KHDays My Thoughts On: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

[Awesome Sauce 634]

In the words of DJ Khaled: "Another one".

Continuing with my marathon, today I'll be sharing my opinions about Days, the 1st DS game in the series. I encourage anyone that visits this to share their experiences with this game. This comes from my 1st playthrough in Proud mode.

 

Story: I'll be honest: I spoiled the ending on myself, so I didn't have as much of a reaction to some of the events as others had. However, I liked the plot for being different from the other games and not sharing their formula of "go through the worlds in an adventure, defeat the heartless and the villain and find your missing friends". This was more about the life of a member of Organization XIII, conducting missions  trying to get his heart back and overall finding his place on the world. I especially liked seeing the friendship of Roxas, Axel and Xion develop throughout the game, which made their fallout even more sad. It was interesting seeing Riku after ReCOM and how he went about doing things, but it only made me wish there was another mode or game where you play through Days from the perspective of Riku, Mickey, Naminè and DiZ. The game made me care about Roxas and gave a new opinion on Organization XIII, however the plot doesn't add much to the overall story of the series. The pacing isn't that good, the story not really picking up until Day 150 or later and the 1st half being a lot of filler. While I liked the story, it's purpose was to show Roxas' existence when he was with the Organization and fill the gaps from KH2 that COM didn't explain. That's it.

 

Gameplay: The gameplay is decent. While not as great as KH1, it is close enough. After playing ReCOM, this game was refreshing, since I was able to just do anything I wanted without worrying about card breaks or numbers. It felt good to use attacks and spells in succesion and just do stuff similar to KH1. Of course, it is more limited, since the game is split into missions with restricted areas and magic having a limited number of uses as opposed to an MP bar, but it's not so bad later on. I found the panel system to be the AP of KH1, now used on everything instead of just abilities. I didn't customize much and simply made my deck as I went along, but after getting decent panels and releasing slots, it felt good to just breeze through everything with a powered up Roxas. The level up system could've been natural instead of using panels, but aside from that I was okay with the panel system. I didn't like how in most missions, some areas were restricted and unable to be reached, which killed the exploration aspect of the game. I wouldn't mind the mission aspect of the game if it weren't for that problem. Aside from that and the sometimes slow combat, I liked the gameplay of Days a lot.

 

Graphics: while Days doesn't look as good as the other games, it's graphics are great for the DS. The character models look good, even if pixelated and more polygon-y and all the worlds were accurate recreations of the ones from KH1 and 2. The text scenes were bland, due to no voices, but the cutscenes that played at certain points looked as good as KH1.

 

Sound: Most of the soundtrack is recycled from other games, but the few new tracks are as great as usual. I especially loved the new Neverland theme and Mystic Moon, while other tracks I found to be from good to meh.

 

 

Overall, while it isn't as good as the other games, Days was a good experience from start to finish, and I think is as good/better as COM in certain departments while worse in others. I enjoyed it a lot.

 

I'll also give a pseudo-review on the 1.5 cutscenes, since I watched them as I played the game. The remade scenes are beautiful and make the development of Roxas, Axel and Xion's feel more real while giving the plot more life. The voice acting is, again, great and just made them better. However, I didn't like how they remade some scenes and not all of them, probably to not make it as filler as the game, and the fact that there were no battle scenes killed it for me. The biggest crime, for me, is that it shows evidence of the planned-but-scrapped HD remake of Days, with some of the models used in the still images, which I would've loved to see. It was an okay collection of cutscenes.

 

Now,I shall go onward with my marathon, to the true sequel...

[The Transcendent Key 12,109]

Awesome review man, I'm glad you got the chance to play Days!

 

Days was an amazing game, and it had a very interesting stance in the series, due to the game being Roxas's life during the year Sora was asleep!  What happened to him, Axel and Xion was of utmost sadness, and it was truly a tragic, bittersweet story!  While I would've loved more insight on the other members of the Organization, I'm more than content with what we got, ya know?  I especially loved the game's final arc, where everything just went crashing down for the trio!  Seeing their friendship tested and ravaged the way it was...it was messed up!  And well, I liked how the game explained some loose threads that were lingering from other entries in the series! I especially loved Riku's part in all of this!

 

The gameplay was awesome, but the panel system took a while for me to get used to!  But after I played through Days a second time, I didn't mind it much!  It was good for experimenting different spell layouts and trying out new Keyblades, ya know?  I also remember playing the multiplayer one time with my best friend/soul brother Dennys, and from what I can remember, it was fun!  I was using Marluxia...or was it Xemnas?  Lol, I don't remember!

 

But yeah, everything about the game was awesome!  The music and voice acting were amazing, especially in the 1.5 cutscenes, and the graphics for a DS game were impressive!

 

Awesome man, I'm glad you enjoyed this game!  I bet you're having a blast playing through each KH game, huh?

[Awesome Sauce 634]

  On 8/11/2016 at 2:00 AM, The Transcendent Key said:

Awesome review man, I'm glad you got the chance to play Days!

 

Days was an amazing game, and it had a very interesting stance in the series, due to the game being Roxas's life during the year Sora was asleep!  What happened to him, Axel and Xion was of utmost sadness, and it was truly a tragic, bittersweet story!  While I would've loved more insight on the other members of the Organization, I'm more than content with what we got, ya know?  I especially loved the game's final arc, where everything just went crashing down for the trio!  Seeing their friendship tested and ravaged the way it was...it was messed up!  And well, I liked how the game explained some loose threads that were lingering from other entries in the series! I especially loved Riku's part in all of this!

 

The gameplay was awesome, but the panel system took a while for me to get used to!  But after I played through Days a second time, I didn't mind it much!  It was good for experimenting different spell layouts and trying out new Keyblades, ya know?  I also remember playing the multiplayer one time with my best friend/soul brother Dennys, and from what I can remember, it was fun!  I was using Marluxia...or was it Xemnas?  Lol, I don't remember!

 

But yeah, everything about the game was awesome!  The music and voice acting were amazing, especially in the 1.5 cutscenes, and the graphics for a DS game were impressive!

 

Awesome man, I'm glad you enjoyed this game!  I bet you're having a blast playing through each KH game, huh?

Yeah, I'm overall having a good time execpt for ReCOm's gameplay with this series, and glad that I discovered it. Too bad I don't have a PS4...

[The Transcendent Key 12,109]

  On 8/11/2016 at 2:05 AM, Awesome Sauce said:

Yeah, I'm overall having a good time execpt for ReCOm's gameplay with this series, and glad that I discovered it. Too bad I don't have a PS4...

 

That's great man, I'm glad you're having fun! (Lol, that ReCom comment, though! )  And well, don't worry, I'm sure that by the time Kingdom Hearts III is out, you'll have a PS4 ready to go!  Unless you're trying to see if you can get a PS4 to play 2.8?

[Awesome Sauce 634]

  On 8/11/2016 at 2:08 AM, The Transcendent Key said:

That's great man, I'm glad you're having fun! (Lol, that ReCom comment, though! )  And well, don't worry, I'm sure that by the time Kingdom Hearts III is out, you'll have a PS4 ready to go!  Unless you're trying to see if you can get a PS4 to play 2.8?

2.8 and KH3 are the main and so far only reasons to consider a PS4 at the moment. I could always ask for my brother to buy it for his console. But true sadness will come in december.