I'm going to be honest while reviewing this, I'm not going to let my loyalty to Square-Enix get in the way of my opinion on Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. Re:coded falls short of all KH games to date, with few qualities.

The Graphics in Re:coded are one of the few things that are up to Kingdom Hearts standard. Think of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and the graphics in that game were said to push the DS to the ‘limit’. Well, Re:coded has just broken that limit. In some parts of the game, Destiny Islands for example, you could swear you are playing KH1 on the PS2. The graphics are the best on the DS (I do realise that has been said about many games, but this time, it IS true).

The next thing, music: The tracks in Re:coded are quite simply taken from the rest of the series. Nothing new. The main theme in the KH series, ‘Dearly Beloved’ usually has a different variant of in every KH. But in Re:coded, it's just the same as KH:358/2. All in all, the soundtrack is boring.

The gameplay, one of the most important aspects of an Action RPG. The gameplay in Re:coded is just boring, and sometimes just plain stupid. For the most-part of the game, combat is not much different than any other KH. But in one specific part of the game, combat is turn based, which brought back memories of watching paint dry, except watching paint dry is ALOT more entertaining. They should have just left turn-based battles in Final Fantasy. There is also a side-scrolling stage, which is actually kind of fun. In the end, gameplay is a mish-mash of good, bad and plain boring.

The story is mediocre for Kingdom Hearts. It doesn't compell me to keep playing.

At the end of the day, Kingdom Hearts Re:coded doesn't offer enough to draw interest. It falls majorly short of its predecessors and doesn't live up to the KH name. But If you're a fan, play it, because you feel like if you don't, you won't be able to sleep at night, you'll feel insecure and you'll end up going crazy and convince yourself thet you're Sephiroth. We don't want that. That's about the only reason to play Kingdom Hearts Re:coded.

GreaT game fun to play and great graphics but Square Enix needs to find some more story as this was just a small port from kingdom hearts 1. 4/5

The normal game play is kinda good. You sometimes play in different dimensions and styles such as platform, ATB (like final fantasy 4 to 9).

There are 4 difficulties: -Critical
-Proud
-Normal
-Beginner

This is the first of the Kingdom Hearts series I've played but since I am considered an avid gamer I started playing on Critical, which can be can be changed throughout the game.

The enemies are repetitive, getting ‘Star’ Rank in boss battles can be challenging if you don't know how to score a lot, but all in all it's deemed fine.

One thing that really annoyed me a lot was the wager before the portal dungeons. Expecially the timed ones, because if you failed to meet the wager, you'd may as well start the whole portal dungeon again. If you are impatient and inexperienced I suggest playing at a low difficulty because this game makes you want to ‘R-r-r-rage quit!’.

The story isn't what you would recall as amazing. The plot is that of a typical boys cartoon such as Dragonball Z. It's about removing abnormalities in a program located in journal. Much like saving the world, but not.

If you really want a challenge, you can decrease your health% (which increases enemy drop rate) and/or increase monster strength (Which increases the prize rate).

All in all it was worth my money(since I bought it on special). I don't play it all the time, about 0–2 times every two day since I got it…

Maybe I'm too old to be so excited anymore