Hey guys, I want to apologize for the lack of updates. It's taken awhile to get a solid connection, which is keeping me from adding updates. Below is just a catch up on some things that I've missed. Once this issue is solved, everything will be fine. Take care guys.

Please note that this update contains a huge amount of information. If you are looking at this update on the main webpage, make sure you access the read more link.

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: NA Official Website
A small update has been added to the official website for Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. This time around, another update was made to the North American Days website. You can now access King Mickey and Riku in the characters page. I added the description of these characters below.

» Riku:
Sora's best friend. Once, darkness ruled him; but his experiences at Castle Oblivion have since taught him to wield an arsenal of darkness and light alike.

» King Mickey:
The King of DIsney Castle. He travels between worlds, watching over them and often coming to Sora's and Riku's aid.

New Nomura Interview
A new interview with Nomura (director) has been published with some information on Coded, 358/2 Days and Birth by Sleep.

Translations below are provided by Heart Station.
» Is there a connection in 358/2 Days between Birth by Sleep and Coded?
Nomura: At the moment Coded does not have any connections with 358/2 Days, but Birth by Sleep is deeply linked. Birth by Sleep has connections to all the games in the series.

» As for Coded, Chapter 2 will be distributing
Nomura: From Chapter 2, the story becomes progressively longer. The story of Chapter 1 had the nuance of a tutorial, but from Chapter 2 item synthesizing increases, and after a stage is cleared, other side quests become available. Since linkage with Avatar Kingdom also becomes full-scale, please look forward to it.

» How is the development status of Birth by Sleep?
Nomura: It’s doing alright. You could say it’s becoming a confident title. I’ve kept you waiting, but I think some new information will be sent out during summer. Since the plan is to present a trailer showing off the game's fighting spirit at Tokyo Game Show, look forward to it.

Kingdom Hearts: II (Black Shirt):
Once again, Hot Topic has added another t-shirt item. It was recently added about a week or two.
Source: LionHeart14 (member from) KHInsider
http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/WhatsNew/Apparel/Kingdom-Hearts-Keyblade-TShirt-272448.jsp

KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 Days: New Novel
The Square-Enix calendar has updated on the Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days novel (volume 1). It's release date is set for July 31st 2009.

KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 Days (Fan Reviews):
We have two more reviews that were sent in for the Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (Japanese) title. Please note that we are NO longer accepting any more reviews at this time.

Name: Anderson
Username: Anderson

Controls: 9/10 (under ideal conditions)
The controls are pretty smooth and very impressive for a DS game. It plays extremely similar to the first Kingdom Hearts, so anyone who has played Kingdom Hearts I or II can adjust easily to the game. For the most part, the controls don’t cause a problem.

However, there are quite a few occasions where the controls can betray you. Well, actually, it’s only one button in particular which happens to be a notorious R button. Why? It shifts the camera and serves as the lock-on button. The two normally work together in a very smooth manner. However, during a large enemy ambush, one might find it hard to attack a certain enemy/part (you’ll see what I mean if you fight certain bosses). You might be thinking, “Oh, I’ll just kill all the enemies and button-mash.”

I’m going to tell you right now: That’s not how this game works. You can get by button-mashing only for so long until the game decides to turn on you. Some enemies are pretty much designed to stop button-mashing. But that’s drifting off a bit. Anyways, even with the screw-ups that the R button has, it’s not to the point where it’s going to take away from game play.

Gameplay: 4/10
I know I’m going to get utterly flamed for this, but this isn’t even the lowest rating I’ll give. As a friend of mine put it: “you run up, hit stuff, look at stuff, go through a portal, repeat”

It’s sad to say that this is really how the game is. Just to refresh anyone’s memory, I’ll repeat how the game goes. You’re given a mission. You complete the mission. You get the reward. You go on to the next day. Usually, it’s a mission a day, unless there are optional missions along with them.

Now as you know, there are 358 days, but not that many missions, thankfully. There are a number of time skips – probably an excuse not to make that many missions in the first place.
You take missions until you beat the game. There are barely any extra things to play except for Mission Mode, but it’s the same concept. Dull, monotonous, and mostly not fun at all.

Audio: 8/10 (for quality)
The music pieces are very nice…except for one thing. They’re the same tracks from Kingdom Hearts I and II. At first, I was delighted that they brought back some themes from each game…until I realized that that’s about all the songs in this game. There are only about 4 or so new tracks added to the game.
Unfortunately, those new tracks are basically a mix of different tracks put together. However, the quality of the music is pretty good, nonetheless. I was surprised that the quality was degraded from the PS2 to DS transition.

Graphics: 9/10
The graphics show that Square-Enix really pushed the limits of the DS once again. A few parts are a bit sketchy, but that’s probably because the DS can’t give perfect 3D graphics.

There are a select 28 cutscenes that are granted the highest quality in the game (the ones featured in Theater Mode upon completion of the game).

What utterly impressed me was the terrain of the worlds themselves. The worlds are almost identical to the PS2 games – I mean that the maps are the same. Twilight Town was the one that was the most identical to Kingdom Hearts II.

Storyline: 3/10

This was the most disappointing game in terms of story I’ve EVER played in the Kingdom Hearts series. I’m afraid I can’t elaborate too much on the subject due to spoilers, but I’ll give you as much as I can.
First off, Xion is the most generic character in the entire game. She’s your typical shy girl who keeps to herself and once she spends time with her friends, she opens up and becomes cheerful. I was already pissed off that they had to add a 14th Member, but it was worst that she was nothing but a pathetically made character.

Next off, story development dragged on a lot more than it should have. Now, due to the nature of the story, it obviously needed to take some time to develop, but this game took it way too far. It took a long time before any kind of story started to unfold.
I was also disappointed that many of the Organization members failed to be of any importance to the overall storyline. Seriously, this game was nothing but fanservice.

Replay Value: Fairly Low
I can’t rate this because there’s two ways to look at it. Now, there’s the obvious method and just starting a new file and playing the game over again. Then there’s this thing where once you’ve completed the game, you can replay past missions / days with the cutscenes intact. (Note: I’m not sure if you can do it immediately after you’ve completed a day, so don’t quote me on that.)

I tried starting a new file and playing the game over again, but I couldn’t do it. But really, this is just how much you really liked the game.

Overall Rating: 6/10
I’ll give the game some credit that it did an excellent job with graphics, audio, and controls. I found it quite easy to adjust to the game after just 5 minutes of gameplay, although that might be because I’m quite used to the Kingdom Hearts games as it is. However, the style of the game was just way too boring after a while. I don’t know how I pushed myself to finishing the game.

The first half of the game is okay and moderately easy. But once you pass that point, you’re in for some frustrations. Some Heartless have from 3-6 life bars of health. Some bosses have from 5 – 17 bars of health. The worst part about that is that you really don’t get much of an attack boost from Keyblade upgrades, unless you’re using Kingdom Key+ (From what I’ve heard, it’s the strongest Keyblade in the game…and no, there’s no Ultima Weapon this time around.)

Sometimes it would take quite some time to defeat Heartless and to make it worse, you were forced to defeat them to advance to the next area or perform a required action to continue on in a mission. The worst part is that there’s a lot of flying bosses. Many bosses were so similar to each other, it felt as if some were just a bunch of lazy palette swaps.

Disappointing for a Kingdom Hearts game.

If you’re a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, you’ll probably be enticed the moment you lay your hands on the box.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Alukah (aka Kimberly)
I recently finished Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days--finished in the sense that I beat the main storyline. There is still a lot I feel I need to do--including unlocking all weapons, missions, etc. There is a massive replay value, at least in my opinion.

Before I bore you to tears, however, allow me to sum everything up.

GAMEPLAY: 7/10
Overall, the game play was wonderfully crafted. It only loses points for two reasons: 1) Locking on takes a few times to get down pat, and it is often useless in battles, especially in the Neverland levels. 2) The challenge curve is extremely hard, especially for a Kingdom Hearts game. Provided one goes through every battle in the mission section of the game as Roxas with a great weapon and many, many potions, you will do fine. The moment you switch to, say, Vexen or Zexion, however, be ready to have your teeth handed back to you. Roxas, Xion, and Axel are the best characters (that I have come across so far) to play as during the multiplayer (or single player, as you can play by yourself) missions, simply because they are the most balanced. Other members of the Organization usually fall flat until they've been level buffed beyond all reason.

The limits for each of the Organization members also vary greatly. Some of the members (Xaldin, Roxas, Axel, Zexion, etc.) have wonderful limits that you will want to use again and again until you have beat your enemy into creamy, Heartless paste. However, many of the members have horrible limits that you will never use; I'm looking at you, Xemnas. Others, such as Xigbar, have great limits provided that you are in an area in which you can aim and your enemy is directly ahead of you. Otherwise, don't even bother. Big surprise, however (please read that as sarcastic): Roxas as the best limit in the game.

In short: Roxas is the hero. Apparently, no one else matters.

I do, however, find the equipment pages to be enjoyable. There is a massive amount of customization in this game; you can decide what level your character is at, what weapon he or she uses, magics, etc. etc. One aspect I loved about the weapons, while we are on that, is that a weapon that is wonderful in say, Saix's hands, might not be the best choice for Vexen or Lexaeus. This makes you hunt and peck for each individual Organization member's best weapon and overall equipment set up; I loved it.

STORYLINE: (Optional) 8/10
It's a Kingdom Hearts game. The story is going to make as much since as you want it to. Of course, since I cannot understand/read Japanese very well, I can only base the storyline off of what I can understand from the cutscenes. You might wish to skip over this section of the review if you are looking for something in-depth; I am doing as best as I can with what I can understand.

Still, I managed to gasp a few times, cheer once or twice, and sniffle a bit. Some of the story is rather surprising, and seems to link directly to whatever's going to happen in Birth By Sleep.

SOUND/VOICE ACTING: 10/10
This is the best sound I've heard in a DS game (voice acting/clarity as well) since I played The World Ends With You. The sound is crisp, clear, and sounds almost perfect. The only thing I can find wrong (and this happens in all Kingdom Hearts games) is that many of the background music tracks have been reused and were carried over from the previous games.

GRAPHICS: 9/10
The graphics are close to being as great as they can be for a NDS game. However, I had a few issues with how things were set up; sometimes it was difficult to tell one floating Heartless from another. When you are hunting for a specific Heartless in order to finish a mission, this can be frustrating beyond all belief. Especially when the Heartless you have died against four times turns out to NOT be the one you are meant to hunt.

OVERALL: 8.5/10
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a great game to pick up and play. It falls short in some aspects, and is not the strongest game in the series, but for fans (especially those of the Organization), this is something you'll want to play over and over again.

Just don't be surprised if you level grind as Roxas, Xion, or Axel, just so the other Organization members stop sucking. (I'm looking at you, Zexion.)