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Kingdom Hearts Re:coded (DS)

Status: Finished playing
I started playing this game on Thursday 12 April, 2012  //  I stopped playing this game on: Monday 10 December, 2012
Current opinion of this game
I liked it. There's some interesting gameplay, but the story made no sense to me at all.

December 10, 2012 01:44:42 PM
Finished it!
(a long time ago, and I've just gotten around to writing this which is embarrasing to say the least).

Ok, so what do I remember?

For some reason I can only remember that some of the fights at the end were really difficult for me. I had to visit gamefaqs just to check that I wasn't doing something wrong, but no. They were just hard (for me). Sigh.

As for the storyline - what a mess. I really can't make heads nor tails at this point. It involves memories, people losing memories, people going into other people to recover/fix memories, but then things get messed up, then you're a memory. Or you're in a memory. Or something like that, but in the end it doesn't matter because everyone is friends and will miss each other even if you don't remember. Something like that.

I honestly don't know at this point if it's an issue due to their being too many different games or if Square Enix just loves the whole convoluted storytelling per se. I'm going with both the former and the latter...


April 30, 2012 11:45:54 PM
In theory I shouldn't enjoy this because it's rating was so low. However, I really did like one of the other Kingdom hearts games (I think it was one of the GBA ones?). The story is one confusing mess so far and the gameplay seems quite complicated with lots of different systems that interact and interrelate. The camera is also pretty bad - I'm always losing track of where I am (and where the enemies are) due to the camera.

However, it all seems to come together somehow. I've slowly and surely been peeling back the game's systems (figuring out how they work and how to utilize them). My greatest praise so far? The game's designers weren't afraid to mix things up a lot. Quite a few of the game's worlds/areas feature interesting variations on the games core gameplay that keep things interesting. For example, in one the game becomes a "traditional" RPG while in another you can't attack or defend yourself, but must rely on AI companions to do that.

My greatest gripe? I've found myself twice in a situation that required re-loading from an earlier save because I reached a fight/moment I was unable to beat. This was due in part to the configuration of my character: certain abilities are useless in boss battles, others aren't that effective, etc. You're not allowed to swap out things and make changes while you're in a fight, but sometimes you don't KNOW there's a fight about to occur and so I've twice found myself screwed over having to reload and replay significant parts of the game.

Worth continuing to play? Absolutely.

Do I now have a better understanding of the Kingdom Hears world/narrative. Absolutely not.


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria