I didn’t pay much attention to Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days before, partly due to me not having a DS when the game was announced and as a result, didn’t follow any news about it at all. But thanks to it being heavily promoted in the recent issues of Weekly Famitsu, it kind of grow on me. The fact that it has been confirmed for a September release in US only raises my interest even further. Here’s the last interview the mag did for the game with director Tetsuya Nomura and assistant director Tomohiro Hasegawa (published in issue 6/5) where the duo highlights some of the cool stuff of the game.

According to Hasegawa, he always wanted Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days to be played in short chunks of time where players can slowly accumulate their game time. It’s also one of the main idea behind the title, where “Days” refer to the story progressing day by day.

Famitsu noted that lots of guidance were given by the seniors in the early stage of the game. A feature that Hasegawa says is there to help ease newcomers to the series. Steps were also taken to make sure that players don’t really need to read the manual in order to play the game. Although there are some connections with previous games in the series, the game has a completely new protagonist and it’s a standalone story too. Nomura adds the fact that Roxas lost his memories should help too as players can learn to know everything about the world with him. He also says that the ending will surprised everyone.

Personally, one of the most interesting aspect of the game is its panel-based system. It allows players to customize a character’s level, weapon, magic and ability through a panel with slots that slowly opens up as they clear more missions. Nomura says one of the main reason for this is to make sure that multiplayer won’t be affected by differences in character levels. Although there are more than 200 types of panels in the game, players don’t really have to worry about not arranging it correctly but it will make for a really deep experience if they are willing to spend more time on it.

In the game, players get to pick which mission to go into and information on the enemies are shown beforehand to make easier for them since panels can’t be changed during missions. Hasegawa says that missions would normally take around 5-10 minutes to complete but some of the larger bosses will take around 20 minutes. Overall, the game takes around 20 hours to complete. He also warns that since multiplayer is the base of the game design, some of the missions might be hard when playing alone.

Moving on to the game’s multiplayer modes, Hasegawa says the game can accommodate players who just want to multiplayer for fun or players who are in for some real competition. There are also missions that only possible with friends around. The rewards for multiplayer are huge too.

Famitsu asks if it’s difficult to re-create actions that Kingdom Hearts is known for on the DS. Hasegawa says h.a.n.d. (the developers) have done plenty of research in the early stage of the development and there’s nothing for them to worry about. However, due to the lesser buttons that DS has, it took some efforts to find the best solution for buttons and camera configurations.

Some of the Limit Break are gorgeous to look at, something Hasegawa says the team has spent huge amount of time on. Although Roxas’ Limit Break is the easiest to use, other characters have their own cool looking moves too. Nomura himself prefers Xigbar and his long range attacks. Hasegawa recommends Xaldin for first timers with his wind attacks that seem too powerful at times. Xemnas is another character he would recommend.

Although Nomura prepared the initial draft of the story, Tomoko Kanemaki (author of Kingdom Hearts novels) and Yukari Ishida (scenario event planner of The World Ends With You) both have a hand in the story. Asked if the game has any connection with the upcoming Kingdom Hearts Coded for mobiles and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for PSP, Hasegawa says “a little” with more information coming soon.

Posted in News on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 8:47 pm | Tags arpg famitsu hasegawa interview kingdom hearts nomura
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