Honestly I'd like to say that this story is somewhere down the middle.

Brief Recap of what I thought of the series as a whole.
358/2 days was both a colossal waste of a shitty storyline that we got nothing out of. We got small tidbits of pretty much nothing and contributed very little to the series as a whole other than to confuse an already convoluted mess

Kingdom Hearts 2 had a fairly decent storyline, but in retrospect I have to say some of the overall logic was lacking. Many questions were answered but a lot was retconned or completely changed preconceived notions of the mythos surrounding it.

Chain of Memories had an above average storyline, but was brought down after the introduction of the wangsty stick which thoroughly beat whatever I liked about the original series. Particularly the overu sage of the asspull.

Kingdom Hearts as a standalone series was probably one of the best storytelling and mixed in 2 completely volatile elements together to the point where I thought that development team must have outsourced their resources to actual writers.

Moving on...

Overall this storyline went back to it's roots buried it so deep that I hope that nobody ever digs them up again otherwise the overarching shrub that is this story will rot and die.

Everything that I thought I would hate about this game turned out to be completely wrong. Every character is likable.

Aqua whom I thought would end up being the useless girl ended up being a truly magnificent bastard

Terra whom I thought would end up being a prequel Anakin Skywalker ended up being what Anakin Skywalker should have been

Ventus whom I thought would end up being a Sora clone... was exactly that, but for some reason he came off more mature as the story went on.

Venitas whom I thought would be a horrible negative ball of angst ended up being a complete psychopath on the joker level

Xehanort whom I thought would end up being like Emperor Palpatine actually ended being more of a sound man with just a really effed-up sense of morality

Further more, none of the disney characters ended up being annoying. Every stage ended up being a delight each being as equally enjoyable. The mains are without a doubt the best that it could be. The battle systems is perfect and I mean perfect. I don't think that they could make it any more perfect than now. There's a nice balance and fluidity of the overall system.

They finally skipped the middle man and did away with the mp bar. Now magic works off of the sleight system. Mode changes are based off of whatever sleights you combine and synthesizing can be done whenever you want. Proud mode gives a decent enough challenge if your bellow level and fighting a monster that spams. Finally magic... actually does something like it did in KH1. Your specials and magic are your sleights but they can actually combo if you set it right.

There are actually abilities that do good damage and a flashy enough to be enjoyable without being repetative. Honestly the combat system in this game is incredible and I think that square should take their hands off it and don't work it any further

Now we get to the problems

First off this game has horrible loading issues. Data saves only do so much. Everytime you perferm a mode change, there's a loading time. Everytime you try to enter the save screen, there's a loading time. Everytime you finish a cutscene, get out of a world, or die, there's a loading time.

Jesus fuck this game should have been on the PS3.

2ndly I have to say that the twists in this game are either really predictable or really stupid. If you guys haven't figured out who Vanitas is after the first time he talks, you might be retarded. The way that they try to fill in the missing plotholes at often times seem pretty contrived. Basically when it boils down to it a lot of the questions that were left unanswered by the end of Kingdom Hearts 2 can be solved with one of 2 answers:

A Wizard did it.

OR

He did a thing and that's what made it happened.

No I'm being really serious about it. Trust me when you find out the answer you'll understand what I mean.

Finally the climax of this game is shallow in comparison to what I'm used to out of a KH game. I expected the end game boss to be over the top and world shattering especially since this this the precursor to everything, but when you reach it, (with the exception of Ven's Storyline) it comes off as flat.

Overall I have to say that this is my favorite KH game next to the original. Even tho it's a bit buggy it's still really solid.

It was worth the import money that dropped for it, so... WOOT! 'w'