Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Review

I am fairly big fan of the Kingdom Hearts  games, mostly because of the very good gameplay. I was surprised to see how well this transferred over to the DS. The controls seem to be the biggest complaint people have overall, but its really not that bad. It took a few minutes to get used to, but after that it makes perfect sense, and I have had no trouble.

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The way the game plays is a bit different in that instead of exploring worlds and achieving one goal or beating one boss, you play multiple missions in each world. These missions are relatively short and are very fun and addicting. Once you complete a mission, you can go back to get more items or to complete tasks that you may not have been able to complete during your first run due to lack of certain abilities. You can also unlock challenges that require you to beat missions under certain conditions or within a certain time limit. This helps to keep up the replay value.

After getting about seven or so hours through the game, it seems to me that Square Enix may have had the lead on this one. There are fewer Disney characters involved, as the plot focuses on Organization XIII. Also, the character customization system in the game is very much like other Square games. Anyone familiar with the Final Fantasy series or The World Ends With You will be comfortable with this. In this game, there is what is called the Panel System, which allows you to place items and abilities in a grid, and even link some panels together to create abilities. The thing is, you have a lot more panels to place in the grid than the grid has spaces, meaning you have be very careful which panels you take with you. This helps to boost the difficulty and strategy level of the game.

I would say that if you are a fan of KH, this is a must have, as it is very fun, and the new Panel system is really cool. The worlds all look familiar, and the enemies are pretty much the same, but the focus on Organization XIII and the new gameplay features definitely make this a worthwhile investment.