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I have recently, that is to say "yesterday", beaten the NDS installment of the Kingdom Hearts series and I am sad to say, that even with my low expectations, I was terribly disappointed.

It's not really about the character called Xion, snarkily called "Xarmy Xuse" by some, because I knew beforehand, what she was in terms of storytelling and that she would hijack the plot and turn it to a bad fanfic (even though I never imagined how bad, really).

I was disappointed with the end-game. No clever boss fights, no real closure to sub-plots, barely any dramatic tension. It felt like a facade more than a real game.

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

The battles against Saix, Xion and Riku were particularily lacking. Not exactly easy, I played on Proud Mode, mind you, but lacking. They weren't impressive. They weren't intense. They were repetitive. Like the last boss fight in Silent Hill 1

There ARE good points to the game, though:
I presonally liked the panel-equipping skill and inventory system, the various keyblades you could gather, the mission mode, allowing me to play as Organization members (I was particularily happy to play as Xaldin and Luxord, but Axel and Xigbar were pretty awesome, too), the UST between Axel and Saix (), a lot of the dialogue, especially anything Xigbar and Saix said.

And this reminds me, that I find the mission mode particularily infuriating as it is, in it's multiplayer version, competitive instead of cooperative, what with the friendly fire and getting reward crowns only if you have the higher score in the end, making many higher-level missions actually EASIER in single player.

I feel sad, that they decided to do such a bad job on this KH installment. I can only hope Birth by Sleep will make up for it.

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"I fell off the mountain of words at around the 10,000ft mark. Tell my family...they owe me money." -Narratorway

"If you retort against this, so help me God I'll shove any part of your anatomy I can find into some other part. Figuratively, of course." - Josh

"We have more, can deliver tuesday." - Del S

Good old CoN

I'm on the complete other end of the spectrum on this game. Going in, I had zero hope that this game was going to be any good, given how godawful Chain of Memories had been. (At least in terms of gameplay, as I still enjoyed the plot.)

For a game on a hand-held console, it played nearly identically to it's Playstation 2 counterparts in that the battle was in real-time, fluid and lots of fun. The use of magic-shortcuts, items and combos reminded me quite a bit of the system in play during the first game. Granted, there were some slow down at times during battles against higher numbers of enemies, but it was relatively unnoticeable and didn't hinder my experience in the slightest.

In terms of plot, it's hardly a surprise if you've been following the series, but the fact that they've given us that clear glimpse of what exactly transpired during the "missing time" between games is satisfying in and of itself. I didn't particularly feel for the character of Xion and did feel like the game needed a more formal final battle, particularly when it came to Riku and Saix. However, I never played the Kingdom Hearts series to be challenged, so I didn't mind that it was relatively easy to beat.

The panel system was brilliant, comfortable and very simple to adjust to. Actually, in hindsight, it reminded me somewhat of the materia system in Final Fantasy VII in that you could link several panels and try various combinations to achieve the desired effects, and that your character was completely customizable through his panels.

My only major complaints are the repetitiveness of some of the missions, which generally consist of fighting a large heartless or slaying a large number of smaller ones, the lack of any Final Fantasy characters, worlds or even references outside of the Synthesis Moogles and finally, that the musical score was a rehash of the Kingdom Hearts II soundtrack, in much poorer quality.

Beyond that, it's still an enjoyable game worth playing through at least once.

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Okay, but there was a goat!