Ok, finished this. Here's my take:
For starters, I want to preface this by saying I don't know why this game exists. There is no story, no new areas, no new music outside version of dearly beloved with extra twinkle sounds, only one new enemy A BLOCK WITH LEGS, no new bosses, no new attacks/magics, the entire game is lacking any budget/effort whatsoever.
Actually I get why it exists for cellphones. People don't expect much out of cellphone titles, so throw out a recycled retread on phones and you'll make a few bucks. But why this got made into a DS game without a COMPLETE OVERHAUL is beyond me. Sure the battle system got upgraded, but that doesn't change the battles take place within a cellphone game, and cellphone games really do not belong on the DS.
First let's talk about the main gameplay of the game, aka the mini-games that make up each world. There will be spoilers since I'll list the worlds, but considering NONE OF THEM ARE NEW it's not a huge deal but it will spell out the entire gameplay experience for you.
Destiny Island - standard gameplay
Traverse Town - 2d side scroller = holy ___ this is terrible. Weird auto-scroll + awful physics and laggy controls make for a bad experience.
Wonderland - stealth, decent little mini-game; on-rails = WOW THIS IS BAD. Instead of doing this in peter pan world so you can fly around like Panzer, here you can only run left/right and jump and float down. The controls are awkward and the animation for jumping is really bad. Goes on and on and sucks.
Olympus - Turn-based rpg. Finally a good gameplay system. Plays like Paper Mario and is actually pretty fun. Wouldn't mind a full KH game based on this idea. Otoh the level design of the "dungeon" is bad and full of non-stop encounters so you get pretty worn out by the end. But if you want more you can go back post-game and do even more floors of it!
Agrabah - standard gameplay.
Hollow Bastion - Squad based game. Like the turn-based system this is fun and a nice change of pace. Sit back and dish out orders and attacks to your troops. The only problem is when you fight enemies that can't be hit from the front and trying to get your people to move behind the enemy by moving around yourself is a mess.
??? - SO [explicative] TERRIBLE. Replay through all the worlds again starting at lvl.1 and gaining your levels back through items. Full of the most annoying enemies (blocks that are electric so when you physically attack them you take damage) and awful cramped platforming. Goes on for hours and hours.
Castle Oblivion - Kind of cool. Plays a bit like CoM I guess (still haven't played CoM) you get world cards and each world is represented by a room, in the room depending on what you do you can get 3 different ending cards. Fun until ??? strikes again and they steal all your f%#@ing abilities/attacks/magic and make you do horrible timed platforming with pits.
[ending]
General Pros:
+As mentioned above the turn-based rpg system & squad rpg systems are enjoyable
+The status board where you level up is sort of like 358/2 days panel system but more intricate. It's alright
+You can make cute avatars
+You can test out a new attack/magic before melding to make it
Cons:
-Shop doesn't start carrying an attack/spell once you make it. This limits what you can meld dramatically. Especially because enemies don't usually drop high level stuff.
-Overclock system. Each keyblade has unique passive skills that activate as you use them and then disappear when you do a finisher. Because of how often you do finishers in KH this means the skills only exist for a few seconds and you can't rely on any of them so it all ends up being worthless.
-Because of overclock there are no permanent passive skills like the ones you made in BBS.
-Spells/Attacks level. This is stupid. Instead of melding two attacks to get a new one, 90% of the time two different attacks just meld to the first attack + 1 level. Every attack/spell can be melded up to lvl.99. Supposedly the higher the level the more damage the attack, but a lvl.50 attack looks the same as a lvl.1 attack and doesn't do noticably more damage. So it seems like a waste and all it does is...
-There are barely any spells/attacks. The reason the level system is like that is because they don't want you melding new attacks since they'd have to make and animate more of them! There's probably about 20% the amount of spells/attacks as BBS and they are all the boring non-flashy ones. Even watching expert vids of the final boss fight on youtube people's best attacks are like TRIPLE SHOT FIREGA, BALL OF WIND CHASER, BLIZZARDGA; nothing great and flashy like BBS.
-As described above the 2d sidescroller parts suck as do the on-rails parts
-The framerate is bad. Probably the same as 358 ~15-20fps, but I think it effects the controls in platforming and unlike 358 there is TONS of it here.
-The controls in general feel laggy. In battle it's noticable but especially when you are jumping and you hit jump and he runs off the edge. Whoops. Great in a game with complex platforming. D-pad also doesn't allow much precision when doing angled jumps.
-Camera. SO BAD. You will often not be able to see half or more of the enemies you are currently fighting. The game takes place in VERY VERY SMALL CRAMPED AREAS. Much smaller and more cramped than 358 because they were made for cellphone and filled them with blocks everywhere. Camera is ridiculously bad for platforming. There's one boss fight which is WOW as you have to basically do it blind and it takes forever.
-Level design. Terrible terrible terrible. Like I just said, awful cramped spaces, no real exploration or normal sized worlds like BBS.
-The trial system in the virtual areas where you bet your money on if you can pass the challenge for the next floor is @_@ because a lot of the times you have no idea if you can do it until you see what the stage entails. So you bet blind and sometimes you win big or sometimes you lose big.
-Enemies. For some reason the majority of enemy types are the unfun annoying ones that you can't hit from the front but they take up the whole screen so getting around them is a pain. Or electric block enemies who damage you if you physical hit. Or flying enemies who stay so high you can't reach them. Outside of the standard 2 grunt enemies, everything is not fun to fight.
-Story: there is none. What a joke. Nothing happens; it's all just filler. There are no characters, events, anything of substance. They didn't add anything to the cellphone game in this department besides a 2 min secret movie. The main game has exactly 2 lines relevant to the entire KH storyline and they are in the ending
What a waste of time.
So yeah, game was pretty bad! At times (Olympus, Hollow Bastion, Castle Oblivion) the game is fairly enjoyable to play and you're happy with it. But the majority of the game sucks and is unfun gameplay + no story + all recycled content for a bad bad game overall. Maybe on cellphones with lower standards this would be fine. I've played plenty of bad cellphone games over the years that were ok because they were convenient and low expectations. But on a DS that doesn't fly. Despite a few changes, you are getting a cellphone port on your DS and being charged full price for it. If SE sells this for $40 in the US I cannot recommend it to anyone. If it's $30 or less, then diehard KH fans might enjoy it somewhat, but for everyone else I'd stay far far away. I love KH but to me this was a 6/10 game. 2nd worst game I've bought this year behind ACE:R which was a 3/10 game.
Finally I just wanted to say that I liked 358/2 days and it's 10x better a game than Re:coded. 358/2 days had A PLOT, CHARACTERS. Sure it was repetitive and lots of ice cream licking but events did happen and the final hour is PURE AWESOME while you play out deep dive in real-time and lots of stuff happens and it has a great finish. In comparison the last 30 mins of Re:coded is nothing. You're just doing platforming and then a boss shows up and you fight and the game ends BECAUSE THERE WAS NO PLOT. Also 358/2 days has far more open areas that give you room to fight and let the camera not die. You get to fly around Captain Hook's ship fighting dragons or run around twilight town which is good sized and logically connected. Sure 358 no way compares to BBS but what BBS is to 358, 358 is to Re:coded. And it doesn't help that Re:coded is coming out following BBS.
So yeah, H.A.N.D. really should stop making KH games.