Video Game Review: Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded is the Nintendo DS port of a cellphone game only released in Japan, Kingdom Hearts Coded. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it's a mash-up between the worlds of Disney and Square-Enix (namely Final Fantasy). So that's right, Disney characters fighting monsters/demon-like things alongside anime-styled characters.

While the Kingdom Hearts franchise usually relies heavily upon its story, this particular game in the series was more or less completely filler. Literally the only bit of valuable information learned from this game in relation to the rest of the games is what the letter said that the main character, Sora, received at the end of Kingdom Hearts 2.

So while the story is not the strong point of this game, it does have excellent gameplay. I personally think the gameplay of every KH game post-KH1 was amazing. It's always very fast, flashy, and action-oriented. There were a few tedious parts to this game, but overall it was very fun to play.

The music in this game was almost entirely rehashed from other games in the series. That's not to say that's necessarily a bad thing. The music in these games is great, although some of the tracks are starting to get a little old...

The graphics in this game really surprised me. It's been a while since I've played since I've played through a DS/DS Lite game since getting my 3DS, so I was starting to remember the original DS as that portable system that only had two 3D games, Mario and Animal Crossing. But I digress, the graphics in this game were great. They definitely pushed the Nintendo DS to its limits, even causing it to lag at some parts - this was not nearly often enough to have any impact on gameplay, however, so I won't dock it for that. If you want to see a great looking DS game, I definitely recommend this one.

So for the overall rating, I give Kingdom Heats Re:Coded a 7.5/10. It certainly would have gotten a better score if not for the somewhat poorly thrown-together storyline.