Josh Average

So I got past the Vexen wall in Re:Chain of Memories. Literally all I needed were the cards to make Lethal Frame and I was good. Packed a deck with 5-7 of those, some 0s, and I beat him in one try. Made my way through several other fights/bosses, and now I’m at the Marluxia wall. Looking online, it seems like the play is “lots of Fire spells and 0s”, but I don’t have that many fire spells. Additionally, lots of Marluxia’s attacks have such a small window for response that I don’t have a lot of options, especially not compared to how he responds to my own attacks.

Pardon the pun, but the game is designed in such a way that the deck is stacked against you in largely unfun ways. Enemies can, and will, just walk away from your attacks unless you have some sort of lock-on to them. The Simba move has such a long startup that, even in an easy encounter, enemies will just walk away by the time the attack is going off, same with something like Lethal Frame that has an incredibly long startup and a short lock-on distance. Marluxia can just teleport away and you’ve now removed a card from your deck while dealing no damage. Speaking of movement, while you have an okay dodge roll and solid glide abilities, that’s not nearly as effective as Vexen’s ability to guard attacks regardless of card mechanics or Marluxia’s ability to teleport without even playing a card.

What this means is that most battles are either all in your favor or all in their favor, no in-between. And it’s largely decided by deck composition, in a game where bosses require a specific type of deck and anll other encounters will use a completely different deck. My “quake, other board clears, and Blitz” deck cannot defeat Vexen, and my “0s and Lethal Frame” deck can’t even clear an encounter of just a lot of small Shadows. You either you cheese them, or they cheese you, and there’s no real in-between.

I’m getting to the point where I’m considering playing/recording some KH2 as a break from Re:CoM, just to remind myself that there are actually good games coming after this.

Re:Chain of Memories is so funny because at the beginning you really feel how this was a game that just existed to tell KH1 again on the GBA. Literally the first world you go to after Traverse Town drops the whole "hehe what will you forget/remember" bit.

Sora to the Traverse Town gang: Guys, it's me! Sora! I'm not entirely understanding the concept of "you are illusions based on memories" thing haha help me out

Sora in Agrabah: hehe let's help out this random man and his genie :)

ALSO you can tell where they cared about cut scenes, because (iirc) the only ones with VA are the ones in Castle Oblivion, like walking between floors. I was hoping for Homer Simpson Genie and got nothing. It honestly makes me want to play the GBA game because I feel like it's gotta be worse in how plainly it's a retelling.

And I know there's more to it than simple retelling (it's no Melody of Memory lol) but you can tell that's clearly where the story started from.

I'm a Certified Kingdom Hearts 1 Hater¹, but Re:Chain is really trying my patience in a way I wasn't expecting.

I've been breezing through most areas and bosses. Had a hiccup with Wonderland's boss, but figured out what of my obtained cards would work for the boss and managed to make my way through after only dying once or twice. That's basically been the only hurdle so far. Enter Vexen.

The strategy seems to be "use lots of Sonic Blades" and/or "use lots of Lethal Frames" or "use lots of Fire-based attacks" or "have lots of 9s or 0s:. The problem is that I haven't been able to get cards good for those Sleights, and I think I have one or two 9s or 0s total. And grinding just means hoping you can luck into some good cards, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to deckbuild for certain cards outside of getting Moogle Points and hoping your Red, Blue, or Green pack has exactly what you're looking for.

It's not fun! It's straddling the line between "KH1 action game" and "card game" in such a way that both ideas are dragged down. It doesn't have any of the equipment management of KH1, or later KH games, which feels like something that's sorely missing from this game. Some way to just add Attack+ or Defense+ or something would be ideal, but it's completely missing. The sleights allow you to do good moves, but you're disincentivized from using Sleights if you don't think you'll win before reloading your deck because they permanently reduce your deck for the rest of the combat encounter. The deckbuilding feels like pure luck, and there aren't nearly enough opportunities to be getting new cards for your deck. Fighting regular enemies effectively only provides XP and Map Cards, meaning you may just hit long patches of never having a reliable way to add to your deck. Leveling up either increases your max health or increases your max Card Points, with the occasional opportunity to get new Sleights, and that's it. Despite battles mostly being focused on the card mechanics, enemies can just walk away from some Sleights, meaning you've given up a card and dealt no damage. Combat encounters are either piss easy, a simple repeated pressing of triangle, or ridiculously hard, with incredibly tight windows to dodge attacks in any opportunity is available at all, with no in-between.

It's got some interesting ideas, and I'm interested in the story, but... it's a bad video game. I hate that I decided my let's play series was based around beating all these games because I think this means I have to spend hours and hours and hours grinding for specific cards to get me through frustrating combat encounters just to see some small glimpses of Organization XIII and Nobody Lore. Sucks bad!!

1. I played KH1, specifically Final Mix HD, for the first time ever a few years ago and it is a miracle the series made it past the bad gameplay of the first game. The way the game decides to remove mechanics from you (Atlantica, any flying/gliding fight) without providing new mechanics to replace what was lost, the way you don't have much at your disposal at any given moment, the way checkpointing works for longer boss endurance encounters, the way the difficulty scaling provides nothing but extra movies but no other benefits... folks, it's not a fun game!

Re:Chain of Memories is so funny because at the beginning you really feel how this was a game that just existed to tell KH1 again on the GBA. Literally the first world you go to after Traverse Town drops the whole "hehe what will you forget/remember" bit.

Sora to the Traverse Town gang: Guys, it's me! Sora! I'm not entirely understanding the concept of "you are illusions based on memories" thing haha help me out

Sora in Agrabah: hehe let's help out this random man and his genie :)

ALSO you can tell where they cared about cut scenes, because (iirc) the only ones with VA are the ones in Castle Oblivion, like walking between floors. I was hoping for Homer Simpson Genie and got nothing. It honestly makes me want to play the GBA game because I feel like it's gotta be worse in how plainly it's a retelling.

And I know there's more to it than simple retelling (it's no Melody of Memory lol) but you can tell that's clearly where the story started from.

Dive Into The Heart, my let's play "Oath To Replay" the Kingdom Hearts series, starts season 2 soon! We beat Kingdom Hearts 1 Final Mix, now it's time for us to lose ourselves in Re:Chain of Memories.