from rpgamer.com

In an interview with Famitsu, director Tetsuya Nomura talked about the next few games in the Kingdom Hearts series. Although he didn't have any news for fans who are waiting for a Kingdom Hearts 3 on an HD console, he had plenty to say to portable gamers.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Final Mix introduces the changes from the North American version of the game to Japanese players, but adds a few new features as well. Nomura said the biggest change from the North American version will be a new boss fight with a man in a black coat, which will set players up for future series developments. There will also be a new secret movie in the Final Mix, although Nomura did not provide any details about this movie or how it is unlocked.

Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded, which is due to release in Japan next month, will have an extensive avatar system with over 800 parts. Nomura revealed that the game's tag mode system will assist players in obtaining rare parts, as they will receive any rare parts equipped by other players with whom they interact in tag mode. Re:Coded will also have a trophy system like the one found in Birth By Sleep. It will include around thirty trophies, and players will need to obtain about twenty trophies in order to view the game's secret movie.

Finally, Nomura confirmed that Kingdom Hearts 3D will be the next game in the series. Planned (naturally) for the 3DS, the game's final title is yet to be decided. The team for BBS Final Mix is currently moving over to Kingdom Hearts 3D as they finish their work on the prior game. Development has already begun in Osaka, and Nomura hopes to announce more information about the game soon. Although BBS Final Mix is extremely unlikely to release outside of Japan, Re: Coded and Kingdom Hearts 3D have both been announced for North American releases.

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Famitsu has recently provided a large amount of information about the upcoming Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. One of the new game mechanics is the "Command Matrix" system. In this game, the commands that characters perform are more akin to equipped items than learned skills. With the Command Matrix, players will be able to fuse two of these commands together, destroying the two original commands and creating a new, more powerful command. One example is combining the Thunder command with the Rise Upper command to get the Thunder Blade command.

Another feature of Re:coded is its variety of options for replaying completed areas. From the world selection screen, the player can choose to play through the area's story again, challenge the area's boss in a score attack mode, or freely explore the area to find optional dungeons and quests. The game will keep a record of the player's best score and how many dungeons and quests have been completed.

Finally, many more details about the game's Tag Mode have been revealed. In addition to traditional things like personal avatars and profiles, players will be able to share dungeon floors. Each player will be able to choose a few variables for a custom dungeon floor which will be exchanged in Tag Mode. When a player collects these, they are combined together into a large optional dungeon called the Avatar System Area that can grow to have up to one hundred floors. These large dungeons will increase in difficulty as the player climbs floors, but offer an opportunity to acquire a lot of items and commands.

In addition to building giant dungeons, Tag Mode has a few other gameplay benefits. Participating in Tag Mode lets a player acquire virtual scratch cards that can provide commands and avatar customization parts, and exchanging information with many other players increases an avatar's happiness level, which improves the drop rate of items in the game. However, it is also possible for viruses to appear and infect avatars. If that happens, the avatar's happiness will plummet to zero and the player will need to dive into the Avatar System Area to get rid of the problem.

quare Enix has announced that Kingdom Hearts Re:coded will be released for Nintendo DS in Europe and North America. Sora, Mickey, and friends will arrive in North America on Jan. 11, 2011, and will fly across the Atlantic to Europe by Jan. 14.

Re:coded is set after the events of Kingdom Hearts II, when Jiminy Cricket discovers that someone has written a mysterious message in his journals about Sora's adventures. King Mickey decides to digitize the journal and investigate it, and within the resulting "datascape" is a computerized copy of Sora who is about to embark on his own grand adventure. The game includes a classic-style Kingdom Hearts battle system that has been modified for the DS, and promises unique boss battles and an avatar system that allows players to trade avatars and playable maps with friends.