I was hooked from the moment the first Kingdom Hearts started playing, and the series has been a part of my life
ever since.
I’ve managed to play most of the Kingdom Hearts games in the past few years, from Birth by Sleep all the way to Kingdom Hearts II, though I’ve missed a
few games such as Dream Drop Distance.
It’s hard to keep up with a series that gets around to so many consoles, and I
think that’s an issue that the series has, especially when the story progressed
a bit on many of these spin-offs (Chain
of Memories is a prime offender in that regard, if it’s considered a
spin-off, since you NEED to know what happened in that game to get a better
understanding of what happens in Kingdom
Hearts II).
This new HD collection of Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom
Hearts HD 1.5 Remix, sounds awesome. It’s got the
never-before-released-in-the-US Final Mix
edition of the original game, which will let me walk down memory lane, and Re: Chain of Memories, which I never
played (though I did play the GBA version), and have always been interested in
playing. I’d love to pick up this collection one of these days. It’d be great
to play these two games, but…
Why did 358/2 Days,
the third “game” in the collection, have
to be just HD cut-scenes? In all honesty, the package would have been so much
better and much more appealing if the game had been playable, and here are 5
reasons why:
1.
Gameplay
- Obviously, being made into a
collection of cut-scenes, you lose the gameplay aspect of 358/2 Days – basically what makes this a game. You couldn’t just
conclude that, “Hey, 358/2 Days is
like the gameplay of Kingdom Hearts, so
I’m not missing much”. You lose so
much by not making this a game. You lose the customizability that 358/2 Days offered (the Panel System was
great, allowing you to upgrade yourself with panels, or customize your Keyblade,
etc.), you lose the missions you could’ve completed (with or without friends –
a point I’ll bring up later), you lose the boss fights you could’ve played, you
lose the worlds you could’ve explored in, and most importantly….
2.
Interactivity
– As cut-scenes, you lose the interactivity that you would have playing
a video game. You lose something that would’ve made you feel like you were a
part of the story more. There’s a disconnect between you and Roxas now; you’re
separate people. He is no longer your avatar into the world of Kingdom Hearts. How else can you feel
the exhilaration or difficulty facing enemies such as the Heartless or bosses? Plus,
You wouldn’t be able to feel as connected to characters who you fight together
with in missions in the game, like Xion.
3. Multiplayer – By removing the
gameplay aspect of 358/2 Days, you’re
also stripping away one very enticing feature – multiplayer. How cool would it
have been to play Kingdom Hearts 358/2
Days with friends? Finishing missions together, fighting bosses together,
etc., etc. The appeal is apparent. It would have been really cool, since there
are only 2 games I can think of in the series that features multiplayer (358/2 Days and Birth by Sleep).
4.
Revision/Expansion
– The problem with making 358/2 Days
into nothing but cut-scenes is that you also take away to opportunity to
make better and expand upon what was already there. You could create longer,
more exciting missions (removing the potential issue of missions being too
short, coming off from a handheld game) or maybe add onto the backstory and
characters that 358/2 Days already
had. You could even add more to the multiplayer, like PvP, or make new mini-games
like in Birth by Sleep. So many
opportunities…
5.
It’s a
game, not a movie – Lastly, there’s the fact that you buy a game
collection to play games. Doesn’t this sound obvious? Why would you buy Kingdom Hearts to watch a movie when a
big part of the fun is the great gameplay? 358/2
Days would be so much more appealing as part of a “game” collection, which
would make the collection 3 games total, not 2 games and a movie.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand
that it would have taken more time and effort to make 358/2 Days more than collection of HD cut-scenes; they would have
had to create new assets and everything in order to make a faithful translation
to the PS3 from the DS (and I heard about how they had to remake the original Kingdom Hearts from scratch - http://www.destructoid.com/kingdom-hearts-hd-s-graphics-rebuilt-from-the-ground-up-257161.phtml). Maybe the pay-off wasn’t worth it, since people were probably going to buy the collection just for the first two, regardless.
Some people didn’t like 358/2 Days, and I’m okay with that; maybe
it’s easier to watch than to play for those people. But still, the overall
package would have been so much greater for those who did like the game, who did want to play rather than watch, who did want a "complete" collection.
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