How would you feel if you found out you’re secretly a mirror image of a person with a mind full of memories that are not yours? Roxas, one of the main characters in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, has to live with that reality every minute of his eventful life.
This new installment in the Kingdom Hearts timeline has you playing as Roxas, a copy of Sora, the main character within all of the Kingdom Hearts games before 385/2 Days, who is trying to find out about himself while unraveling the intent of Organization XIII and the search for Kingdom Hearts, which are the key to the Organization’s plan.
Game play is just like the Playstation 2 versions of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. The controls are pretty solid: you move with the directional pad while attacking with A, jumping with Y, and navigating the menus with X. You control the camera with the R and L buttons. Touch screen integration is almost non-existent. There is nothing new to the game play, but for fans that enjoyed the style of controls in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, you will be pretty content with these.
There are some new features in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, such as the new panel system. Before, the player would have to go into different menus to equip abilities, magic, and equipment. Now, players use panels for everything. These panels have slots where you put items and abilities you earn through missions. These slots are filled with abilities like fire, blizzard or thunder or roll, dodge and block. Items such as potions and elixers can be added. The successfulness of the mission depends on how well you’ve fitted your panels and with what skills you’ve given yourself.
The missions are the meat of the game. You continue the story through missions which the Organization gives you as days go by. There are a variety of ways to play these missions, like search and destroy or sneak around town to grab intel before the civilians spot you. The game play in this title is enough to keep a hard core fan satisfied while keeping new comers a little confused.
The graphics are pretty decent for a DS title. They are, at times, muddy in appearance, but overall moderate. The cut scenes themselves look like they came out of the PS2 titles and they also include voiceover which was something of a surprise.
The bond that drives the story is between Roxas, Axel, and Xion. The whole timeline between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 has been pretty unclear so far, but now its revealed what occurs to the fourteenth member of Organization XIII and Roxas, along with his relationship with Axel.
A person’s heart is what makes them a person, without it they are nobody. Kingdom Hearts 385/2 Days is a game about nobodies who are looking for a heart, while some are looking for a purpose. Kingdom Hearts fans who are looking for a deeper look at what really happened inside of Organization XIII and also want to see what happened between Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories will find a great experience in 358/2 Days.
