Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days brings the awesomeness of the original to handhelds in almost all its greatness.
Story wise, 358/2 days is particularly strong. The pacing is a bit off, you will go several missions before anything particularly exciting or important happens. Most events take place with text with the games 3D models acting them out, sometimes you may get a full rendered cutscene with voice acting and they bring a certain flair to the otherwise low quality scenes. The story is particularly slow in the beginning, but slogging through is well worth it later on. Pretty soon the emotion and dramatic story begins to unfold and it is one worth seeing to its end.
From a standard screen shot the game looks similar to the console versions in that it is real time and has the, attack/magic/item panel to the side, as well as shortcuts to favorites, but the similarities end there. The game is mission based, so instead of going along the story you will have an objective to meet, and once you meet it, you return back to the castle and do another. When at the castle you can add abilities that you can use in the field including potions, and magic which has been changed from the regular meter to a cast system.
Whichever magic you equip is what you get to use.
Gameplay is a bit faster than KH1 but slower the KH2. Because limits are cast to the end of your health bar, most attacks are repeats of the same combo. You won't be dealing out fantastic and visually startling attacks as much. I normally add some flair and extra abilities to string in attacks in previous games, but in this one, it was the same basic combo over and over, with different keyblades you might get longer and more powerful combos but there still the same. With magic being limited most battles especially while in a lower level, i found myself avoiding battles. Sometimes you may have a party member. They are mostly helpful and you can assign what they do in the main menu so they can either attack someone else, attack your target, or do nothing.
Voice acting, while limiited is still topnotch. Some lines could've been delivered better but overall the package is intact. The non voiced cutscenes do have character laughs and grunts, all of which add nothing but don't really provide any annoyance.
The games score is mostly fantastic. Most worlds just have the same tracks as they did in KH1 and some for KH2, they still sound good, boss themes and original themes all sound good too.
The game isn't short by any stretch, I got through in about 29hours on my first play-through and that was on the standard (normal) difficulty, you may be a bit quicker on the easies difficulty though. Even still missions that weren't completed 100% can be gone back too, and the games local multiplayer component has the ability to use all Organization members to go back through and play missions that had been completed.
Overall Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days is a great portable experience. The mission based structure give it a more pick up and play feel, so playing on the go is just as fun. With the exception of the incredible bore in some areas, you will have fun, and for KH fans it is a great way to find out more about the ever expanding story.