I spent the last week of my life blazing a trail through this game, partially at the request of friends and partially because I enjoy beating things down with a large key.  30 hours of gameplay on Proud mode later, I completed my mission.  Now it’s time to reflect on the whole experience.

First, we’ll consider the story portion of the game.  358/2 follows Roxas during his experiences as part of Organization XIII, from inception to the events that start Kingdom Hearts 2, as well as the “XIIII” member, Xion.  Additionally, and perhaps more importantly in some ways, Axel also plays a focus as his friendship with Roxas develops and his ideals slowly start to shift.  The story content evolves along with Roxas development.  He starts out as a “zombie” who says very little and doesn’t really think for himself, and the story is very brief and shallow to match.  By the end, he is a fully thinking individual, questioning his lot in life and the Organization, and the story content keeps pace with that.  It can be somewhat off-putting to some people to have almost no story for the first third of the game, but I think it’s an interesting way of story progression.

In the case of the other characters though, I was a little disappointed.  Saix does play a fair role in the game’s story, being the second in command, but he doesn’t develop at all and it feels like his placement is just cursory.  The rest of the Organization gets no development at all.  Sorry Luxord fans, you’ll just have to wait for another game.  The Disney cast also takes a major backseat; though you will run into them from time to time, you have very little direct interaction.  By comparison, Square-Enix’s cast is non-existent, except in one or two references.  The overarching theme is “What measure is a (non)human?” and is rather fitting for a game filled with Nobodies.  Unfortunately, it loses a bit of its impact because you know what must happen by the end of the game to prevent any major retcons from occurring.

On the gameplay side, this is your standard hack-n-slash Kingdom Hearts affair.  They do try to mix the formula up a bit with Objectives, which is admirable, but you know why you’re all here.  The difficulty seems a little schizophrenic at times, where you’ll go from rooms that you’re absolutely dominating to rooms where the designers hate your existence.  The lack of any repercussions for death is a double-edged sword here: it does make it much more bearable to clear these areas, but it cheapens the experience by promoting character suicide over strong tactics.  The leveling system is unique; it’s kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  You’ve got a grid of squares with a series of abilities in a variety of shapes and sizes, and it’s your job to maximize the space available with the abilities you need.  Even raw character levels have to be placed on or removed from the grid, making this a great game for self-imposed challenges.

Normally you wouldn’t think much about replayability, but this game has a surprising amount.  Upon completing a level, you can unlock challenge variations by picking up the appropriate badge during normal play.  These challenges add restrictions to the level and grade you on different criteria, such as completion time.  It does keep track of high scores.  The game also includes a Mission mode activated in much the same manner.  In this mode, you can play as any member of the Organization, as well as a few extra characters.  Enemies have their health attributes increased and you can freely tweak other aspects of the level.  This mode also supports multiplayer, and should you have the overwhelming desire to kill one of your friends, you are free to do so.  Players can trade in emblem rewards from both modes for a few unique prizes.

On the audio and video fronts, the game also delivers.  Visually, this is one of the best and most intensive games that I’ve seen on the DS.  The models lose a lot of resolution from the weaker graphics processors, but they still look good and animate well.  That’s good, because there will be a lot of models on screen at any given time.  The same can be said about the environments you’re playing in, though I do think they stand up to the transition a little better.  You’ve seen the majority of these areas and enemies before, but there is some added content in there to keep the experience fresh.  Audibly, the game sounds great as well.  The majority of the music has been recycled from the other games in the series, which might disappoint some, but I personally couldn’t imagine places like Wonderland having different themes.  The small bit of vocal work sounds good as well.

The game does have faults, but they are largely cursory to the experience.  Bottom line, you Kingdom Hearts fans will probably eat this game right up, and you probably already have it.  For everyone else, this is a solid entry in the action-RPG genre, worthy of checking out.

Final Score: 8/10 Sea-salt Ice Creams.