It’s time for the next stop on my first play through of the Kingdom Hearts series, and it’s the DS game “358/2 Days”, pronounced “Three-Five-Eight Days over Two” which means really it should’ve been stylised “358 Days/2” but… whatever. Also I was following the main menu of the “Story So Far” PS4 game so played this next (by buying a physical copy! Who’d of thought I’d be buying a DS game in 2024…) then later found out it was released AFTER Kingdom Hearts 2 in order to fill in some gaps. Did it matter? No, in fact I really enjoyed myself here, seeing it as a sequel to Chain of Memories that fleshes out the Organisation plus sets up the prologue of KH2 to boot. I guess I’ll just have a different experience with the series than people who played it at the time! Let’s take a look anyway.
Background:
This will certainly be the lasting memory of my experience with the game…
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was released exclusively for the Nintendo DS on May 30th 2009 in Japan, September 29th that year in the US and October 9th also in 2009 for PAL territories, so all things considered, not a bad release schedule for the time.
Unlike most of its fellow Kingdom Hearts games 358/2 hasn’t been given a remaster, instead a “cutscene movie” summing the game up can be watched on the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD collection and all its re-releases. The cinematics have obviously been given the high-rez treatment and I believe the voice acting was either re-recorded or just touched up. Either way, at nearly three hours it’s only for the die hards who can’t be bothered to replay the full game, or don’t want to track it down.
Gameplay:
In case you’re wondering, the bottom screen did next to nothing, thankfully. A lot of DS games can get rather gimmicky!
The core gameplay is thankfully more like Kingdom Hearts than Chain of Memories (or I guess more like Kingdom Hearts 2?) in that it’s your traditional action JRPG, allowing you to move freely in a 3D space, attack enemies with simple attack combos and magic spells, collect items in chests (though you can only hold four or five items at a time for some reason, meaning most missions you’ll be told your bag is too full to open some of the later chests to force a replay or two…) or refill your health/magic meter with enemy drops, and otherwise platform across the levels, though given the DS only has a D-Pad the camera was sometimes an issue. There is also a “Limit Break” mechanic that gives you a powerful combo move, and much like in Final Fantasy you gain access to it based on how much damage you’ve taken, though it’s clearly marked on your health meter here. The difficulty curve was odd too, most missions were a doddle, especially as your partner can’t really die so you can sort of let him/her absorb some damage while you back off and heal or charge some magic, but a few of the later levels, especially the final boss, were a pain in the neck.
There are a few other twists though, like most of the time you’re paired up with another member of Organisation XIII and you have to do really simple and often repetitive tasks, like “destroy this amount of enemies”, “collect this item” or “scout the area”, that latter just meaning go to various places on the map and click on them until you’re told to return to the castle. Each mission is very brief, especially if you’re not going for the collectables or the bonus points, which goes with the “handheld game created to play on-the-go” aspect, and I think it’s due to this that the creators opted not to go for a full on remake, though given how much better this game is in terms of story and gameplay than Chain of Memories I still say they made the wrong decision, even if that game ties into the mainline entries more…
It’s like Leon’s suitcase in Resident Evil 4, only not fun at all and can make gameplay more annoying.
Probably the weirdest twist is the “Panel System”, which sees you having to place items, magic spells and special attacks on a grid with limited squares that determines what you can do on the field of battle. That means wanting to take several potions with you might cost you an offensive spell you wanted to take, or not being able to get the next level of a certain attack because you can’t fit it into the grid, even though you worked hard to unlock it… it’s not great, to be honest. Not a deal breaker, especially for most of the missions, but some of the harder ones towards the end was an unnecessary head-scratcher. Speaking of the upgrades, they can be created or brought via a Moogle store as well as being rewards within mission objectives. Some enemies are REALLY weak to certain elemental magic as well, meaning you do want to carry at least one of each spell with you…
There is also another set of missions you can do that acts as the game’s multiplayer, though you can do it by yourself with AI partners if you so choose. Basically they’re the same kind of missions but you can pick any of the Organisation members or even some special guest characters from earlier games to play through alongside up to four friends. I believe there was also a versus mode of some description as well, but obviously I couldn’t try that in 2024 even if I wanted to! It was fun trying out some of the other character’s movesets but it’s not like I didn’t have enough regular missions to be getting on with already, so I soon dropped it.
That’s it really! You slowly unlock worlds from the previous games, do a simple mission, return to the castle, and do it again. Sometimes you’ll get a cutscene showing what some of the Disney characters got up to in between KH1 and 2, sometimes you’ll get a cutscene to do with the main cast of this game, and a LOT of the time you’ll get a cutscene of the game’s main trio eating sea salt ice cream on top of a clock tower. A LOT. In short bursts, I enjoyed it for the majority of the time, but I can’t see playing it for hours at a time or anything, which again does make me understand a bit while it wasn’t HD-ified (though they could’ve just axed a bunch of missions for the re-release if they really wanted to…)
Graphics and Sound:
I mean, sure it looks blocky and messy here, but on the actual DS it was fine…
The graphics are good for a 3D game on an original DS, the models look good and the backgrounds are fine. Thankfully a lot of the levels were divided into segments in the original game anyway, so the smaller levels being cut-up into chunks still worked fine.
Sound is great. The voice work is good, the soundtrack is once again excellent and the sound effects are fun. Obviously you’re hearing it compressed onto a cartridge and through the DS speakers, so I’m not saying it’s on-par with the other games, but for the hardware, it’s good.
Story:
I told you in the last game, yes! … Wait, I’m not Roxas…?
You spend the game playing as Organisation XIII’s newest member: Roxas, who soon befriends fellow Org member Axel and later an even newer member called Xion. They spend their time chatting about being Nobodies (as in the body that’s left over when someone’s heart it taken and turned into a Heartless that retains their personalities and often wildly colourful hair but lacks their memories of when they were alive) and eating ice cream as time passes. At one point Axel vanishes because he’s been assigned to Castle Oblivion, showing that this game not only takes place between KH1 and 2 but co-currently with Chain of Memories, and we see the other Organisation members reactions to the attempted rebellion that costs them a bunch of their number. Roxas is told he’s special because he has a Keyblade and therefore can kill Heartless in such a way that it frees their hearts and helps create Kingdom Hearts, the end goal of O XIII’s leader Xemnas, and soon Xion is shown to have a Keyblade as well.
*Spoilers from here until the next bolded sentence!*
We soon learn that Xion is a replica of Roxas created in case he fails in his duty, though really Xemnas wants her to absorb Roxas and become a “perfect copy” of Sora. Roxus in case you haven’t worked it out (or if you played KH 2 before this like most of you…) is Sora’s Nobody, not that it wasn’t obvious already given the name, look and personality. Xion escapes with the help of Axel, and soon Roxas finds out the truth and turns his back on the Organisation too, much to Axel’s distress. Roxas finds Xion but she’d been altered by Xemnas to absorb him and create the copy, so he has no choice but to slay Xion, who dies in his arms pleading him to stop Xemnas’s plans. Roxas agrees but on his way back he meets Riku, who eventually takes him out and brings him to a mysterious man who sticks him in a computer simulation, leading to the opening prologue of KH 2…
*Spoilers are now over!*
Wow, given how long it took to complete this game, there really isn’t a lot of meat to the many missions, is there? I did enjoy the story when we got it, the over-designed and oozing with OTT personality Organisation XIII was my favourite part of Chain of Memories so it was fun having a whole game with nothing but them interacting, but in terms of story it’s not a surprise it can be summed up in just three hours of cutscenes compared to God knows how many hours I put into it, here and there…
Thoughts Now:
Ooo! I forgot about desperately un-fun stealth sections, thankfully there was only a couple…
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was a fun game to play in short bursts. I enjoyed the story, the central mysteries (which were many given again I haven’t played KH2…) and interplay between the characters, plus the combat for the most part with simple fun, but the sheer volume of pretty basic, often bordering on flat-out boring missions you have to do to get the plot moving is a little excessive, to say the least. I think if I ever wanted to experience it again, I’ll probably go with the HD “movie” on the PS4 disc, but I don’t want to take away from the game too much, I enjoyed myself far more than I didn’t, which came as a great relief after struggling through the half of Chain of Memories that I did previously…
Hogan Reviews 