Kingdom Hearts: Re:Coded

I really took my time with Re:Coded. I was playing it for several weeks, and I think that in this way, I got the maximum enjoyment out of what is after all a pretty poor game.

After the excellent Birth By Sleep, the comparatively underpowered DS was never going to be able to provide a newer sequel that could really compare – especially not by simply updating a throwaway game made for mobile phones that was designed to sit alongside the main plot without advancing it. But that’s what Square Enix offered, with the additional carrot on a stick of added plot nuggets relating to BBS.

So the game itself was strung on an unimpressive piece of plotting: the data Jimminy recorded about Sora’s KH1 adventures got corrupted, so a data Sora is created to help piece the corrupted data back together again, mostly by hitting some blocks with his keyblade and destroying simulated heartless. Of course, the plot develops and become progressively more important to those in the real world it affects, but as a game for a small subset of fandom even in Japan, it was designed not to have any significance to plot.

But interestingly, despite its simplicity and lacklustre graphics, it has actually been the most fun I’ve had with Kingdom Hearts in quite some time – primarily because it is the game you can tweak the most…meaning you can if you wish make it absurdly hard. Birth By Sleep I liked, but it was simply too easy. KH1 had the Sephiroth fight, which remains one of the most fun gaming challenges I’ve taken on in any action game or RPG, but ever since there just hasn’t been anything of comparable difficulty. And though with Re:Coded there is no big bad hidden boss (the closest is a rather easy ‘bugged’ Roxas), the entire game can with the ‘cheats’ that are part of the game be made into a decent challenge, and that is what I enjoyed the most, even if eventually you reach a plateau where simply nothing can come close to challenging you any more unless you simply neuter yourself to a frustrating degree for no advantage.

It wasn’t easy, getting every weapon or quest item, or getting the 20 trophies necessary to see the hidden ending (a nice two minutes offering something of a bridge to KH3, but unsatisfying because it is far too short), and while I really liked the way the game offered minigames for just about each world to keep play varied, some where plain annoying.

The worst game in the series in story terms, no doubt, but for a gamer who actually wants something to play, rather than a story roped to some easy button-mashing fights…well, the other games could learn from the depth here.

But roll on KH 3D, with its Engrishy title, or better yet, BBS Final Mix – hopefully still with the Japanese cast, because I really didn’t like BBS’s dub…even though I’m back to playing it casually until I get to the new hidden boss in the Eng version.