This review contains spoilers
Continuing my playthrough of the Kingdom Hearts series I played through Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Now this game was remade as a movie that I could have watched in order to gleam the story from it, but I was told it was outright the worst way to experience the game's story and I didn't want to try tracking down the manga version of the game so I found myself a ds copy of it. I have to say, while it was worth it to experience the incredible story this game tells the gameplay is probably the worst feeling traditional style Kingdom hearts gameplay so far. That being said I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is an interquel game that takes place between Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 that follows Roxas from the day he first is inducted into Organization 13 to the day that he leaves it and starts the events of Kingdom Hearts 2. Over the course of the game you get insight into what Roxas was up to during this time, what eventually lead to him leaving the Organization, and how deep his friendship runs with the characters Axel and Xion. I really enjoyed the story set up for this game (and the story in general, but we'll talk about that later) but that being said the story is just about the only part of the game that I would actually call completely good.
358/2 Days was a game made for the Nintendo DS and within the first few missions that is very apparent. They tried making an approximation of the general gameplay feel of Playstation 2 games on the DS, which already feels like a recipe for disaster considering the pure disparity between the hardware and the controls available for both. The keyblade combat is more or less a completely dumbed down version of Kingdom hearts 1's gameplay to where you just do the same combo every time with no variance other than sometimes being able to press Y for your third hit and doing a different move that you can't continue off of. It may just be because I played this immediately after Kingdom Hearts 2 and Birth By Sleep, but this felt insanely mind numbing to play due to how repetitive and boring the core action felt. I imagine it was probably hard to add a lot of different kinds of combo paths and ways to chain things together because of the console 358/2 was designed around, but removing that really killed the experience for me personally. That being said, at least the core gameplay is more intact than the magic system is.
Magic is a weird thing in Kingdom Hearts games for me because I didn't use it much in the other games before the command deck just due to the general quickness of combat, but in this game I actively tried to use magic and it felt like I was punished for that decision. Due to how leveling up and ability allocation works in this game (which is really cool actually and is a highlight of the game that I'll talk about in a bit) you have limited magic charges per spell, and once those charges run out in a mission you're completely out of those spells until the next mission unless you equipped an ether. Think of them essentially as spell slots from Dungeons and Dragons if you have an familiarity with that game. I don't think that really works for a game like Kingdom hearts where you have a continuous series of battles throughout an area since this actively discourages the player from using spells out of fear of not having enough if a surprise boss or tough enemy shows up. It feels like a completely needless restriction that just holds the gameplay back in my opinion. Having a mana bar or or a cool down style system would have felt much nicer and made it so magic could have been a more useful and integral part of your combat kit instead of making it something you only bust out on rare occasions.
While on the topic of magic, I also am not a fan of how they handled designing improved versions of spells in this game. Using the healing spell "Cure" as an example, followed by its upgrades "Cura" and "Curaga", cure starts out functioning like the normal cure you would expect from the series where you jab your keyblade into the air and recovery a good chunk of health. Cura and curaga however, don't function like this. In the case of cura you slowly replenish small chunks of health over time instead of giving yourself a full bar and with curaga you create a small area of effect that you have to stand in in order to regain health. I take problems with both of these because it actively changes how healing via your already limited spell slots works and in both cases they function actively worse than if you had just made them heal as normal. With Cura since you don't get any health immediately and have to wait a second or two repeatedly to get any sort of substantial health back the player is essentially forced to keep running away from enemies without being able to do anything about it while you slowly wait for your health bar to refill from these small chunks of health you get every few seconds. Curaga has the other problem where you're almost forced to stand still in order to regain health; which is a problem in itself because you generally have to keep moving around the battlefield in order to not get hit, especially in boss fights. These changes are indicative of the main problem with magic in this game in my opinion, where it felt like they were trying to experiment with new styles of using old spells without understanding why those old spells worked.
Being a bit more positive here for a second, I did really enjoy the game's level up/ability selection system here. The game gives you a grid not unlike the Resident Evil 4 briefcase inventory that you slot blocks for level ups, spells, items, abilities, weapon upgrades, and armor onto. I really liked this system because it felt like a challenge in itself to see how much you could fit into the system and what you could shift around to make everything you wanted slot into each other without having to give up something. Another interesting aspect of this were doublers and amplifiers, which are blocks that have areas around them that you can slot certain blocks into to make them stronger. For example you get various level up nodes that double or triple the amount of levels you get from one level block, so you can vastly increase your level quickly if you already have the level blocks. Same games with magic, but for magic you also get the amplifier nodes that allow you to use stronger versions of whatever spell you slot in without using the next named upgrade of the spell (this was incredibly helpful in dealing with the problems with the cure line of spells). This is probably my favorite aspect of the gameplay from 358/2 Days, but at the same time I'm not surprised by this since fun inventory management is something I'm generally drawn too.
Something that sets 358/2 Days apart from other games in the series with this traditional gameplay style is how it handles worlds and going through each area. Instead of putting you down into a world and having you linearly go through its story here you are given missions that you accomplish in a world, leave, and then come back later for more missions. There were several types of missions possible to get which usually boiled down to defeat a ton of heartless, defeat a big heartless (usually a boss), investigate the area, or stealth through something. At first I really liked this system since they were all pretty quick get in get out types of missions so even the gameplay types I really detested like the investigation and stealth sections were at least over soon enough. Then, as the game went on the missions kept getting longer and longer. I don't inherently have an issue with a game that has clear levels having each level get longer as you go on and are more familiar with the game, far from it, but the short levels at first were a strength of this game I felt. Even when an activity wasn't the most enjoyable you would be done with it soon enough, or it wouldn't take too much time so if you're playing on the go due to the system you were playing on you could quickly play a mission, put it down, and then play another when you pick it up again. This becomes increasingly harder to do once you hit the halfway point of the game as each mission becomes around 20-30 minutes long as it tried to recapture the feel of the console Kingdom Hearts games. I feel like if they were going to introduce the mission system they should have stuck to it personally instead of trying to emulate the feel of the main games later in the game after already setting the precedent of the mission system.
One thing that I think would have really benefited this game is the command deck from Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, the two other traditionally styled Kingdom Hearts games for handhelds. The system was made specifically to make it easier to cycle through abilities make them more manageable on more restricted consoles and it feels really off that the handheld game with the most traditional gameplay, that is also on the weakest hardware of the games mentioned, is the only one to not use the system designed around mobile experiences. With all that being said about the gameplay, I do have to say this game is really saved in my mind by the story.
Just a forewarning I will be going partially into spoiler territory, especially regarding the ending, after this so if you have an interest in playing, watching, or reading the story of 358/2 Days I recommend skipping this next part.
Getting to explore who Roxas is and how they came to be the character we see by the time Kingdom Hearts 2 rolls around is great and it blew me away how much fun I had with the character interactions between Roxas, Axel, Xion, and the rest of the cast. Seeing the three of them slowly form bonds and become friends over the course of the 358 days that Roxas was in Organization 13 was great and made the ending stretch of the game where everything falls apart surprisingly heart wrenching in a way that I was not expecting from I game that I felt had really unimpressive gameplay. A stand out character for me that I wasn't expecting much from before playing this was Xion; who I only knew about vaguely from the cover of the game and from her briefly showing up in a cutscene in Birth By Sleep. Watching her come into her own, leave the organization, and actively try to be better than what the organization expects of her really resonated with me and it made her getting brainwashed and forced to fight her old friend before dying all the more impactful to me.
In a similar vein, seeing Roxas become more and more of his own person over the course of the game was something I really enjoyed. Something present throughout the series in regards to the Nobodies like Roxas, people who are the remnants of a strong person who has lost their heart to darkness, is that they retain their memories and personalities of who they were before they became a nobody. Since Roxas is Sora's nobody he would normally retain Sora's memories, but since Sora regained his heart through different means than normal in Kingdom Hearts 1 Roxas has no memories from Sora. This lets Roxas grow into his own person entirely based on trying to decide who he is and who he wants to be, and I think it works out really well personally into making him a deep and complex character for someone who shouldn't have emotions.
Small tangent before I wrap this up, but I am not a fan of prequel/Interquel stories because usually they don't line up incredibly well with what they're supposed to come before and due to this they usually lack any sort of importance to them for me personally. That's not the case here, since this story makes sense as both something that makes Roxas who he is by the time we meet him in Kingdom Hearts 2 as well as having a bearing on future events and not just being left alone based on Xion being shown in Birth By Sleep's ending cutscene. So I'm hopeful this means that the events of this game will be followed up on in a game that feels better to play.
Overall, despite how much I complained about the gameplay, I liked Kingdom Hearts 358/2. Not a lot, because man the gameplay drags it down astronomically, but I loved the story so much that it almost makes up for how much distaste I have for the gameplay. I wish this game would get remade with gameplay that more closely matches the other handheld games, but considering how they opted to just make it a movie instead I unfortunately do not see that happening anytime soon. I'd say this is definitely an interesting experience that you should check out if you really want to, but I would probably recommend checking out the manga if you can find it over this since that is reportedly the best way to experience the story outside of playing the game, which might be hard to tolerate for some.
6.5/10
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is an interquel game that takes place between Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 that follows Roxas from the day he first is inducted into Organization 13 to the day that he leaves it and starts the events of Kingdom Hearts 2. Over the course of the game you get insight into what Roxas was up to during this time, what eventually lead to him leaving the Organization, and how deep his friendship runs with the characters Axel and Xion. I really enjoyed the story set up for this game (and the story in general, but we'll talk about that later) but that being said the story is just about the only part of the game that I would actually call completely good.
358/2 Days was a game made for the Nintendo DS and within the first few missions that is very apparent. They tried making an approximation of the general gameplay feel of Playstation 2 games on the DS, which already feels like a recipe for disaster considering the pure disparity between the hardware and the controls available for both. The keyblade combat is more or less a completely dumbed down version of Kingdom hearts 1's gameplay to where you just do the same combo every time with no variance other than sometimes being able to press Y for your third hit and doing a different move that you can't continue off of. It may just be because I played this immediately after Kingdom Hearts 2 and Birth By Sleep, but this felt insanely mind numbing to play due to how repetitive and boring the core action felt. I imagine it was probably hard to add a lot of different kinds of combo paths and ways to chain things together because of the console 358/2 was designed around, but removing that really killed the experience for me personally. That being said, at least the core gameplay is more intact than the magic system is.
Magic is a weird thing in Kingdom Hearts games for me because I didn't use it much in the other games before the command deck just due to the general quickness of combat, but in this game I actively tried to use magic and it felt like I was punished for that decision. Due to how leveling up and ability allocation works in this game (which is really cool actually and is a highlight of the game that I'll talk about in a bit) you have limited magic charges per spell, and once those charges run out in a mission you're completely out of those spells until the next mission unless you equipped an ether. Think of them essentially as spell slots from Dungeons and Dragons if you have an familiarity with that game. I don't think that really works for a game like Kingdom hearts where you have a continuous series of battles throughout an area since this actively discourages the player from using spells out of fear of not having enough if a surprise boss or tough enemy shows up. It feels like a completely needless restriction that just holds the gameplay back in my opinion. Having a mana bar or or a cool down style system would have felt much nicer and made it so magic could have been a more useful and integral part of your combat kit instead of making it something you only bust out on rare occasions.
While on the topic of magic, I also am not a fan of how they handled designing improved versions of spells in this game. Using the healing spell "Cure" as an example, followed by its upgrades "Cura" and "Curaga", cure starts out functioning like the normal cure you would expect from the series where you jab your keyblade into the air and recovery a good chunk of health. Cura and curaga however, don't function like this. In the case of cura you slowly replenish small chunks of health over time instead of giving yourself a full bar and with curaga you create a small area of effect that you have to stand in in order to regain health. I take problems with both of these because it actively changes how healing via your already limited spell slots works and in both cases they function actively worse than if you had just made them heal as normal. With Cura since you don't get any health immediately and have to wait a second or two repeatedly to get any sort of substantial health back the player is essentially forced to keep running away from enemies without being able to do anything about it while you slowly wait for your health bar to refill from these small chunks of health you get every few seconds. Curaga has the other problem where you're almost forced to stand still in order to regain health; which is a problem in itself because you generally have to keep moving around the battlefield in order to not get hit, especially in boss fights. These changes are indicative of the main problem with magic in this game in my opinion, where it felt like they were trying to experiment with new styles of using old spells without understanding why those old spells worked.
Being a bit more positive here for a second, I did really enjoy the game's level up/ability selection system here. The game gives you a grid not unlike the Resident Evil 4 briefcase inventory that you slot blocks for level ups, spells, items, abilities, weapon upgrades, and armor onto. I really liked this system because it felt like a challenge in itself to see how much you could fit into the system and what you could shift around to make everything you wanted slot into each other without having to give up something. Another interesting aspect of this were doublers and amplifiers, which are blocks that have areas around them that you can slot certain blocks into to make them stronger. For example you get various level up nodes that double or triple the amount of levels you get from one level block, so you can vastly increase your level quickly if you already have the level blocks. Same games with magic, but for magic you also get the amplifier nodes that allow you to use stronger versions of whatever spell you slot in without using the next named upgrade of the spell (this was incredibly helpful in dealing with the problems with the cure line of spells). This is probably my favorite aspect of the gameplay from 358/2 Days, but at the same time I'm not surprised by this since fun inventory management is something I'm generally drawn too.
Something that sets 358/2 Days apart from other games in the series with this traditional gameplay style is how it handles worlds and going through each area. Instead of putting you down into a world and having you linearly go through its story here you are given missions that you accomplish in a world, leave, and then come back later for more missions. There were several types of missions possible to get which usually boiled down to defeat a ton of heartless, defeat a big heartless (usually a boss), investigate the area, or stealth through something. At first I really liked this system since they were all pretty quick get in get out types of missions so even the gameplay types I really detested like the investigation and stealth sections were at least over soon enough. Then, as the game went on the missions kept getting longer and longer. I don't inherently have an issue with a game that has clear levels having each level get longer as you go on and are more familiar with the game, far from it, but the short levels at first were a strength of this game I felt. Even when an activity wasn't the most enjoyable you would be done with it soon enough, or it wouldn't take too much time so if you're playing on the go due to the system you were playing on you could quickly play a mission, put it down, and then play another when you pick it up again. This becomes increasingly harder to do once you hit the halfway point of the game as each mission becomes around 20-30 minutes long as it tried to recapture the feel of the console Kingdom Hearts games. I feel like if they were going to introduce the mission system they should have stuck to it personally instead of trying to emulate the feel of the main games later in the game after already setting the precedent of the mission system.
One thing that I think would have really benefited this game is the command deck from Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, the two other traditionally styled Kingdom Hearts games for handhelds. The system was made specifically to make it easier to cycle through abilities make them more manageable on more restricted consoles and it feels really off that the handheld game with the most traditional gameplay, that is also on the weakest hardware of the games mentioned, is the only one to not use the system designed around mobile experiences. With all that being said about the gameplay, I do have to say this game is really saved in my mind by the story.
Just a forewarning I will be going partially into spoiler territory, especially regarding the ending, after this so if you have an interest in playing, watching, or reading the story of 358/2 Days I recommend skipping this next part.
Getting to explore who Roxas is and how they came to be the character we see by the time Kingdom Hearts 2 rolls around is great and it blew me away how much fun I had with the character interactions between Roxas, Axel, Xion, and the rest of the cast. Seeing the three of them slowly form bonds and become friends over the course of the 358 days that Roxas was in Organization 13 was great and made the ending stretch of the game where everything falls apart surprisingly heart wrenching in a way that I was not expecting from I game that I felt had really unimpressive gameplay. A stand out character for me that I wasn't expecting much from before playing this was Xion; who I only knew about vaguely from the cover of the game and from her briefly showing up in a cutscene in Birth By Sleep. Watching her come into her own, leave the organization, and actively try to be better than what the organization expects of her really resonated with me and it made her getting brainwashed and forced to fight her old friend before dying all the more impactful to me.
In a similar vein, seeing Roxas become more and more of his own person over the course of the game was something I really enjoyed. Something present throughout the series in regards to the Nobodies like Roxas, people who are the remnants of a strong person who has lost their heart to darkness, is that they retain their memories and personalities of who they were before they became a nobody. Since Roxas is Sora's nobody he would normally retain Sora's memories, but since Sora regained his heart through different means than normal in Kingdom Hearts 1 Roxas has no memories from Sora. This lets Roxas grow into his own person entirely based on trying to decide who he is and who he wants to be, and I think it works out really well personally into making him a deep and complex character for someone who shouldn't have emotions.
Small tangent before I wrap this up, but I am not a fan of prequel/Interquel stories because usually they don't line up incredibly well with what they're supposed to come before and due to this they usually lack any sort of importance to them for me personally. That's not the case here, since this story makes sense as both something that makes Roxas who he is by the time we meet him in Kingdom Hearts 2 as well as having a bearing on future events and not just being left alone based on Xion being shown in Birth By Sleep's ending cutscene. So I'm hopeful this means that the events of this game will be followed up on in a game that feels better to play.
Overall, despite how much I complained about the gameplay, I liked Kingdom Hearts 358/2. Not a lot, because man the gameplay drags it down astronomically, but I loved the story so much that it almost makes up for how much distaste I have for the gameplay. I wish this game would get remade with gameplay that more closely matches the other handheld games, but considering how they opted to just make it a movie instead I unfortunately do not see that happening anytime soon. I'd say this is definitely an interesting experience that you should check out if you really want to, but I would probably recommend checking out the manga if you can find it over this since that is reportedly the best way to experience the story outside of playing the game, which might be hard to tolerate for some.
6.5/10