Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded

“We must return to free them from their torment”

The theme of this game pretty much says it all. Torment. Okay, so it’s not that bad, but it will cause you to rip out your hair in aggravated frustration whilst screaming out profanities the likes of which Tetsuya Nomura will hear all the way from Japan, which in turn will cause him to roll over in his grave bed laughing at you for even bothering to get this game. “But the game’s not that bad, and it’s part of the series, you have to play it to understand blah blah blah BLAH” fuck this game.

                The background for this game is this. Whilst Tetsuya Nomura and his team were working on the Great and Powerful Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, and on Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, they were also making small episodic installments on mobile devices. Of course by mobile devices I mean on phones in Japan, which they apparently come out with every year, so I’ve heard. So the game ends finally, and Nomura said “Hey guys, I think there’s still some milk in there,”

                “No,” one of his developers says, “I think we’re done with this.”

                “No there’s defiantly some milk left in there,” Nomura said.

                “What else could we possibly do?” The developer asked. “More levels?”

                “How about we just port it to the DS,” Nomura says. “That way the Americans can FEEL MY WRATH . . . oops, I mean play it too.”

                “Okay,” the developer answered.

And thus Kingdom Hearts ReCoded came to America.  And the Americans bought it. And Square made a shit tone of money, which they shared with Nomura by letting him work on the next three Final Fantasy games, which he has been working on for TEN FUCKING YEARS, but that’s okay, we all know that when they come out, we will buy them because it has Square written all over it. Even if it’s a giant steaming pile of golden crap, people will buy it.

                Okay, so enough delaying the inevitable, let’s get this over with. Grab yourself your favorite alcoholic beverage and let’s gooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

The Characters

Jiminy Cricket is back home, now voiced by Phil Snyder, as the original voice for Jiminy has passed, rest his soul. Snyder does a fine job once he finally decides to drop the weird southern thing going on with his voice and just tries to sound like Eddie Carroll. So, yeah, Jiminy is back home copying his journals into Mickey’s Altair 8800 when suddenly he finds a strange message. As he has nothing better to do with his time he decides to get King Mickey, Voiced again by Bret Iwan. Goofy and Donald tag along because, why the hell not? They are voiced by Bill Farmer and Tony Anselmo, of course. Chip and Dale have to come too, just in case the computer decides to start smoking.  They are voiced by Tress MacNeille and Cory Burton. Mickey sees the message and at once decides that he needs to decode it. So what does he do? He creates a digital Sora, voiced by Haley Joel Osment, to unravel its mysteries.

Of course as it is based on the first game, we get to see Riku, voiced by David Gallagher. Riku acts as a guide to Sora through his journey. He leads Sora through all the levels and even somehow pulls Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy into the computer via the Matrix. Oh, another thing I should point out is how good Riku’s computer skills appear to be in comparison to Sora’s. Mind you this is a data version, so the real Riku might share Sora’s computer illiteracy but then again, it is supposed to be based on the real Riku, so it’s kind of up in the air on that.

Oh and guess whose back. If you said Ansem, then you were wrong, it’s Pete. Yeah that guy from the second game who wasn’t in the first game, but somehow found his way, not only to Mickey’s castle, passed all his broom security, and into the room where Mickey and his friends are, just around the time that Mickey and the gang were sucked into the computer, thus getting himself sucked into the computer, and this makes no fucking sense at all, but it’s what’s in the game, so we just have to accept it, even though by all accounts he shouldn’t even be here because he was in the second game and not the first. Oh and that’s not all. Pete can call his dear sweet friend from the computer.

And Maleficent finally gets her revenge on Sora, only it’s a data version of Sora, so does it’s not really revenge, it’s data revenge? I don’t even understand how she ends up in the damn computer

when Pete calls her? If Pete can call her anywhere, or she can appear anywhere she wants then why not show up in Mickey’s Castle again, or somewhere else to cause real damage to Sora. Pretend you’re his mother or something. Destroying a key made of data just doesn’t feel all that spite full, but hey, at least she’s a villain this time and not some half ass attempt at a reformed vigilante.

Now, while there are certainly more people in the game such as Wakka, Tidus, and Selfie (aww Square does remember them) none of them have any speaking rolls, so I will mention them when I get there.

Digital Levels

Each level of the game has its own uniquely, AGRIVATING mini game. What’s more, each level of the game you’ve already been to, a billion times now, so there’s absolutely no repetition at all when  are rerererererererevisiting these places.

Destiny Islands

The first place the player visits is Sora’s old Stomping ground.  That’s right, the Station of Calling. It is the place where he gives up a power to gain a power. This game tries really hard to be the first game and just fails miserably for so many reasons. After the training session the player is taken to Sora’s real stomping grounds. It’s been a while since we actually got to play this area, so I’ll let it slide. I do like Destiny Island. Here we meet up with Sora’s old buddies, Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie, they tell us what they’ve been up to since Kingdom Hearts 2, turns out Tidus had some daddy issues to work out, and Wakka had to go off to a Blitz Ball tournament. Selphie was just busy tending to her garden. The absence of Kiari is conspicuously apparent, considering how important she is to Sora, and how integral she was to the story, but whatever; if the game doesn’t care than neither do I. Sora has to bust up some blocks to find all the strange anomalies on the island. At the end he sees Riku swallowed by darkness and Darkside coming to destroy the island. Sora puts a stop to it and ends up in everyone’s favorite place.

Traverse Town

I’ll avoid the fact that the player has visited this place at least three or four times now. When Sora arrives he is immediately taken aside by Cid and asked to find the twins Huey, Dewy and Lewy. Sora obliges, only because he needs to find some bugs. In searching the town for them he discovers plenty. Sora puts a stop to the bugs, and returns the twins to Cid. This is the place where jumping becomes a chore, and you thought it was bad in Destiny Islands. Well, here there is even more shit to worry about. Now you have moving platforms, a camera that is useless, and Sora, who will decide just before the jump that he doesn’t want to, causing you to fall down and have to do everything over again.  At the end of the level it tries to do something uniquely different. I will not sit here and tell you how this game tries to be like Nier, but I will tell you that it is kind of fun. It’s a side scrolling session in which you will find yourself falling down many a times, only to be dropped back down in a spot with no platform so that you fall again. By the time you reach the end battle, your health will be pretty much wiped out, and the game won’t let you heal. Fortunately the Guard Armor can’t aim worth shit and you will beat him.

Wonderland

The next area you go to is Wonderland. Alice is having an awful time trying to remember anything. It’s up to Sora to help her restore her memory. You will find throughout the level that there are clues, some of which belong to Alice, and others of which belong to other characters. Very soon you will find yourself within a maze area where you have to avoid the card soldiers. This is where the alcohol comes in handy. I made a drinking game out of it. Every time you get caught, and you will get caught at some point, take a drink. Eventually you will make it, and by then you should start to feel that tingle in your fingers. So once Alice gets her memory back, she will help you get to the queen. After that it’s off to the on rails shooter portion with, yep, you guessed it, Trickmaster. Not only do you fight him again, but you get to fight him three more times. Probably to make up for the three games that he has missed out on. Of course getting here will have caused you to take several more drinks of your alcohol, causing you to now feel very excited that you have even made it this far at all. In the end Sora does away with Trickmaster, likely not for the last time, and then heads off to another world.

Olympus Coliseum

This place is nothing like you remember. Here Sora is forced to fight like he’s in a real RPG game. Each enemy takes a turn. Then Sora gets his. As you travel through this maze like section you will eventually run into Hercules, who will join you. If you play your cards right, Cloud will join you as well. There is something like 10 levels to go through. At the end you fight Cerberus. Then, as if you didn’t get enough punishment, Hades comes in to finish you off. After that the game kindly tells you that you can keep coming back for more punishment. There is something like 20 floors. It’s nuts, I don’t know why anyone would want to punish themselves like that, Oh right, for the secret movie that you can watch on youtube. I was probably a bit inebriated at the time when I did it though I can’t really remember, I blacked out. If you decide that you do want to punish yourself further, then you are treated to a Behemoth fight and a Rock Titan fight, all in Active Time Style, of course.

                You would think, if we are trying to piece together what the fuck happened to Sora, than Jiminy would have written down what happened in every world, but apparently that’s not the case. Jiminy opts to skip out on Monstro, Atlantica, Halloween Town (which is surprising since every game accept for BBS has include them), and Neverland. Instead we head straight to:

Agraba

The game starts out okay, you meet some folks, you fight some heartless, then we have to find  Iago under a strict time limit while goddamsonofabitch Jafar chases after us, stealing away our precious time. After several retries, and several more drinks you will become numb to the tedium and finally just do it by sheer accident. When that shit is over your head straight to the Cave of Wonders. Here you are treated to several traps. In one particular trap it has you avoid falling, but with a shoddy camera this is impossible. You will fall, you will fight a million heartless to escape, you will have to consume a third of your drink of choice to convince yourself that it is worth continuing. When, finally you make it to the elevator, you will begin to cry. Here, the elevator slowly grows smaller. You will fall off and have to start over. This will be the billionth time Sora has fallen down. You will have to drink another third before continuing. At the end you fight Genie Jafar. It’s a pretty routine fight at this point. Once Jafar has been defeated, Pete shows up. He calls for Maleficent and she comes out of nowhere to destroy your keyblade. Bitch.

Hollow Bastion

This is where you will start drinking heavily. Sora ends up here with no keyblade. You have to go it alone for a long time; that is until Goofy shows up. Once he shows up the real fun begins. Now you get to find Donald. To do so, however, you must first cross through enemies and blocks, and a particularly infuriating timed jump that will make you drink about half of what’s left in your bottle, honestly who the fuck decided to put jumping puzzles in here, especially ones where lining up your jump is so crucial? So after that’s done, and you go back down to the base level to find Donald, then you climb back up the stairs to find the library, then you get to part take in more timed escapades. Yay for time limits! And by that I mean I need to take a break and go get more liquor.

                Once you have finally made it passed all of that, you get to fight Pete. He’s just there to piss you off though, because the real enemy is Data Riku, who you fight, not once, not twice, not three times, but four, each time becoming more frustrated. With each loss of the battle you take a drink from your newly acquired bottle of alcohol and keep going. Now, what happens after the Riku fight you ask? You get to do it all over again of course. The really sad part about sentence is that I’m not even joking. Once Riku is defeated we travel into his data to repair the damage. We have to go back to every single world and fix whatever the fuck is wrong. That’s three worlds, plus a fifth Riku fight. From there it’s back to the side scrolling adventure, then back to the on rails shooter with a Invisible at the end that will make you consume the rest of your bottle. Then you fight Sora’s Heartless, which is somehow now in Riku’s data, then you fight dark Sora. The fact that you’ve made it this far is a miracle, now do it all over again.

               

Or at least the game would have you believe that. After all that is done, the bugs return to the journal, stronger than before. Sora, who had to sacrifice himself, is now reawakened with no memory of his previous adventure. He wakes up in Traverse Town where he sees Mickey who convinces him that they were friends in a past life. Sora buys it and Mickey tells him go find the bugs. This time it’s different though. Now you end up in a mysterious castle where “to lose is to find and to find is to lose”. Yes, the final level of the game is:

 Castle Oblivion

 

The first few levels aren’t that bad. If you go back and re do them you can get different rewards. Once you get to the last room though, you will never want to return. The last room is all time limit bull shit. Let me be clear on this though, you are timed. You must make it to the other side, or across the room, or where ever, in the allotted time. You must not fail or be damned to do it all over again. You will be very very drunk by the time you finally get to the end.

                Something I should point out here is that if you get through all four or five of these areas within the allotted time, you will be given a special scene in which Yuffie and Leon show up. I got the scene, apparently, but I failed so many goddamn times (fuck time limits) that when I finally got to the scene at the end I skipped it, and ended up missing both the Pete scene (which I intended to skip) and the Yuffie and Leon scene, which I did not know even existed until I saw that I had met them in Jiminey’s journal. It’s on youtube though; if you feel you need to see it. All it is is Leon telling Sora not to be a pussy.

At the end Sora gets into a fight with Roxas. It’s the only time in the game I think I had fun, even though I died a lot. This fight is probably to cater to the American and European fans who never got to play the Roxas fight because Final Mix+ was only released in Japan at the time. When the fight is over Riku finds Data Namine who tells him she was the one who erased everything. Sora tells Namine Thanks, as per Kingdom Hearts 2 request and the game ends.

Getting the secret end

Throughout the game, the way to fix the bugs is to enter these challenge rooms. In these rooms Sora gets points for defeating enemies and for breaking blocks. By the time you reach Traverse Town the game is having you gamble your points. Sometimes it is worth it, like when the game tells you to block six times, but there are others like, ignite your enemies. That sounds easy enough, equip fire, problem solved. WRONG. Equipping fire does not ignite enemies. I could never figure out what did, so I just said fuck it. This was a mistake, as some of the things you can get at the end of the challenge rooms are crucial to not getting your ass killed in the game. Once the initial challenge room starts, you are offered to go back. To be honest though, unless you want the secret I wouldn’t. 

                These Challenge rooms are very frustrating. Mostly so because when you fight the enemies are all black and fuzzy. This if fine for things like shadows, but when you start to fight large bodies and can’t tell which end is which, it is just a pain. God forbid the thing back into a damn corner too. Add to that the different verities, such as the red ones, which take more damage, the yellow ones, which move much faster, and the green ones which are ridiculously large, and it makes you want to eat your DS. But it’s totally worth it to get that secret ending right? RIGHT? It’s just not as satisfying to watch it on youtube . . .

                Oh, but we haven’t even gotten to the best part. You want to earn enough trophies to get the secret ending? You have to play the game all over AGAIN, this time with in a strict time limit. Admittedly you can skip over the scenes at this point, and Sora gets to keep his abilities, but even

still. I will admit, glide solves about half the camera issues in the game. Too bad it doesn’t make the game any more fun. But it’s totally worth it for the secret. Thank god I didn’t have to use the avatars to get the secret movie.

                That’s not even the best part. Once you do it all over, and complete all the levels in the time limit, and finish all three endings for Castle oblivion, then you have to complete certain challenge rooms. These ones will make you want to hurt yourself for ever playing this game. Many of these challenges are “don’t get hit more than once” challenges, that then end up throwing danger boxes at you as the enemies, as well as putting you into rooms which are full of danger boxes, and if that weren’t enough they add this “powerful heartless” which is like a Defender on steroids, and tell you that you have to defeat it. Doing these challenges makes a person wonder. Why the hell am I doing this? Why am I torturing myself? Why the hell did I buy this game? Why the hell am playing this? Why the fuck am I even writ

Conclusion

There are a few, and I do mean a few, redeeming qualities to this game. One is the music that plays while fighting Riku, it’s lovely. The other is the Roxas fight at the end. I’ll even admit that the Rock Titan and the Behemoth fights in Olympus were fun. Hell, even the side scrolling parts, the on rails shooter parts, and the rpg parts were fun for a bit. The only real problem I have with Olympus is the active time battle. I get bored with it after a while. Don’t get me wrong I love Final Fantasy and everything, but I’ve found myself dozing off while in fights. They are just boring to me. I need the action and speed of Kingdom Hearts to keep me interested now days. I blame games like Ninja Gaiden for that, but let’s be honest, if you are in a real fight, are you going to wait your turn so that your opponent can beat the ever loving shit out of you, or are you going to beat them first.

In the end this game feels like an excuse for Square to cash in on a good game. Really the story and the Roxas fight are the only thing that is good about this game. Everything else is utter rubbish. Thankfully Square decided that remaking this game in HD was not a necessity. Instead they opted to make it into an HD movie, which I am totally okay with. Perhaps they should have done that to begin with. My only concern now is that Square might decide to change the music during the Riku fight. If they do, then that would totally ruin the vibe of the fight, but at least I won’t have to play the damn thing.

The end result is a game that, in the end, just feels like an afterthought rather than something that was needed. Really, it’s just a set up into the next side game, which, around mid completion of BBS Square knew they would have to make another game for the lack of a Kingdom Hearts 3, so they added the end in. I have heard great things about Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, and would love for a chance to play it. If Square can ever get their shit together, and somehow get it released before KH 3, then I will buy it. Until that day comes, however, I will have to wash the taste of this game out of my mouth. Hopefully we can all just pretend that the game was an illusion caused by an alcohol induced coma.

Most images are taken from:

Kh2.co.uk

Khinsider.com