a little concurrent story-wise), but there's enough of that familiar gameplay present here that it won't be off putting to the previous fans. If nothing else, the mission structure introduced here really lends itself well to portable play, and while there are a few missions that tend to be on the long side of things, for the most part this is easily a title that can be picked up and played for 10-15 minute chunks before you can save and put it back down again. That's one of the small things I enjoyed about the game, it actually felt like a portable title, as opposed to a console experience shrunk down to the small screen and forced to fit.
The story of this title, as you probably know by now, revolves around the character of Roxas that was introduced in Kingdom Hearts 2, and his involvement with the mysterious Organization XIII. There's another character introduced here, Xion, that plays a somewhat significant role in the plot, but I won't spoil much of that here. Needless to say, this is pretty much Roxas' game, and you'll get to learn some interesting stuff as it goes along. Those of you that don't care for the overall zaniness or nonsensical stuff in Kingdom Hearts are going to be further put off by most of the revelations here, but if you're somewhat invested in the story up to this point, I think there's suitable payoff. I really enjoy the series, and what I've come across has definitely kept my interest up.
The core fighting aspect of the gameplay is pretty much the same as previous Kingdom Hearts titles. Like Sora, Roxas wields a Keyblade weapon, and also has access to magic attacks like Fire, Ice, Cure, and so on. There's a small menu at the bottom left of the screen, which is defaulted on the Attack option, so when you tap the action button you're just swinging your Keyblade around. The game autolocks on to the nearest enemy in combat, but you can switch that around easily enough by just using the D-Pad to change your direction towards whatever enemy you want to fight. Most of the basic battles aren't particularly challenging, but certain boss fights will have multiple points on their body that you can hit, so being able to change which one you're targeting is useful. If you want to cycle through the menu, just tap X, and since there's not a lot of options to sort through, you can easily find a safe spot and move through them fast enough. It's probably a little awkward if you haven't played a KH game before, but fans of the series will feel pretty comfortable with the set-up.
There is a new system introduced here that ties into leveling and skills, called the Panel system. Basically, every item, power-up, and level increase generates a panel of varying sizes. You have a certain number of slots to fill up in your Panel board, so if you want to stock potions or ethers for an upcoming mission, you head into your menu screen and move those panels over to your board, which basically adds them to your inventory. The same works for magic, you'll get panels for spells like Fire, which you'll add to the board. Every panel constitutes a charge, so if you have three panels of Fire, you can cast Fire three times. They don't disappear after use, but you have a limited number of uses within one mission. There's other panels that upgrade your weapon abilities, grant abilities like Block and an Air Dash move, and there's even panels that will allow you to doublecast or triplecast magic. Also, the leveling system is tied into Panels, and when you gain enough experience for the next level you're actually granted a level up panel to install. In theory, you could not install the level up panels at all and keep yourself under-leveled, so you'll want to make sure to check your inventory often. It's not a bad system once you get used to it, but I didn't care for the inability to stack multiple items and how they've tied leveling into it. You do feel like you're short on space at the beginning of the game, but soon it starts to dole out slot enhancers after just about every mission you go on, which will increase your available panels by one each time (and thankfully they don't need to be installed as well). One other inventory issue that I found annoying was that you had a limited number of spaces to fill in your "backpack" during missions, especially since item drops and treasure chests are pretty frequent. You're not generally going to miss out on anything big if your inventory is currently full, but I'm not sure I see the point in limiting it to begin with. You'll gain some enhancements to your backpack eventually, but they're few and far between, so it still remains an issue for the majority of the game.
The other new aspect introduced here comes from the Mission structure of the game. There's a hubworld at the Organization XIII base, where you'll take on missions assigned by XIII members. There are story-based missions that are mandatory, signified by a keyblade symbol, and others that are optional but will yield decent rewards and experience if taken on. There's a small list to choose from most times, usually no more than four or so. If you want to skip the optional missions, you can just hit the advanced button to move the story along. Missions are usually explained well before you take them on, giving you the chance to swap out panels and come into the situation with the best equipment options you can muster. Also, it was nice to see the rewards listed too, giving you an idea of whether or not an optional quest would be worth checking out. You can only save your game within the hubworld, but most missions don't take longer than 5-10 minutes to complete, even with the occasional story moment tossed in, so it's not much of an issue. Also, the game isn't particularly hard, and boss fights all have patterns that are fairly easy to recognize and exploit.
The game tries to maintain the same visual style as the previous entries, and I think they would have been better off by going with a stylized approach for the DS. The 3D is decent, but it's not the best effort by Square on the system so far. The worlds you'll visit are surprisingly open though, and while a lot of the locations seem to be lifted out of KH2's design, there are a few new areas to check out and explore. Still, they're very simple in design, lacking detail, and I'm a little under-whelmed at times. It was cool to see some decent cutscenes inserted at various points, along with voice acting for those scenes, which helps keep the game in line with the previous entries. Also, the music is great once again, using a lot of familiar tracks and some remixes to remind that you are, indeed, playing a Kingdom Hearts title. I really enjoy the Dearly Beloved remix here, and outside of KH2, it's probably my favorite rendition of the tune.
My only other issue with the game is that it's a slow, slow start before you really feel like it's taken the training wheels off. Even 3 hours into it you'll get some new tutorial pop up about an item or panel you received. The early missions are very focused on getting you acclimated to a control scheme that's already pretty simple, and since I don't think the game is really user friendly for anyone that hasn't played a Kingdom Hearts title before, I'm not sure why the felt the need to explain to me how to jump and do basic attacks in the amount of detail they have here. It's not a big deal for me, but if you complained about the opening of KH2 being slow, it'll probably bug you just as much here.
But yeah, I was a little taken aback by how much I enjoyed the game. I figured it would be all right, sure, but I liked it far more than I thought I would. It's a great entry into the series for long time fans, and while I don't think it would work well for anyone that's unfamiliar with the series by this point, it's obviously not meant to appeal to a newcomer anyways. Definitely worth picking up, and I'm glad I had the chance to check it out. It's nice to get a little more light shined on Roxas and Axel in particular, so fans of those two characters will be pretty pleased I think.
