Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Been there, done that"

I see myself as a fan of Kingdom Hearts. I like the atmosphere, I like the combat-system and I like the story, so I was very exited about getting my hands on this game.

Now I wish I had just watched the cut-scenes on Youtube.

The story summarized is Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Jimmy Cricket studying the first journal (the one that got erased). They do this by computer and discover it is bugged (literally). They decide to debug it for the sole reason of figuring out the purpose of a secret message they received from the journal. Thus begins the adventures of Data-Sora and the big bad red blocks of buggies.

The gameplay is a mixed version of 358/2 days (control-wise) and Birth by Sleep (resource-wise), and you use them by pressing X-button and changing ability with L-button. While that works well in theory, it doesn't in praxis. Two reasons: The lock-on system requires you to hold both L and R-button (instead of double-tab the R-button in 358/2D), the Ability-shortcut, which is pressing L plus another button, namely B, X or Y OR the direction-buttons. That means I can accidentally use a wrong ability at a bad time. While it might sound like a small thing, it happens more often than not, which is especially noticeable in the final world.
That said the passive abilities the weapons give and the "finish-attack" are good touches. Many of those abilities and finishes are very powerful as well as useful, some more than others depending on the situations.

Another bad thing is the scenery. They have not used much effort in making new places. Given this is a remake of a mobilephone-game, I still expected a bit more than going through the same 6-7 dataplaces again and again and again and again. The problem is that in Re:Coded you see things which are "wrong", or rather, bugged. To solve this, you have to find a way into the dataspace and kill some heartless/bugs, which is where the 6-7 rooms come in. And while it is a good touch with the challenges and the bettings you can make, it still becomes annoying to see the same rooms again and again.

Kingdom Hearts also has mini-games, but this time they took it to the extreme by placing bosses in them. While I have nothing against trying something new, they have to work and they have to be fun. The 2D-bosses were not fun, nor were the "running"-bosses. I was constantly looking forward to get to the "real" gameplay when I was doing those mini-games.

Again, I know that this is supposed to be a remake of a mobilephone-game, but I don't see that as an excuse for not making more scenery and a better executed gameplay. The scenery has become so boring they're burning in my mind after overuse of Kingdom Hearts 1, 358/2 Days and now Re:Coded.
There were roughly 5 fun bosses, but 5 fun bosses (some reused from earlier game) does not compensate for roughly 10 hours. The experience system was just as annoying as Final Fantasy 10 and 13's, and don't get me started on the RPG-mode in the Colosseum.

This game is not fun.
This game is not a good game.
This game should never have been a Kingdom Hearts-game.

I hope Dream Drop Distances and make this mistake right.