Here is yet another big review, feel free to skip it all because it is extremely big. If you do make it through the entire review and like it please recommend it.

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Square's amazing ability to tell great stories transforms an average package into an absolute winner

Through the course of its history the Kingdom Hearts saga has achieved what was thought to be impossible in joining two very distinct fan bases, Disney aficionados and followers of the Final Fantasy series. By mixing Square's story telling with Disney worlds and characters the series has succeeded in gaining respect from both gamers and critics on its execution. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is yet another chapter on this beautiful friendship tale and like its predecessors it excels in character development and technical achievements.

The game follows the story of Roxas - Sora's nobody – during his time with the Organization XIII, hence the number 358 on the title. The game starts by the end of the original Kingdom Hearts and sheds a light on the occurrences of Chain of Memories eventually ending precisely before the beginning of the second Playstation 2 title. During that time players will be able to get an inside look of the evil organization and watch the growth of Roxas and Axel's friendship.

Those who are not familiar with the series may get lost at some point in the game due to the constant appearance of many returning characters, but that doesn't mean Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days doesn't welcome new players because it surprisingly manages to hold up as a game of its own, even if some central parts of the plot can only be fully comprehended by having a good knowledge of what happened in previous titles.

The game is played from a 3-D perspective and features two control options. The initial one is faulty since it has players pressing the select button to enter a camera control mode from where they can move the view as they wish. This specific setting breaks the pace of the game, and it also makes players vulnerable for a considerable amount of time as all actions your character can perform are disabled when you are moving the camera. When you take into consideration that it is during battles that your camera will need the most adjusting it is easy to see why the first control setting fails.

The second one is much better as it allows players to move the camera by simply pressing the L or R buttons. While this doesn't fix the camera hiccups that happen from time to time it makes the overall experience much more pleasant. As usual, players will engage in real time hack and slash battles and perform combos to make enemies hit the ground.

Magic is also an option and can be accessed through menus on the left portion of the screen which are controlled with the X and Y buttons. Navigating through those menus during battles can be a nuisance, especially before you get used to them. Fortunately it is possible to create shortcuts that will allow gamers to perform magic with the press of a combination of two buttons, a delightful solution for a sometimes confusing menu system.

During his time with the organization Roxas will have to undertake a series of missions to climb up the ranks. These missions – mostly happening on Disney worlds – don't offer a lot of variety as they are basically separated into a few different categories: Reckon missions have players exploring and discovering info about a newly found world, other tasks have Roxas killing either a large horde of minor enemies or a massive boss.

However it takes a long while for this limited mission variety to kick in as during the first four hours of the game you will be basically going through very limited missions that feel more like tutorials than actual gameplay. These assignments usually have players following instructions given by their partners. The fact that the game takes such a long while to pick up the pace and throw a decent challenge at players can make it boring before it has even started which will absolutely turn off some players.

Your duties are performed on a daily basis and most of the time you will be paired up with an AI controlled character. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days manages to stay away from the current overflow of poorly controlled AI partners and presents very intelligent assistants that will indeed help on battles without ever getting in the way and making players mad due to bad programming.

On every single day Roxas spends with the organization your routine will be exactly the same. Talk to your boss on the organization's base, accept one of the missions provided by the game and do your job. It is undeniable the game offers plenty of missions (even though a bunch of days will be skipped during your adventure), but truth is most of them are extremely repetitive. Chances are that after a while the only reason to play the game will be watching how the story develops and eventually seeing how it all ends, which is unfortunate due to the time and care that was put into the worlds – a sentence that is not true when it comes to mission design.

Even the game's bosses, while huge and impressive in size, don't take a lot of thinking in order to be defeated. Instead of being creative battles most of the bosses encountered during the adventure will simply be bigger, stronger enemies with a huge amount of stamina, naturally making those battles extremely long hack and slash affairs. Truth be told though, the big guys do have a very nice range of attacks that demand a lot of skill in order to be avoided.

The biggest and best new feature of this particular entry is the addition of a Panel System. Before heading out on their missions players must carefully assemble a series of blocks containing different abilities, magic spells, items and etc into a specific gridded area of their inventory. Mixing up the correct abilities and making the items fit perfectly into the limited space takes a lot of rational thinking and strategy which are necessary to succeed in the game's highest difficulty levels.

Visually the game is a huge achievement by Square. The character models are wonderful to look at with very smooth edges and animations, showing how far the DS hardware can go when rendering 3-D models. When it comes to the scenario it is hard not to be overwhelmed by what you see, the Disney worlds (Beast's Castle, Agrabah, Wonderland, Neverland, Halloween Town) are wonderful to look at and are perfect reproductions of what was featured in the movies. However, the low quality textures take away some of the scenario's quality even though it is hard to think that Square could have done better with what they had in their hands.

The songs present a lot of recycled material from previous games, which is far from being a bad thing. The story is mostly told through outstanding Square-quality cutscenes, which means that as far the DS goes they are only paralleled by other games produced by the company.

Besides, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days also presents a lot of extra content for fans of the series. There is a multiplayer mode where each player plays as one organization member on unlocked Story Mode missions, there are also tons of unlockable characters that are sure to keep hardcore fans playing for many hours after completion of the regular story.

Overall Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a nice addition for the Nintendo DS. The game thrives on its technical achievements and is mostly hold up together by the amazing storyline developed with each passing day in the game. Long time fans of the series will spend up to 50 hours unlocking everything this amazing package has to offer while other gamers will spend thirty-hours to complete exclusively the Story Mode. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days may not be one of the system's finest moments, but Square's amazing ability to tell great stories and make players deeply care for their characters transforms an average package into an absolute winner.

Actual Score: 8.2