Kingdom Hearts: Recoded Review

Starts off with Jiminey Cricket finding a mysterious message in his journal that he use to keep log of the journey and adventures that occured during the Kingdom Heart series. Then you are controlling the Sora inside the journal, because apparently journals are digital and contains ones and zeroes and some sixes and twos. Well Mickey and friends actually created a computer to analyze the journals data and entered the journal universe. They come to find that the journal is infected with bugs. The same type of bugs that would impede you progress on your computer only they come in the form of blox (blocks). Suffice to say that the opening to the story’s game was getting a bit, well not the usual story telling you would expect from Disney.

After a week of playing this game pushed 30 hours playtime into the story. I’ve tweeted that I would be disappointed if I finish this game in under 50 hours playtime and I was, but I played through the game without going back to do any side quests or extras. The only extras I’ve done is getting the world cards in Castle Oblivion and even that stage of the game it was just quite boring.

I love the Kingdom Hearts series, I do. I’ve played the first one, Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II, 358/2 Days. I haven’t gotten my hands on Birth by Sleep yet but eventually I will. KH:Recoded was a birthday present and I was psyched to get it. I started playing and it had all the basic elements that I expected from the KH series. Then I came upon the side scrolling battle of Traverse Town. I wasn’t so keen on this feature, and it didn’t seem to fit with the game in all honesty. I feel that this game could’ve done without the side scrolling battle. Same feeling goes for the Wonderland’s shooting battle, and the emulation of turn based system at the Olympic Colosseum. I don’t particularly like how these was added into the game.

Leveling up isn’t that bad, although you can alter your stats by using the Stat Matrix, where you use “Chips” (in which you get by leveling or can buy with SP from System Sector zones.) This reminded me of Final Fantasy X where you have to use the grid map to go down a tree or try to fill it all up to better improve your character. Not a bad feature although you can unlock extra CPU boards and connect the two CPU to double any stats in those chip slots. I’ve just used them to double up my levels and HP and any stat chips that are +3 and up.

System Sectors zones are backdoor zones that are infected with viruses or more bugs and heartless. During the beginning stages they’re easy to overcome until somewhere in the middle of the Wonderland zone you have to complete challenges depending on the number of floors in the sector. Most of the challenges are easy while the hardest ones I’ve found are the zones (after finishing the game, saving and reloading) are the ones that require level 50-70. I guess the System Sector is the only thing I was pleased with about the game. Kept me playing when I got bored.

The Castle Oblivion stage was revisiting Chains of Memories, however it’s buggy as well. This is where I spent some time trying to get all the World Cards to get the extra ending sequence. Hallow Bastion is basically kicking my ass right now so after one hour of trying to get all three cards I just settled with one and finished the game. The boss fight in CO is almost like a joke, and I was doing this at level 50.

Again 30 hours playtime just going through the storyline, doesn’t seem satisfying to me. I’ve played other button mashing RPG games that the storyline would get me over 50 hours playtime. I can add more hours to the playtime and go back and do the extras. It’s something to do on downtimes and while I wait for my daughter’s school bus to arrive at the bus stop.