2025-05-14

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

It’s pronounced “Three Five Eight Days Over Two” btw don’t say it any other way please

Wow this game is impressive!!! Despite playing on original hardware, I often forgot I was playing a DS game. Once you get used to the controls, it feels incredibly natural to fight and explore. Locations are often ripped straight from the PS2 games, as are a lot of the enemies and combat mechanics. It doesn’t even feel like a demake, it just feels like KH1 but at lower resolution. The few corners that are cut, like lower enemy spawn count, are usually hidden well by the game’s design. It was probably easier to hide these cut corners by approaching the memorable locations with a new story.

And yeah, it’s a Kingdom Hearts story. If you know you know. And if you don’t know, you probably shouldn’t. On the timeline, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days takes place between Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 2, around the same time as Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. But Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories came out before Kingdom Hearts 2, making it more of a “lead-up” story, while Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days came out after Kingdom Hearts 2, making it like a prequel. That’s how the games should really be played: Kingdom Hearts 1, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories or Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts 2, and then Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. This is notable because Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX kinda implies the opposite, placing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days after Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and before Kingdom Hearts 2. While I can’t wipe my memories and play the games in that order, I can’t imagine doing so would really ruin the experience. Really, the ideal way of experiencing this series is to play Kingdom Hearts 1 and then immediately die, but not all of us could be so lucky.

Anyways, the most accessible version of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is on Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX, as cutscene collection and story summary. That’s how I first consumed this game’s story, but it left me curious about how the delivery changes in its original form. Obviously, the dramatic scenes are more impactful when slotted between a few hours of heart collecting, but most of the gameplay moments don’t add context to the main story. You do get more things to see, more interactions with Organization members, and more context on the game’s timeline, but this is only stuff appreciated by loremasters. So, I’m fine with HD ReMIX’s decision to summarize the game into a movie, since the story is still a great follow-up to 2.

You play as Roxas during his time in Organization XIII, up until the start of Kingdom Hearts 2. That “358 days” in the title is a literal reference to the time span of the story, and the “/2” is a metaphorical reference to the fact that you only play 93 of these days. Each mission is one day, which starts in a hub where you make preparations, and then deploy to another world with a set objective. The default objective is just “collect hearts”, but there’s usually some twist to it. This loop is a lot like Monster Hunter and Peace Walker, which was the style at the time.

Preparation is pretty fun, you get a bunch of panels to place on a grid, some panels have slots to link with others which can compound effects. You pretty much have complete control over your build, removing all panels will revert you to exactly how you were at the start of the game. Leveling is done by placing level panels, which seems like a no-brainer at first, but you’ll quickly realize that level ups are less powerful than getting extra slots for magic or abilities. It’s really cool to see the game subtly communicate a benefit to staying at level 1, instead of being a selectable higher difficulty mode.

Unfortunately, the gameplay isn’t very interesting, at level 1 or otherwise. Most of the encounters can be solved by mashing attack, and guarding is rarely worth trying. Despite this, you have access to a dozen different variants of block, but I never cared to use them since I could always just take the chance of getting hit, and heal later. Magic is neat in this game, the different tiers of magic each have different effects, and each one can be upgraded with link panels. Due to the panel system, you only have enough space for a few spells, so you’ll want to only pick the spells you’re going to use.

But that’s the problem, since it’s a Monster Hunter style game, you have to exit the mission in order to switch from Fire to Ice magic. You don’t always know what sort of enemies you’ll be facing when selecting a mission, so sometimes you’ll just have to restart. Compared to classic Monster Hunter, it’s way less tedious, but I’m still a zoomer baby with low attention span and hate backtracking.

The missions themselves can also get repetitive. Every mission, you deploy to a location, make a little progress, complete the objective, and then return. The subplots of each world were pretty hard to pay attention to, since you get the stories in tiny chunks. Worlds are explored concurrently, so it’s easy to just forget everything. They try to do some sort of message as each world wraps up, but I already don’t care, and it never impacts the story anyways. Is this a missed opportunity? I wouldn’t want there to be more world stories, so I’m glad it’s all skippable. These games, especially Kingdom Hearts 1, feel so much more like an adventure when you’re immersed inside a world, and emerge at the end of its story. That theme park design is lost here, replaced with a commute and chores. It still works, but not as a console entry.

And that’s how I liked playing this game, as a handheld game. Pick up the DS Lite, flip it open for a mission here and there, pick at it until you reach the end. It’s far more enjoyable this way, than trying to whip an emulator into a 1080p dual analog controlled non-remake. Which does exist, it’s called Melon Mix and I’m extremely impressed with what they’ve done. But I think the presentation is best on original hardware.

Score: 2/3. There is a LOT of padding, and it’s definitely worse than the console entries in the series, but it is very enjoyable in small chunks. Or maybe I just have KH brain damage, which are the exact types of people I would recommend this to.

I feel like I’m forgetting something really important