Title: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (aka Kingdom Hearts 365 Days Over Two)
Price: $34.99
System(s): DS
Release Date: September 29, 2009
Publisher (Developer): Square Enix (Square Enix, h.a.n.d.)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone 10+” for fantasy violence.
Pros: It’s a Kingdom Hearts game in a portable format. Decent graphics and character movements. Somewhat enjoyable multiplayer missions.
Cons: Poor magic and item menu system, slow pace of the single-player mode (which must be played to unlock multiplayer missions), confusing resource management Panel system and disappointing Disney appearances and settings.
Overall Score: One thumb sideways, one thumb down; 65/100; D; * 1/2 out of five.
This is one of the duller and more frustrating action role-playing games I’ve experienced in quite a while.
Sure, it may seem promising with a new Panel system, multiplayer elements and Disney characters and settings but Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is marred by awkward controls, a slow pace and confusing role-playing elements.
How Many Days!?
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days follows the story of a young, cloaked and very confused Roxas (Sora’s Nobody) who is sent on mission to defeat various opponents, all called Heartless (confusingly, sometimes so are the heroes) in distant Disney-themed lands. In terms of the time line it’s set in the year when between Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (2004, PS2 and GBA) and Kingdom Hearts II (2006, PS2).
Before visions of Tomorrow Land dance in your head, these are really dull takes on a few settings including a couple streets in Agrabah from Alladdin and a couple barren hallways in Beast’s castle from Beauty and the Beast. Also, the characters enjoy ice cream on a stick while sitting on a very high building ledge and having very long, dull and confusing conversations.
Combat is real time, utilizing button mashing to control the key-shaped sword, aka Keyblade, and menu-based magic attacks (and item dispensing).
Between missions you can get sparse guidance from in-game peers and tweek your equally enigmatic skills and abilities grid. With hardly helpful guidance – although plenty of movement tutorials – you are expected to hunt-and-peck your way around building your offensive and defensive skills menu with tiny icons you place on a grid, often with Tetris-style components that can be combined with mysterious and supposedly specific elements.
It’s a Small World After All
Kingdom Hearts is supposed to mix Disney characters with Final Fantasy and, instead, it’s a weak story with only a tease of Disney. More than eight hours of playing and I’ve watched Jasmine, Aladdin and Apu from afar (for only a few brief moments) and Beast attack a few Heartless on his own. Lumiere and Cogsworth have been reduced to brainless sentries that could easily be replaced by any generic guard.
That aside, the game progresses at a painfully tedious pace with repeated levels, repeated opponents and slowly increasing levels that seem to go on for day (even if short, in-game days). Bosses are dichotomous, being either incredibly patterned and easy or quick and impossibly difficult to beat in less than twenty tries.
The game’s main enjoyment killers are the combat controls and the new Panel system. Trying to go through multiple menus to get to a spell or an item when three opponents are bashing you from all directions – often from a distance – proves especially frustrating in this game. You can assign some magic “quick” commands to the shoulder button but it proves uncomfortable to execute mid-combat.
When you do have a computer-controlled partner, they are usually helpful in terms of combat but not so accommodating when it comes to being stealthy or solving puzzles.
The new Panel system puts all the items, magic, weapons, abilities, armor and accessories (and even leveling up) on one grid, creating a confusing Tetris puzzle of mini icons. While a patient grid master may find it ultimately helpful, everyone else will find it an unnecessarily tedious test in trial-and-error problem solving. Potential combinations are unclear and, often, so are the results.
Unfortunately, the slightly more enjoyable mission-based multiplayer mode is essentially locked down until you get through the miserable main story mode. As you complete levels you unlock each as a Mission. You and up to three friends can competitively or cooperatively as a few of the other characters in the game including Mickey, Donald and Goofy. There are other far more enjoyable multiplayer games out there that don’t require more than one system and more than one cart.
Mouse Traps
Put Mickey Mouse on the cover and I expect to be making contact with white-gloved characters in the first hour or two, not ten or twenty.
This game seems to have wrung out every enjoyable element from console counterparts. It game has many decent technical aspects (eg graphics and character movements) but in the wrong mix and with too little guidance. With a bit more work and better pacing this could have been a much more enjoyable game. Instead it’s unnecessarily tedious, confusing, frustrating, slow and not worthy of the franchise to which it belongs.
After 10+ hours of a handheld gaming I expected to derive a lot more fun than was actually eked from Kingdom Hearts 365/2 Days.
Site [Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days]
Really? I didn't think it was all that bad. The story was certainly weaker than the previous Kingdom Hearts games, but I think it did a good job of satisfying fans of Organization XIII, answering more questions about Roxas' existence and setting the stage/hyping up Birth By Sleep. And I thought it looked fantastic for a DS game.
To each their own though.
I think its more for people who like quick quests where you play one or two at a time, and not for xx amount of hours straight.
The multiplayer part was quite fun, shame there wasn't Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support.
it looked like a very fun and challenging game,but now it sounds cheap and very boring
but i am trying it out anyway