I hope you like Sea Salt Ice Cream.
358/2 Days runs parallel to Chain of Memories, and is the story of Sora's Nobody, Roxas. Having showed up in Twilight Town, Xemnas recruited him into the Organization and gave him his name. Roxas would then spend 358 days as a member of the Organization – Days tells us what happened during that time.
I remember being very surprised when this game was announced. It was when Nomura started showing off his talent of giving his games ludicrous names. I can’t remember if the reveal happened in a magazine or press release, but regardless, we, the fans, only knew how the name was written, not how it was pronounced, and we ended up spending a while simply trying to figure that bit out. “Three-hundred-and-fifty-eight-slash-two-days”? "divided by two days"? The forum discussions on the topic were endless.
Square eventually had to issue another press release saying that the correct pronunciation was “three-five-eight-days-over-two”, meaning not a single fan was correct in their theory. More pre-release material came out over time, as well, showing that this was not going to be another Chain of Memories, but a full-fledged KH game, with the front-facing camera and command menu and such. Could the DS really handle such a game?
The answer was, surprisingly, yes. Sure, the physics are a bit slippery and environments are simpler so to not be visually taxing, but overall, this came much closer to delivering a traditional KH experience than the previous spin-off, Chain of Memories.
That’s not to say Days is entirely without quirks – far from it, actually. Instead of the more free-form world exploration we see in the two mainline KH games, Days has a mission-based structure: on each in-game day, you’ll be given a task to complete in one of the game’s worlds. This bite-sized gameplay was probably considered fitting for the portable setting, but that means there is no free-roam.
Another big difference from the mainline games is that, when you level up or learn new abilities, you don’t simply get those bonuses automatically, they need to be physically fit into your panels, which are a grid where the skills you want to use must be placed. There's a puzzle element to it: it’s very much possible to fit every end-game ability within the grid if you put your mind to it. It's fun to fiddle with.
The only problem, for me, is magic, or rather, how there's a hard limit on the number of casts your spells have determined by how many copies of that spell are in your panels. The game is sorely lacking in burst damage, which magic could have provided if it used KH or KHII's MP systems, but instead, there's this cap which also caps your DPS.
If that sounds like a weird criticism, it’s because it relates to one of the biggest problems with 358/2 Days: enemies take too long to kill. The balancing in the game is utterly skewed towards making fights harder by giving more HP to foes. No kidding, right after the tutorial, you’re faced with an (admittedly optional) enemy that has seven bars of health that have to be chipped down.
When you start doing challenges and mission mode, this tendency becomes the norm, as so many missions devolve into chipping away the massive health of bosses. It’s kind of why I recommend not touching Proud Mode, not because it’s a hard game, but because dying during those chip sections and starting them all over again can take a hard toll on your sanity.
The second huge issue with Days, and this is arguably the biggest one since it cannot be avoided at all, is that a lot of the game is pure filler. There are 90 something missions to do, and there just isn’t enough plot to support all that. The result is useless tasks like “Collect Organization Emblems”, “Destroy the Shadow Globs” (whatever that is) or “Kill a particular brand of Heartless” that likes to run away and hide and burn the mission timer.
Pointless time-wasters such as that bog down a story that is already pretty slow to begin with. It’s ironic, because Days’ story is not bad at all, but it’s perceived as such because of the sluggish pacing. The things that it tries to do, it does well: it shows the story from the point of view of the antagonists, it creates a mystery, it establishes how the friendship between the main characters, Xion, Roxas and Axel, came to be and how it fell apart, and it ties into KHII without breaking anything major. Which is a lot more than you can say for BbS, for instance.
It's the padding that I think ultimately destroy the game. Had it been 20~30 hours shorter, it would be an easy recommendation to make. As it is, though, I think all but the most hardcore of fans should just settle for watching the cutscenes on the remix versions.
358/2 Days runs parallel to Chain of Memories, and is the story of Sora's Nobody, Roxas. Having showed up in Twilight Town, Xemnas recruited him into the Organization and gave him his name. Roxas would then spend 358 days as a member of the Organization – Days tells us what happened during that time.
I remember being very surprised when this game was announced. It was when Nomura started showing off his talent of giving his games ludicrous names. I can’t remember if the reveal happened in a magazine or press release, but regardless, we, the fans, only knew how the name was written, not how it was pronounced, and we ended up spending a while simply trying to figure that bit out. “Three-hundred-and-fifty-eight-slash-two-days”? "divided by two days"? The forum discussions on the topic were endless.
Square eventually had to issue another press release saying that the correct pronunciation was “three-five-eight-days-over-two”, meaning not a single fan was correct in their theory. More pre-release material came out over time, as well, showing that this was not going to be another Chain of Memories, but a full-fledged KH game, with the front-facing camera and command menu and such. Could the DS really handle such a game?
The answer was, surprisingly, yes. Sure, the physics are a bit slippery and environments are simpler so to not be visually taxing, but overall, this came much closer to delivering a traditional KH experience than the previous spin-off, Chain of Memories.
That’s not to say Days is entirely without quirks – far from it, actually. Instead of the more free-form world exploration we see in the two mainline KH games, Days has a mission-based structure: on each in-game day, you’ll be given a task to complete in one of the game’s worlds. This bite-sized gameplay was probably considered fitting for the portable setting, but that means there is no free-roam.
Another big difference from the mainline games is that, when you level up or learn new abilities, you don’t simply get those bonuses automatically, they need to be physically fit into your panels, which are a grid where the skills you want to use must be placed. There's a puzzle element to it: it’s very much possible to fit every end-game ability within the grid if you put your mind to it. It's fun to fiddle with.
The only problem, for me, is magic, or rather, how there's a hard limit on the number of casts your spells have determined by how many copies of that spell are in your panels. The game is sorely lacking in burst damage, which magic could have provided if it used KH or KHII's MP systems, but instead, there's this cap which also caps your DPS.
If that sounds like a weird criticism, it’s because it relates to one of the biggest problems with 358/2 Days: enemies take too long to kill. The balancing in the game is utterly skewed towards making fights harder by giving more HP to foes. No kidding, right after the tutorial, you’re faced with an (admittedly optional) enemy that has seven bars of health that have to be chipped down.
When you start doing challenges and mission mode, this tendency becomes the norm, as so many missions devolve into chipping away the massive health of bosses. It’s kind of why I recommend not touching Proud Mode, not because it’s a hard game, but because dying during those chip sections and starting them all over again can take a hard toll on your sanity.
The second huge issue with Days, and this is arguably the biggest one since it cannot be avoided at all, is that a lot of the game is pure filler. There are 90 something missions to do, and there just isn’t enough plot to support all that. The result is useless tasks like “Collect Organization Emblems”, “Destroy the Shadow Globs” (whatever that is) or “Kill a particular brand of Heartless” that likes to run away and hide and burn the mission timer.
Pointless time-wasters such as that bog down a story that is already pretty slow to begin with. It’s ironic, because Days’ story is not bad at all, but it’s perceived as such because of the sluggish pacing. The things that it tries to do, it does well: it shows the story from the point of view of the antagonists, it creates a mystery, it establishes how the friendship between the main characters, Xion, Roxas and Axel, came to be and how it fell apart, and it ties into KHII without breaking anything major. Which is a lot more than you can say for BbS, for instance.
It's the padding that I think ultimately destroy the game. Had it been 20~30 hours shorter, it would be an easy recommendation to make. As it is, though, I think all but the most hardcore of fans should just settle for watching the cutscenes on the remix versions.