Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories
PlayStation 2
Nostalgia factor:
When Kingdom Hearts II came out back in 2005, I was all over that shit. I was a HUGE fan of the first game, as anyone who’s read my review for it can attest. It didn’t take very long for its sequel to confuse the hell out of me, however. The first Kingdom Hearts game was pretty straightforward, and I think I expected it to pick up right where the first one left off. Quickly, though, things went completely off the rails. I didn’t know what had happened with Sora, Donald, and Goofy. I didn’t know who Roxas was. I didn’t know what Organization XIII was. I didn’t know what the Nobodies were. I knew nothing, Jon Snow. I still enjoyed the game, but 90% of it didn’t make any sense to me. I knew that there was a GameBoy Advance title called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories out there, but I didn’t realize its relevance. I probably blew it off as an inconsequential spinoff that I didn’t need to bother with.
That was a mistake. In the ensuing years, I’ve come to learn that playing this game is essential to understanding the storyline that bridges the gap between Kingdom Hearts I and II. I never got to play it, however, as it was a GameBoy Advance title, and I never had a GameBoy Advance. Nor did I know that there was a port of the game available for the PlayStation 2. It wasn’t until this year, 2019, that I was finally able to get my hands on the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix collection for the PlayStation 4. This collection includes several Kingdom Hearts games, most notably Chain of Memories.
Not just Chain of Memories, but Re: Chain of Memories. What is the difference, you may ask? Chain of Memories is the 2D title that came out for the GameBoy Advance. Re: Chain of Memories is the upgraded 3D port that was brought over to the PlayStation 2 in 2008. That is the version I played for this review. So technically I am playing a port of a GameBoy Advance title that came out for the PlayStation 2, on a PlayStation 4. Confusing, I know, but hey I didn’t make the rules. For clarity’s sake, I am just going to count this as a PS2 game. It is the exact same version of the game that came out for the PS2, but with sharper HD graphics. This most definitely does not deserve to be counted as a PS4 game, and the GameBoy Advance title is a completely different thing altogether.
Got all that? Good, because I barely do. Anyway, enough with the small talk. Let’s get this review started.
Story:
The game starts right where the first Kingdom Hearts leaves off. Sora, Donald, and Goofy are wandering around, looking for signs of King Mickey and Riku. A clue from Pluto leads them to a mysterious hooded man in a black cloak. He leads our heroes into Castle Oblivion, where they discover they are starting to lose their memories. Sora and company have to fight their way through the castle, making their way to the top. The higher they get, however, the more memories they lose.
A lot is going on behind the scenes that our characters don’t know about. As I stated in my last Kingdom Hearts review, I am by no means an expert on the storylines of the games. So forgive me if I am wrong with my interpretation of the events. From what I gathered, everything is being manipulated by a group called Organization XIII. The Organization is a group comprised of Nobodies, who are the empty shells left behind when someone loses their heart and becomes a Heartless. The Nobodies want to get their hearts back so they can become whole again, and they believe the only way to do this is to manipulate the Keyblade holder (Sora) into doing their bidding. Thus, they launch an elaborate trap to cleanse Sora of his memories and make him their puppet.
They enlist the help of Namine, who is Kairi’s Nobody (from when she lost her heart in the first game) to help them accomplish this task. Namine has the special ability to make people lose their memories. How she has this ability, we don’t really know. Anyway, as our heroes battle to the top level of the castle, they encounter Namine. Namine is fed up with being manipulated by Organization XIII, and flips sides over to Sora, Donald, and Goofy. She gives them the option to either leave the castle, retaining their memories from inside the castle, or to get their original memories back and forget everything that happened in the castle. The group decides they want their old memories back.
Namine lets them know that it won’t be a short or easy process getting their memories back. They have to enter these big stasis pod thingies while Namine works on restoring their memories. So into the stasis pods they go, where they remain until the beginning of the next game in the series, Kingdom Hearts II.
That is my bare bones recap of the game’s events. There is a LOT more going on than I indicated. The game dives into the personal dynamics of the Organization XIII members. Namine has some story stuff going on. There are clones in Castle Oblivion, most notably one of Riku. Whether he is simply a clone, a simulation, or a Nobody, I don’t really know. I’m sure the game explains it, but I was pretty overwhelmed by everything else going on to process it. The real Riku also has an unlockable side quest that you can take on after you finish the main game with Sora.
There is a lot going on in this game, and I can’t say I truly understand it all. That’s okay, though. I got to see how Sora, Donald, and Goofy wound up in those stasis pods, and that’s really all I wanted from this game.
Gameplay:
To say there is a learning curve to this game would be an understatement. As if the game’s crazy plot wasn’t enough to process, you have to process a brand new style of combat and level progression as well.
I’m really divided on the direction they took this game. Outside of combat, things control exactly as they did in the first Kingdom Hearts. You run, you jump, you swing the Keyblade. Once you enter combat, things are a different story. Rather than just casting spells and swinging your Keyblade as you did in the first game, things are controlled by a very complex card based system. I am not a fan (AT ALL) of card games, so this new system immediately made me apprehensive. My first few hours with the game, everything turned out to be even worse than I had feared. I was getting absolutely slaughtered in battle to the point where the game was not even the slightest bit of fun for me.
As much as I wanted to see what the game had in line for me as far as its story, I was ready to give up. In fact, I was very, very close to it. Luckily, I was sick one night and had nothing better to do than lay around like a slug and watch YouTube videos. It clicked in my head – hey you should look up tips on Chain of Memories to help get you through the game. So that is what I did. And boy oh boy did it help. I had been doing everything wrong. My main problem was that I wasn’t customizing my deck. I was using the original deck that had been given to me at the beginning of the game. Once I figured out how to add more attack and spell cards to my deck, things became much easier for me.
I want to explain how the card system works, but I fear it would be too complicated and lengthy to spell out succinctly. Do you really care anyway? Let me just say that you have a deck of cards filled with attack and spell cards. Each card has a number on it. Enemies also play attack or spell cards. You have to make sure that the number on your card beats the number on the enemy’s card. So if an enemy plays a one, pretty much every card you have will beat that card. If they play a six, you have to play a card that is a six or higher. If you play a lower numbered card, you lose the card and won’t get it back until you reshuffle your deck. If you play a zero, however, that beats ANY card that the enemy plays. The key to success in this game, particularly when you are fighting bosses, is to have lots of zero cards in your deck.
You can string together up to three cards at a time to perform a special attack, or to break an enemy’s special attack. So if you see an enemy playing a six, a seven, and a three card, you have to quickly do the math (in this case, the cards add up to 16) and string together a combo of your own to break the enemy attack. Or just play a zero. The catch to stringing together cards is that you will always lose the first card in your deck until the battle is over. As you play, you learn sleights, which are special, more powerful attacks that Sora unleashes when certain cards are played in a certain order. You also gain summon cards, which you can use to summon Donald or Goofy to your side to help you in combat. That’s right, unless you play a summon card, you are fighting solo as Sora.
As you level up, you are given the option to get more HP, learn a new sleight, or gain CP, which allows you to add more cards to your deck. I made the mistake of loading up on HP. CP is what you want to focus on.
For the most part, this covers how card based combat works. Cards also affect how you play through the game’s stages.
Each level of Castle Oblivion represents a stage you played in the first Kingdom Hearts game. For example, the first stage in the game is Traverse Town. You can actually pick what order you want to play the rest of the stages. I followed my original KH path, going to Wonderland, then to Olympus, then to Agrabah, so on and so forth. Deep Jungle is notably missing from this game, as I believe it has something to do with copyright stuff, since Tarzan is based on a book.
Each stage is filled with locked doors. You have to unlock these doors by using cards you pick up in combat. Each door has a certain condition you must meet in order to open it. For example, one door may need a blue card that totals four. Another door may be a red card greater than six. Some doors require several cards to open. What you want to look for are the doors that are marked with a heart, a key, or a Heartless logo. Unlocking these doors advances the game’s storyline for you.
Different cards each carry different conditions with them. For example, let’s say you have to open a door with a red card that is higher than a three. You look at your deck of red cards. You should have several different types of red cards, many of which are over three. You want to find the one that best suits your need to unlock the door. For example, one red card may be “more Heartless will appear in the next room.” So you want to play those ones if you are looking to fight a lot to level up. Another card may be “less Heartless will appear in the next room”, so if you are looking to just run through a stage without fighting anyone, this may be your best bet. Other cards will put Heartless to sleep, make it so they give out more EXP when they die, or force them into playing only weak cards when you fight them. On the flip side, there are cards that make things harder as well. Card management is definitely something you have to take into account as you play this game. I got rid of all of my “make the game harder” cards on story based doors where I knew I wouldn’t have to fight any Heartless on the other side.
As I said, there is a massive learning curve to this game. I hope I explained everything pretty thoroughly, although even with all that I am sure I am missing a lot.
Graphics:
Graphically, this game is on par with the first Kingdom Hearts. It doesn’t look any better or any worse than that game. That’s really… all I have to say about that.
Sound:
The same thing goes with the game’s sound. Voice acting is as strong as ever, although this game often ditches voice acting in favor of text boxes that you have to read. That’s understandable, as this game is meant to be a smaller scale spin-off, and I am sure its budget is not as big as the numbered entries in the series.
Most of the music you hear is recycled from the first game, which is fine. One particular tune, however, was really getting on my nerves. It is not even that it is a bad little jingle, it is just used WAY too much. It’s the tune they play whenever there is a scene involving Organization XIII. If I had made it a drinking game to take a shot every time that song queued up, I would have gotten drunk FAST.
Overall:
I’m really torn on this game. I went back and forth between loving and hating it so many different times. When it started, I thought that it was interesting. I liked the fact that I was finally seeing what happened in between Kingdom Hearts I and II. The cutscenes and the voice acting were a lot better than I thought they would be, for such a small scale spin-off that pretty much nobody I know has ever played.
Quickly, the game soured on me with its complex card based combat and exploration. I was ready to toss this game in the trash and move on to something else. Then, once I got the hang of the card system and how the game worked, I started to like it again. In fact, there was a spot in the middle of the game where I was cruising along and having a really good time. When this game clicks, it is really fun and entertaining.
Then came the bosses. Oh man. I am still shaking my head thinking about them. Regular Heartless you encounter in battle are pretty easy once you get the hang of the game. The bosses, though, are hard as shit. It is SUCH a big difficulty spike between regular battles and boss battles. Some of these bosses took me ten, twenty, thirty attempts to beat. A lot of these fights were over in a matter of seconds. They left my jaw hitting the floor with how difficult they were. I have not been this frustrated playing a video game in a very long time. I really wanted to throw or break something, but luckily I was able to stop myself. Breaking stuff over a game is stupid. But still, this game made me understand why people throw their controllers through the TV. I am getting mad just thinking about this game’s bosses. They really wrecked a lot of the enjoyment that I was able to get from this game, they were THAT difficult.
So you understand my dilemma. I did not consistently have a great time playing this game. Admittedly, the high points of the game were pretty high, and a lot of fun. But the low points were just terrible. My enjoyment of this game was constantly going up and down and up and down. And I'd say unfortunately it was more down than up. I can't ever see myself playing this game again. Not that the game is bad, just that the boss battles are so horribly frustrating. They almost wrecked the game for me completely, on several occasions.
If you are a Kingdom Hearts fan, I would still encourage you to check this out, as it will help you understand KHII a little bit better. If you are just now stepping foot into this series, I would definitely avoid this game. I can't possibly see what you would get out of it.
Overall:
C
If you liked my review for this game, please check out some of my other game reviews:
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