Kingdom Hearts 358/2 – Nintendo DS

Huray! No more card battles! Although with Disney acquiring Marvel I was hoping for a X-men world but alas it is naught. I guess it’s for the best, It would piss off soo many fanboys.

Another release to the Kingdom Hearts series that supposed to satiate KH hunger till Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out. In this adventure we take on the role of Roxas, the nobody created when Sora became a heartless in the original Kingdom Hearts, during the events that took place between Kingdom Hearts Chain of memories and Kingdom Hearts 2. Bleh mouth full of Kingdom Hearts!

Controls are surprisingly solid, granted I was used to the PS2 controls, but settling in to the DS controls came quickly. The camera is a little irritating even with all of the available options Sqeenix provides but they are on par with most 3D DS games out there.

The sound is great, even though most of it sounds like simple remixes and sometimes straight ports form existing KH sound tracks.

The graphics are good as well. All of the character designs are the same from previous games just modeled low poly. Not bad FF7 low poly but what we’ve come to expect from DS 3D modeling.

The story is good but I kinda wish they went a little more into the depth of Organization XIII’s members. They end up feeling like filler for your party members and glossed over. They do introduce a new member,Xion who proves to be quite interesting. Even so the rest of Organization XIII is such and interesting archetype I wish they spent a lil more time with them.

The leveling system is an interesting new addition. You increase your characters levels and skills through a customization grid. It works kinda like Diablo’s inventory system. You start of with a 3×5 grid and place panels containing every thing from skills to levels on them. Each panel has a unique shape so find the optimal configuration is challenging. For each mission you complete you get an extra panel space for your grid, so completing missions is quite rewarding.

A solid Action/RPG that I believe will stave off the pangs for KH3… for now anyway.
8/10

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