Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Review
To round off the contents of the 1.5 HD collection, I want to very briefly talk about the 358/2 Days cut scene compilation. Being a DS game, it would have required a full remake to look presentable on a HD console and the game would need to be completely overhauled to avoid falling into the same trap as Re: Chain of Memories so a collection of the game’s cutscenes is probably for the best.
The plot of 258/2 days focuses on Organisation XIII, the villains of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II. There is no plot to save the world and the story instead focuses on the tragic drama between three members of the organisation and as a result, is one of the series most engaging narratives.
Some of the cutscenes for the original game were made in the Kingdom Hearts II engine and recorded in an effort to make you feel like you were playing a full Kingdom Hearts game whilst other important cutscenes were running in-engine on the DS and so were significantly lower in quality and had no voice acting. The best part of this compilation is that all the important in engine cutscenes have been updated to have voice acting and use the Kingdom Hearts II engine which makes this compilation the best way of experiencing the story.
I feel that placing 358/2 days between Re: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II in the collections was a mistake. It fits there in the timeline and fills in the rest of the gaps between Kingdom Hearts one and two but it also spoils the mystery of the opening sequence from Kingdom Hearts II and features a lot of foreshadowing for Birth By Sleep making it best experienced after Kingdom Hearts II. I understand that this was done originally so that 358/2 days could appear as a bonus in 1.5 so that both PS3 collections could consist of two games and a bonus cutscene compilation but they could have at least repositioned it on the menu of the PS4 collection.
The other issue is that a lot of events in the game are only represented by text summaries. For the most part, they cover what happens on missions the protagonist is sent on which for the most part do not impact the main story. Unfortunately, this cuts out a lot of the interactions between the Organisation XIII members that are not heavily involved in the main plot. The positive side of these text summaries is that all of the filler in the plot is skipped over quickly. A common criticism of the PS3 version of the compilation is that the summaries ruin the momentum near the end of the game mostly due to them ruining a moment of the game that involves a boss fight. In the PS4 version, there is free DLC to add a new cutscene to fix this instance.
If you can deal with a slow start and the quirks of this being a collection of cutscenes instead of a proper movie, this cutscene compilation is well worth your time if you decide to get Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 HD ReMIX.
