This is my lawn

Re:coded's gameplay is pretty fun, but the story is honestly probably the worst of the series.  Any specific questions I can help with?

Firstly, the heck is going on? Is it like a past version of Sora from another dimension? Does he live in Jimminy journal?

 

How was I back on Destiny Islands? I thought that place was destroyed in the first game?

 

Would it have been better if I'd picked up 358/2 Days instead? (I originally wanted to pick that one up, but I mistakenly picked up Re:coded at the Exchange).

 

Is it true that the video game was super gltchy and instead of fixing it completely the game developers said "meh, the kids can handle it"?

 

Also I only ever made it to the face off with Cloud at the Olympia Arena in the first game. Can I get a brief synopsis of what happened in the second game (as I believe I understand the basic plot from the first game and the start of this one mentioned that two adventures had already happened).

 

Also, is this the one where the blonde character totally messes with everyone's memories or is that chain of memories?

 

Alas if I had grown up with a Playstation, all of this would actually make sense to me.

Jiminy’s Journal has been converted into data, and that data has been used to create a simulation of the first game, complete with a simulated duplicate of 14-year-old Sora.  They sort of used their record of Sora’s first journey to make their own bootleg video game chronicling it, and this Sora has the memories Sora had at that time but is aware that he is inside a computer.

 

Destiny Islands did get destroyed at the start of the first game, but it was restored at the end.  This particular Destiny Islands is a digital recreation of Destiny Islands as it was at the beginning of the first game.

 

Well…Days appears to be a love it or hate it thing, so it’s hard to say for sure.  It mainly exists to please fans of Organization XIII, so without having history with them it might not work that well, but since it follows Roxas from the very beginning of his existence (and he has no idea what’s going on either), it could maybe work from that perspective.  The gameplay is far from the series’ best, though.

 

Hm, I don’t remember running into any glitches myself…I mean, throughout the game you fight “Bugs” as part of the story, but I don’t think that’s what you meant.  Since this is a lazy rehash of the first game, though, it wouldn’t surprise me if the developers didn’t try very hard at debugging.

 

While Re:coded does take place after KHII, it barely references its events at all, so you’re probably good.  But, in short, KHII was about Sora’s battle with Organization XIII (the half that survived Chain of Memories, at least): he and Donald and Goofy travelled across a ton of Disney worlds again, fighting more Heartless and a new type of enemy called a Nobody.  When a person loses their Heart, the Heart is consumed by the darkness within it and becomes a Heartless, but their Body and Soul are transported elsewhere and recycled as a Nobody—typically they have twisted, inhuman forms (though they do retain intelligence and their former memories), but very strong Nobodies look a lot like their previous selves, and are sought out and brought into Organization XIII.  The Organization wishes to create their own artificial Kingdom Hearts, “the heart of all worlds”, to recreate their own Hearts and be complete beings again.  To do so, they capture the Hearts released when a Heartless is destroyed by the Keyblade, and merge them all into this giant heart-shaped moon, but in the end Sora and friends are able to destroy it before it is complete and the Organization is wiped out.

 

That was Chain of Memories, but said character does appear in this game as well.

 

There is no one person who can make total sense of Kingdom Hearts, not even Nomura himself, so don’t feel bad.

I mean, throughout the game you fight “Bugs” as part of the story, but I don’t think that’s what you meant.

 

Actually that... that is exactly what I meant. It's not the best joke when you can't convey sarcasm easily via text.

Oh!  I should've guessed that, sorry.

No, no, it's my fault for trying to be funny. XP