I just completed 'Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories' and how was it? Let's just say that I spent the credits individually cursing out every single name that popped up for having something to do with this product. I tried to give this title the benefit of the doubt, I really did, but everytime I peeled away at something vaguely interesting I was struck square in the face by some baffling design choice which several people knowingly approved. This entire game is the perfect embodiment of the overpowering desire to make something unique over making something that is fun, and the result is an experience so headache inducing that I personally accuse 'Chain of Memories' for my persisting nausea. (Either that or I've caught Covid, which I also blame on Chain of Memories.) But there's no point to me bitching without you having any idea what it is that I'm rambling on about, so let's take a walk.
As it just so happens, the original 'Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories' was an incredibly pretty looking Gameboy Advance game that, as far as I can tell, was invented as much to be a port of the original Kingdom Hearts as it was to be a continuation of the story. The GBA obviously wasn't capable of replicating the full-on action adventure gameplay of the original Playstation title and thus a new method of gameplay had to be developed. What the team came up with was actually kind of clever, combat wouldn't be fully real-time but rather adopt a semi-turn based approach wherein players would manage a deck of cards that each represented an individual move. In this way, combat amounted to beating your opponent's card values and putting together powerful combos to whittle down their health, an elegant solution to the problem, one might say. When it came for the Remix, however, something clearly didn't translate over so well.
'Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories' was a remake made 3 years later (I.e. after Kingdom Hearts 2) and was made exclusively for the Playstation 2, and thus had a whole new range of processing power to take advantage of. This time the team could take the story that they had built with Chain of Memories and bring it to the 3D world that 'Kingdom Hearts' was born from. As such 'Re: Chain of Memories' readopted the 3D movement, freeform battles and general visuals as the first game, with one horrifying addition; they kept the card system. Now at the time the folk of the day were quite taken with such a gimmick, noting how it stood out from all the other card-based games of the day, and putting myself in their shoes I suppose I can kind of relate to that view of morbid curiosity, but this is the present day; road rules.
The Highs...
But before I get ahead of myself let me try to be nice for a second; I actually quite like the direction of the story in 'Chain of Memories'. Taking place directly after the end of the first game, this story starts with Sora, Goofy and Donald chasing Pluto in order to grab the letter from King Mickey that it appears to have jammed between it's gums. This chase ends of leading them into the surreal looking Castle Oblivion, after which Pluto completely disappears from the narrative and is never even thought of again. (Probably for the best, otherwise it wouldn't be long before existential questions start getting asked like why Pluto acts like an animal whilst Goofy walks on two legs.) This marks the first point at which the Kingdom Hearts plot gets really confusing as Organisation XIII shows up and starts being annoyingly obtuse. (The amount of times that folk have said "Oh, I won't tell you that. Don't want to spoil the fun" Makes me want to strangle myself.)
Between these worlds the real story bubbles in the background as Sora and friends steadily start losing their memories. (Maybe that also explains why Sora's voice magically dropped several octaves over the course of, in the canon of the games, a few hours) This means they start forgetting about the adventures that they went on, as supposedly happens to all who travel to this place. (Because it's called 'Castle Oblivion'. Get it?) Soon Sora even begins forgetting his close friends and life on Destiny Islands, but in that lies a new uncovered memory of someone he'd seemingly overlooked. There's a girl that he used to know but had somehow completely forgotten about, how is this possible? And how is it that she is apparently somewhere here in the castle? Is this going to turn into an incredibly stupid twist like Sherlock Season 4? No, actually there is a rather sensible twist that is decently executed. We also meet several members of The Organisation that are rather well characterised and enjoyable people to interact with. Even Larxene, which is strange seeing as how I'm fairly sure the devs went out of their way to make her annoying. (Maybe I just appreciated the excessive sarcasm in an almost unrelentingly sincere franchise.)
...Before the lows
So we have a decently interesting and well executed storyline, where does it all start to fall apart? In the gimmicky dumpster fire that we call the gameplay, unfortunately. Re: Chain of Memories inherits the GBA's card system and tries desperately to combine it with the active combat of the Playstation game to create an ungodly abomination of man, and here's how it works. (I need to explain this in the vain hope that you understand even one sentence without subjecting yourself to it.) You start off by building a deck of cards that come with attached values. Each card relates to an action and yes, this is the only way that you can attack as a player. There are strike cards, which just indicate you swinging your Keyblade, the magic cards, which relate to a spell or summon, the friend cards, which summon an ally, and item cards, which are potions that you can use. Now in order to strike an opponent you need to use a card and hit them with that animation, seems simple enough so far, right? Here's the issue, should the opponent play a card with a higher value then your card will be 'broken' and the animation will immediately stop. (And that's just the beginning.)
There is no 'cost' for playing cards except that when they've all been used up the player will need to 'reload' them, an action which requires you to stand still for a few seconds and thus render yourself vulnerable. (Also, the more times you reload in a fight, the longer it takes the next time.) Now as you start to level you'll learn that there are certain combos of three cards that can be used in order to perform a powerful move known as a 'sleight'. Now, Sleights have a little bit of a caveat to them as after you activate them the first card that you selected is discarded to a pile that cannot be reloaded, therefore making it possible for the player to slowly whittle away at their own deck if they use too many sleights. (These cards can actually be reloaded through certain item cards, but that's getting into high-level plays and I want ya'll to understand the basics first.)
So let me try and spell out the problem here. There's this whole system that is built around juggling card values, matching up combos and timing breaker cards; (0 cards automatically break any enemy cards but can be broken by any card in turn) and all of this is on top of the main game. So imagine all of the things you have to do in a standard 'Kingdom Hearts' fight, such as navigating around the arena and dodging their various attacks, on top of juggling a deck of cards; that is what you have to deal with. Now initially this seems like an incredibly weird, yet promising, system that you've been thrust upon. But you'll start to realise how problematic this makes the basic gameplay loop as you go on. Basically every fight you'll need to be paying attention to your enemies attacks in the middle of the screen whilst simultaneously sorting through your cards in the bottom left. The HUD layout makes it so that it's basically impossible to deal with both at once, so soon you'll have to pick and choose between spamming cards or taking damage.
This really starts to become a problem when you hit against the mid game bosses as these folks use decks and sleights just like you do, meaning that now you have to pay attention to the cards that they are playing along with avoiding their moves. Cards become useless unless you're playing a Sleight with a total value higher than their deck's total value, and that's something you must calculate on the go whilst sweeping about an active boss fight. Now quite frankly, this is sensory overload as you have to basically out-math a computer in order to perform a move which then has to land on their hitbox. All of that is an issue, whilst bearing into mind that the longer your animation the more danger it puts you in, because it allows the enemy to sort through their cards until they find a breaker. (Which, seeing as how your opponent is controlled by a computer, doesn't take too long at all a lot of the time.) These animations and attack patterns were clearly constructed to fit into an action based game, and when thrown into this hybrid it's just too much to take in and will quickly overwhelm the casual player.
So by about floor 5 every single person looking for a good time has peaced out; but I'm no casual. I finished the last Kingdom Hearts to 100% completion and on Proud difficulty. Hell, I finished 'Splinter Cell: Double Agent' on PC! (So I know something about smashing my head against a brick wall.) So you end up doing what you do in other RPGs in order to scale a wall, levelling. But that doesn't really amount to much as in Re:Chain of Memories, levelling only permits two stat upgrades. (and, yes, you only get to pick one upgrade every level.) You either improve your health, or your 'card points' (The value which allows the player to put more cards in their deck) or you can opt to improve no stats and instead learn a new combo. So levelling is important, but it doesn't make you feel nearly as powerful as it should, sullying the RPG side of the game.
Sooner or later you'll come face to face with one of the core design flaws; the fact that all of the game's artwork is wasted because you spend the majority of the gameplay not looking at it. The reason why games seek to minimise their HUDs in the modern day is because it's a waste to draw the player's eye away from the action on the screen. Chain of Memories forces you to spend all your time looking at your card hand in the bottom left, meaning that little of the grand visuals will be there for you to see. Even the text at the top of screen, placed in order to draw your eye back to the middle, that explains the enemies next move is completely wasted, it's far more beneficial to break their next move than it is to avoid it with skill and dodging.
But still it won't be enough. Even by devoting the full breadth of your attention to juggling cards it will not be enough to meet the inhuman speed that the computer operates at, and you're going to have to start building your deck to autoplay each fight. By this I mean literally arranging your deck so that every single card is laid out in a sleight, so all you have to do is press the Y/Triangle button repeatedly in order to play the game, with some potions thrown in there so that you can reload the deck. Once this is done, you go from the herculean task of playing the game as the developers intended, to the boring task of pressing Y and winning practically every encounter in under a minute. Sure, there are about 5 encounters in the game that are Sleight proof, but everything else (including the final fight) can be won by spamming Sonic Blade constantly until nothing is left breathing. (Sonic Blade works because it stunlocks the enemy.) When your game is either too hard to enjoy or too easy to love, you've failed at the most basic tenements of balancing and/or game design.
In summary
Now I could go on, regale you with stories and reiterations about just how much of a headache this game was, ramble on about how connection should equal a reaction (something that we should have learnt from Morrowind) but here's the rub; this game is a slog to get through. It's frustrating beyond all get out, and that's because anytime you are felled it's because of system overload rather than due to losing a fair match-up. Every boss feels like a marathon to get through and by the time you reach the otherside you'll find yourself desperate to lose all memories of experiencing this nightmare. And that sucks because, as I stated, I like the story and feel it's a very interesting way of opening up the narrative.
I bitterly hated my time with this game and even when I was flying through it I was doing so with a frown and a grimace. I honestly hope beyond hope that this is the unchallenged lowest point of this franchise, because I'm not sure if I can take another experience that was this unpleasant. I will persist with the series, however, because I loved my time with the first Kingdom Hearts and and have faith that the franchise can latch onto me again. But I must tell anyone who is even the slightest bit curious in Re:Chain of Memories to turn away or at least make sure you're absolutely sure what you're getting into. And if you're worried about missing out on a pivotal part of the story that introduces so many future key players, don't be, at the end Sora and pals have all their memories wiped. (Pretty much making this entire narrative, and thus the 23 hours I spent on it, irrelevant. I could just explode from happiness...)
Right now I'm not done with the game yet, much to my dismay, as my reward for completing this game I've been granted a whole new campaign through this fresh hell once more as Riku. (Yay, me.) This extra game is called 'Reverse/Rebirth', making the full title: 'Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories Reverse/Rebirth HD' (Might as well throw 'Mania Plus' on the end there, make it all complete-like.) But do you want to know the insane thing? I'm almost done (I think) and I'm actually enjoying myself, no joke. I'll talk about all the things that 'Reverse/Rebirth' gets right where the main game got it wrong, but that will have to wait because tomorrow comes something that I've put off for quite a while now...
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