I tried my best to dislike Kingdom Hearts 358/2 but I ended up appreciating the little things that it had to offer so in hindsight I would say it lay somewhere between a hidden gem of a game and a complete waste of time, or in layman’s terms, it simply isn’t too bad. Yes I admit it, I played it with some kind of biased disposition carried from Kingdom Hearts 2. To those who aren’t familiar with the game, the Kingdom Hearts series is SquareEnix and Disney’s birth-child which features a myriad of characters from the 2 universes mashed together and hidden behind the guise of serious but lame story-telling with graphically gorgeous yet spiritually non-fulfilling cut-scenes. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 is exclusive on the DS which takes place, well, to put it correctly, some time in the first Kingdom Hearts after a certain event, ends right before when Kingdom Hearts 2 starts, and encapsulating all the events of Chains of Memory (the Gameboy Advanced and later remade into Playstation 2 version).
In other words, you won’t care about this game if you haven’t already some knowledge of the series. The first game in the series I played it with lots of doubts in my mind and ended up appreciating it for the risks producer Tetsuya Nomura took just to acquire the licenses from the corporates. And well if you at least not detest Disney Characters, there really isn’t a lot to complain, other than the stupid platforming mechanics and the lack of simply anything physics in the game (yes you press anything and your character will fly hitting anything in his way and win), that and it had Pooh and Piglet and the 100 Acre Woods which totally made my day so I ignored everything else that was a flaw in the game. The second in the series I started with much higher anticipation but ended with a bigger disappointment (well, not as big as playing Too Human after Eternal Darkness) . The first game was wacky and kinda cute and didn’t take itself too seriously, and everything that was bad, was redeemed by the fact of its wackiness, like watching a B-rated comedy making fun of itself as a B movie. Kingdom Hearts 2 was serious business, with its dark and malevolent overtone and well… Disney., a jumbled mess of a plot. Now, see how that doesn’t work?
You start the first few hours of the 2nd game as Roxas, a less spiky hair version of Sora, the main protagonist of the series. You are going to probably not care about this guy, even though arguably the hours you spend playing Roxas is infinitely better than the time you spent with Sora, the game never properly introduced you enough back story for you to care. Now as much as I disliked Kingdom Hearts 2, it was a much better game than the Gameboy Advanced Chains of Memory could ever be, in which Sora lost his memory of what he did in the first game, yes, lame, memory loss as plot mechanics is often the worst kind of storytelling. But not just that, the game have you playing with a card battle system, which is more boring than, well actually playing cards with my semi-retarded friends.
358/2 Days plays a lot like the first game and bridges the story between all 3 previous titles, filling you the back story of Roxas and Organization XIII and everything else in between, with a heartwarming theme of friendship and a lot of gorgeous cut-scenes which you thought can’t be done on the DS. But other than that the game carries with it the weight of every problem that is Square, with its one-dimensional spiky-hair teenage heroes and long hair pretty-boy-toy villains and repetitive mission structures and retarded level-up-equip-abilities-panel system. Yes, the RPG mechanics in this game is retarded because this is the game where you win by blindly mashing button so you are not going to build a magic enhancing Keyblade and you are going to want one that performs better in air than on the ground because almost everything you are fighting floats on top of or 3 times as tall as Roxas. When a game’s choices don’t make sense then it is wasting your time to have you choose, and having the abilities on a grid-like panel is even the more restrictive. At the end if you can get past the stupid things Square does to waste your time (at least no random combats and excessive grinding here), you may enjoy 358/2 days with a half-opened mind.
But the truth is that, Square hasn’t learned how to do a mix of universes and characters game properly, all they do is insert “RPG” and “CGI cut-scenes” into every game they have ever made. If you want to see that done right, take a look at Jump Super Stars on the DS (yes only available in Japan) and the very similar Super Smash Bros with Nintendo. Or better yet, look at my all time favorite, Konami Wai Wai World on the Famicon (Yes, not on the NES because it is only available in Japan again). Why Konami World is much better than Kingdom Hearts, because of its simplicity, of it simply not trying too hard to weave a complex tale, of excellent (and every difficult) platforming and memorable characters and the gorgeous background music and unique worlds that represented each character. Just Simon Belmont would kick the ass of any heroes from Disney and any Square villain would shun in the face of the awesome Dracula (Okay, and there is the orgy inspiring Vampire Hunter tune playing in the background).
The author hopes to not see Kingdom Hearts 3 on PS3 with Marvel Characters and claims that she will die happy if one day seeing another Konami Wai Wai world sequel on a next generation platform.
Nice to see you blogging about this good topic.