Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Review

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is the latest in the Kingdom Hearts series but with a "slight" difference, this time its on a hand-held platform, the DS. Note: I came across this game at the Armageddon expo, me already being a big fan of the series I had to pick it up. It was the first day the game had came out and was $70.

First off for a game on the DS it looks great and even more surprisingly the combat is smooth and flows freely. Gameplay is very fun expect for the extremely boring recon missions were you search around new places for "Unusual" things, in short it makes you not want to go to new worlds. There is two modes, story and mission mode. In story mode you just play as Roxas but in mission mode you can replay any of the missions you've completed in story mode but with different organisation members. You can also do it with a friend. This is one of the games big selling points.

The story works around Roxas in the organisation doing missions and gathering hearts to complete "Kingdom Hearts" a giant collection of hearts in the sky that the organisation hopes to use to become "whole". The story works fine but edges on fan-service with the main characters, Roxas, Axel and Xion eating ice cream off the top of the clock tower just like the crew from twilight town did in Kingdom Hearts 2. The story is generally engaging but is really annoying when you skip out about 10-20 of the games supposed 358/2 days which is stupid because the missions are already dragged out. Dialog between characters is good and makes you worry about what will happen to them later on and its also quite nice to get a mini-cut scene on the DS with spoken dialog.

In conclusion its a very good game pretty much every thing is solid and over the time I have played it it has been well worth it.

Gameplay: 7.5 - Solid gameplay that does get a bit tiresome.
Graphics: 8.5 - Nicely done for the DS but I can't help thinking it would of been better on another console.......
Sound: 7.0 - Good music but lacks its previous luster seeing most of it was used before.
Worth: 8.0 - With about 50 hours of gameplay its got the quantity and its mostly fun.
Overall: 8.0 - If you have previous games of the series its a must buy. The story is very engaging and interesting.