Re:coded is not the first time that Kingdom Hearts has hit the DS, the phenomenon originally came to the DS in 2009 with 358/2 Days. While an overall great game, the story was deep and filled with emotion and the multiplayer Mission Mode was an absolute blast, it had some pretty hard to miss issues most notably repetition through the mission system, gameplay that seriously dragged down the pacing of combat, a character upgrade system that often felt limiting more than anything else and not much in the way of post-game content beyond playing Mission Mode. Now, Re:coded, while it has it's own issues which I will go into detail about later, improves upon and fixes almost every single issue that detracted from Days.
To start off I'll discuss everything, and that's pretty close to absolutely everything, that is fantastic about Re:coded. Most notable and worthy of discussion is the gameplay. It's an absolute blast. There is an incredible amount of variety, a level of variety that any game will have difficulty matching. You certainly hack and slash away at Heartless as you typically do in a Kingdom Hearts game, but with Re:coded things change up in the boss stage for each world. Traverse Town becomes an auto-side-scrolling platformer, Wonderland becomes a shooter of sorts, and most impressively Olympus Colosseum takes the form of a turn-based RPG of old. With this shift in gameplay from world to world you're forced to stay on your toes, and it's absolutely fantastic. While this shifts in gameplay from world to world occupy most of the spotlight, you shouldn't overlook the regular gameplay whose improvements over Days make it just as fun and impressive. Where with Days to use magic or items you needed to sift through menus, drastically slowing down the pace and the ultimate enjoyment of the combat, Days is a breath of fresh air with the Deck Commands system lifted straight from PSP title Birth By Sleep. Now all commands, attack, magic, and items are all in one streamlined flow that is navigated via the L trigger and the D-pad. This does take away the L trigger's responsibility from camera control as in Days, but it is a necessary and welcome sacrifice. Also worthy of mention are keyblades and their functionality in the game. Where in Days they had stats tied them, ultimately making earlier keyblades obsolete and useless the further you got in the game, in Re:coded they have no effect on your stats and the overclock ability tree, as you battle a gauge fills up and grants you new abilities, means that each has it's own use in different situations.
Stats and character growth proved to be somewhat frustrating with Days, as previously stated feeling limiting and frustrating more than anything else. Re:coded turns that completely around with the stats matrix. The stats matrix is an inventive and enjoyable new way to manage character growth, taking inspiration from from computers and motherboards allowing players to place stat chips on the board and giving them freedom to choose which direction that trhey want to go and unlock new abilities as they go and in awesome bonus connecting two CPU's activates "Dual Processing" which doubles the benefit of the chips between the two. This effectively makes the placement of chips very strategic and important and if not properly utilized can negatively effect the player later in the game.
Another area that Re:coded excels in is replay-value and post-game content. As stated earlier, the only real source of replay-value that Days presented to the player was Mission Mode and while an absolute blast with friends is limited in value to those playing solo. While Re:coded lacks that multiplayer element, it has numerous post-game activities to occupy the single player. From trophies and the Avatar Menu, there are hours of enjoyment to be had after the credits roll. Trophies encourage the player to complete worlds below certain times, collect and complete different items and tasks and more. There is even incentive to collect trophies, with an unlockable secret ending that sets up the next title in the series, Dream Drop Distance. The Avatar Menu brings a more social element to the game and series, utilizing the tag mode feature where player exchange avatars, system sector layers and scratch cards. With literally hundreds available, collecting avatar parts has become somewhat of an obsession for me. In fact, I am about 134 hours into the game, and there is still plenty left for me to do.
Now onto the slightly problematic elements of the game. The two that really stick out are the re-usage of worlds already visited in the series and the overall story quality and length. While I don't find much issue with either of these seeing as the only other Kingdom Hearts game I've played in 358/2 Days, they are issues large enough in the community to warrant discussion. When considering the worlds used in the game, it needs to be remembered that this is essentially a revisit of the original Kingdom Hearts so it should be no surprise that it uses much of the same worlds from that game. I do understand frustration over the repetition, Re:coded and Days share some of the same worlds in fact, but seeing how relatively new I am to the series I can take no points away for that. The story issues on the other hand I can understand a little more. In relation to the rest of the series it really makes no contribution and does very little to move the story along, and tied in with that lengthwise the story is somewhat lacking, I myself clocking in at about 15 hours by the time the credits rolled. Though insignificant and short, I still found the story incredibly enjoyable and the wealth of post-game content (as discussed earlier) more than makes up for those length issues.
Overall, Kingdom Hearts Re:coded proves to be a fantastic game. Though it has it's own share of small problems, it makes great strides over Days and proves to start of the year for the DS off with a bang.
Overall Score - 9/10
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