The oddly-named chapter to Square's Disney mash-up is a deep and strategic action RPG, though it can be a bit repetitive and frenetic.

Game Summary

Popzara Rating

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a refreshing, engrossing, and fun action RPG. Combat is done in real-time, and will utilize just about every button on the DS (there's no stylus use in the game). You will be pressing just about every button on your DS in rapid succession in order to dodge, attack, cast, heal, and otherwise grunt through the game's powerful bosses. The main story and resolution of the characters' lives in this world kept me going through some of the repetitive sections of the game. Release Date: 9/29/2009 ESRB Rating: E10+ Publisher: Square Enix

Written by Mike Henderson

It's important to open this review to say, guiltfully, that I haven't played any of the Kingdom Hearts games on the PS2 or any other platform they've been released on - I am late to the Kingdom Hearts party. So this review is written from that somewhat unique perspective. That said, as a fan of Japanese-style RPGs, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a refreshing, engrossing, and fun action RPG.

The story is actually one of the reasons I enjoyed the game, despite any other issues it may have. The tale is a unique spin on a typical RPG framework. It's framed as a classic "wake up somewhere and don't know who you are or where you came from" RPG, but this time around it's a little different: You also lack a heart (a.k.a. no soul), you "live" in this strange place with others that have the same problem, and you must work with them to build the "Kingdom Hearts" so you can all return to the real world again. You spend the storyline learning about yourself, others from your past, your memories, etc. You travel from region to region, collecting hearts and solving the greater mystery, and along the way meet (and fight with) many different Disney characters from Mickey Mouse to Jack Skellington (Nightmare Before Christmas). The main story and resolution of the characters' lives in this world kept me going through some of the repetitive sections of the game.

As is normal for a Japanese-origin RPG (JRPG), your character's stats increase automatically when you level-up. You can, however, completely affect your character's abilities prior to each mission by modifying the collection of "panels" in your character's active profile. These may add magic spells, combat bonuses, defensive skills, and even your character's level of overall ability. It's an interesting and complex mechanic, because you have limited space in a grid to place the panels, with some panels even having a specific shape, meaning they take up space in your grid and limit your combinations of panels. You may have to skip inclusion of a health potion in order to get in that one key extra offense spell to fight a boss, for example.

Combat is done in real-time, and will utilize just about every button on the DS (there's no stylus use in the game). You can perform melee attacks with your "key" (basically a sword) in a couple of different ways (e.g. timed button presses, etc.), and you can cast spells that are equipped. You can also carry items such as health potions, which use up panel spots. It takes some practice to learn the right balance of spells, level-ups, defensive skills, and potions to carry into different missions. Spells, like potions, are limited use - each time you enter an area of the game, you choose how many castings of each spell to put in your grid. Once those are used up, you don't get them back until you complete the area. You'll fight a pretty impressive array of enemies, though they do tend to repeat once you're about a quarter of the way through the game, but each has their own tactics and weaknesses, so it stays interesting.

Thankfully, there's very little "grinding" needed in this game - you don't need to keep bouncing around to fight as much as possible to get through the game as you do with other RPGs of this type. Boss battles are tiring affairs. You will be pressing just about every button on your DS in rapid succession in order to dodge, attack, cast, heal, and otherwise grunt through the game's powerful bosses.

The people and creatures you meet as you go are well done and have deep enough personalities to keep you engaged in what's going on. The Disney characters that you'll encounter (and even fight with) can be a little corny, but that's to be expected. Another nice touch is a lot of short in-game animations to keep the character interaction stories and general story line moving between levels. As for game length, it's about 20 hours if you take your time.

The visuals are actually quite good. The game world is free-roaming 3D, albeit in pretty good Playstation 1 quality. Everything's animated well and colorful, with nice spell animations, etc. There are some very well done anime 3D-rendered cut-scenes scattered through the game.

The music is good, but there's not a lot of variety, so you'll be somewhat tired of some of the themes late in the game. There are no voice-overs to speak of, outside of short little sound bytes (e.g. when your character has an emotional change, he might emit a small laugh sound, or a disappointed "aww").  This is quite a change from the usual big-budget efforts made to the series console installments, where top-name talent (from both the original Disney animated features and pop-stars) would voice the main characters.

Overall, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a very solid JRPG - one of the better to come out for the DS in the last year or so. My only gripe is that in true JRPG form, you may find some of the combat to get repetitive, but luckily the game will move you to a new area with enough frequency to keep it from getting outright tedious. This one is definitely recommended for fans of the genre.