Kingdom Hearts is a series I've had a history with for a long time. I remember the first time I caught wind of the series was when I was at GameStop back when it was called EB Games and saw the cover of Chain of Memories and a banner for KH2 that had Chicken Little on one of the images. I didn't remember the name of the series until a few years later my curiosity kicked in and I looked up the weird Disney game with humans. After this rediscovery, I became very interested in playing the KH games for the reasons mentioned in my 358/2 Days review which eventually led to me purchasing this game. After going back and finally rebeating this game years later, I can safely say that I still enjoyed it just as much as my younger self did.

The combat is extremely fun and the command deck along with the stat matrix are massive improvements over the panel system present in 358/2 Days. The clock gauge while not as powerful as the limit gauge was in 358/2 Days is a cool mechanic that allows you to use a finisher when you max out its level. It's satisfying to pull off and can get you out of some troublesome situations if you max it out in a bind. There are also a variety of finish commands that you can choose such as Faith, Mega Flare, or stronger versions of your typical fire, ice, or thunder spells. The command deck gives you a lot of freedom to choose attacks, spells, or items you want to use. The stat matrix allows you to gain abilities, magic, strength, level-up, and etc by collecting panels across the worlds you visit. I think it's a really clever way of progressively leveling up and strengthening your character since they are pretty common and there are plenty of different panels. Another cool feature you can do with the stat matrix is to change the difficulty at any time. It makes the game more accessable and noob friendly to those who either aren't that good at the game or are new players and it gives those who want more of a challenge to swap to a harder difficulty. It is really a shame most other games in the series do not have this option. Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded also gets a bit experimental as it adds small segments from a variety of different genres such as a stealth segment, a 2d platforming one, and even a part where it turns into a turn-based RPG. Some of them might have fallen flat but its something different and I appreciate it when developers toy with new ideas.

The gameplay may be awesome, but the story feels mostly like a filler arc. There is a small bit of important info that is relevant in the end, but for 90% of the game you're pretty much wandering around the same locations we've all previously been to multiple times just in digitized form. This leads to my other criticism. The worlds in this game are almost exactly the same as they were in KH1 with the exception of Castle Oblivion at the end. All of these worlds are in multiple games and revisiting them with little to no changes starts to get old. 358/2 Days was guilty of this too but even that game managed to add something new to previously visited worlds like Neverland and Agrabah (which is also in this game).

While I can understand the reasons why this game is disliked among fans, I don't think it deserves as much hate as it gets. There is a lot of fun to be had gameplay wise and it is more accessible to people of all skill levels with the added ability to swap difficulties at any time. Unless you only care about the story, I'd give this one a try.

Reviewed on Apr 20, 2023


10 Comments


11 months ago

Re:coded is a very good game and is a lot of fun no doubt. But as you say the story isn't worth it, it's stupid that a paper diary has been hacked. But out of everything, it's a cool portable remix of the first KH, keeping the 3D platforming and combining the combat with that of BBS. Good review!

11 months ago

@Maurith Thank you!

11 months ago

Amazing review! I really should give a try to this series, my only connection with it was watching let's plays of the first one and I remember really liking what I saw, but I just wasn't able to nab any of the games, the closest thing being playing over and over the demo of Dream Drop Distance on my 3DS. You really made it sound fun and being on the DS I have it really easy to try it, so I might check it out if I end up liking the first two games.

11 months ago

Never got the Re:Coded slander beyond it being released during a dire time when fans really wanted something close to resembling KH3. The story isn't anything to write home about but imo it's clear it's not meant to be the important focus other than just trying to squish KH's gameplay into the budgetary dimensions of a DS which was really damn impressive.

11 months ago

@DemonAndGames Thank you! KH1 is a little rough around the edges gameplay-wise, but both it and KH2 are fantastic games. I think you'll like them a lot.

11 months ago

it's insane how this and 358 days/2 got done so dirty by the hd remasters. they were literally the only two games in the whole series where a remaster would greatly benefit them by giving them better controls due to not being on the ds and yet they got movie adaptations instead that don't even adapt the stories in comprehensible ways. Literally the opinion most people have on this game is that everything besides the story is good.

11 months ago

@Ninjabunny I believe they did that so they could release KH3 sooner. It's incredibly disappointing that they still haven't done them. I wouldn't mind waiting a little longer for KH4 if it meant Square Enix finally remastering this and Days for modern consoles.

11 months ago

when I think about why I'm so nostalgic for the DS era of gaming, I inevitably remember games like Re:coded and how endlessly ambitious (and successful!) they were at crushing down PS2-level experiences into a handheld system of that size. the fact that the gameplay is barely compromised at all compared to KH1 is wildly impressive. 2000s game devs were truly wizards

11 months ago

Re:Coded definitely gets overlooked as far as KH goes. So many neat little ideas crammed into a game.

7 months ago

re:coded is not a great game, but surely is underrated, the gameplay quirks on every individual world was a welcome experiment