Kingdom Hearts Re:coded Review

Once again the wonderful characters from Square Enix and Disney delightfully return in the new title of the Kingdom Hearts series, Recoded. Originally it was released in Japan and made in episodes for cell phones as Kingdom Hearts: Coded.
Now we can enjoy it as Kingdom Hearts Re:coded in our Nintendo DS, with enhancements and extra content, ready to take your keyblade and fight once again?

Story
Events take place after Kingdom Hearts II, the journal Jiminy Cricket wrote is empty, just blank pages, nothing that he originally wrote is there, except for a mysterious message which he has no idea how it got there.
After showing it to King Mickey and the rest of the guys they decide to investigate, Chip and Dale create a machine in which you can see the mysterious world of the journal.
You take the role of a new sora within this virtual world, this world withing the journal shows a corruption you must repair in order to discover the truth behind this mystery.

Gameplay
If you’re a fan of the series and played KH1 and KH2 this game will be to your liking, and even if you never played the other games in the series Recoded introduces the story of the universe of Kingdom Hearts in a simple way.
In areas where data is corrupted you will fight powerful heartless to restore the journal’s world.
The gameplay is very nice and entertaining. As you advance in the story the way you play will change. Some areas will change into a shooter, or a side scrolling platformer and not only in a 3D RPG, giving the game a nice twist.

Like other RPG’s you level up, but unlike other games you use chips in order to improve your; magic, attack or hit points. This is done by adding chips to a motherboard (stat matrix), which you find exploring the maps by smashing boxes and defeating enemies throughout the game.

Different magic attacks are improved in a similar way but from the Command Matrix, in which attacks level up and they can be combined to create new and powerful attacks.

The Gear Matrix is the third motherboard and this is used to choose weapons and accessories, it pleased me a lot this Matrix System to choose the improvements Sora will have in the game.

Upgrade your abilities with the Matrix system

The music has the quality you can expect in a Kingdom Hearts title, graphics are good and the cinematics are a pleasure to watch.
My only complaint will be the camera, the game can lock the camera to focus to a certain enemy and is a very nice feature to have, but it can be messy sometimes, especially when you are fighting a lot of enemies and you need to move a lot.

Something else could be the localization to spanish, usually users with their DS set to spanish have to play with a translation made for spain, the spanish from spain and latin america have many differences, i had to set my DS to english to enjoy the game, as the localization made for spain was just not good for me, something to take in mind for future releases in america.

Customize your avatar

Multiplayer (Avatar Menu)
The Avatar Menu is a dandy option, in which you obtain items for your avatar as you play the story and by completing challenges from friends via wi-fi.
It’s not as interactive as playing online with friends but it’s nice to have some sort of interactions with friends, must confess im a sucker for the avatar clothes so i really like this option. More interaction would be desired but it’s still good to have this option in the game. DanVanDam you are going down with my next challenge, oh man!!

Who's this mysterious guy?

Overall
Kingdom Hearts Re:coded surpasses expectations as a filler and stands out nicely and is a decent title in the series. Definitely a game fans from previous Kingdom Hearts games will love and a nice game for newcomers to get a feel of the Kingdom Hearts universe.
Square Enix and h.a.n.d. did a nice job, with a good story, excellent music and great gameplay. It’s a title you can’t miss, definitely an RPG worthy to have in your Nintendo DS collection.

We give the game a 9 out of 10!

~Mario