Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories
Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories is a fully 3D and somewhat voice acted remake of the GBA game released on the PS2 console. A lot of the significant cutscenes have been given voice acting, but a large majority of the game is still text only. You might be inclined to think that the change between 2D and 3D would be a big one with a large impact to gameplay, but here, it really isn’t. For the most part, the game plays almost identically to its GBA counterpart. If the only thing that kept you from getting into the original Chain of Memories were the 2D visuals and handheld aspects of it, then this will finally be your chance to experience that lost chapter between the two Kingdom Hearts games. If, however, what kept you from the original weren’t the 2D visuals or handheld nature… you probably won’t find much to enjoy here.
I may have already spoken of this before, but I will take some time to reiterate it briefly. Chain of Memories used a card based battle system. At first glance, it seems to play identically to the real-time action of the true Kingdom Hearts games, but then you’ll come to realize that every action is limited to cards in your deck. To swing the hero’s weapon of choice, the Keyblade, you must use Keyblade cards from your deck. Moving about is done with the left stick (or d-pad in the GBA’s case) while card selection is handled via the shoulder buttons or triggers. You’ll notice that every card has a small single digit number at the bottom edge of it; these numbers are very important. Whenever you perform an action, you’re placing a card of your deck in “play;” the enemies will do the same. You can effectively cancel an enemy’s action by “playing” a card with a higher numerical value, and they can do the same to you.
At first, you’ll find that you can simply button mash your way through fights if you have a bunch of high numbered cards in your deck, but this strategy quickly falls apart later in the game and during boss fights. A single card is limited to a single digit number. To play a larger number, you need to “stock” cards. Card stocking allows you to select three cards and play them all at once rather than individually. Their numerical values add up to form a sometimes two digit number, which is a necessary maneuver for boss fights, as bosses will frequently use that very same strategy against you. There are, however, the cards with a value of zero. These are special cards with the ability to break any card or card combination regardless of its value, provided you play this card AFTER the enemy already played theirs. If you play a card with a zero value first, then it can be broken by a card of any value. This can make it the most useless or most useful card in the entire game, depending on the situation.
Some cards have really long attack animations, while others are very brief. Normal attack cards, which entail in the hero swinging his weapon around, have the shortest animations of all. These animations are very important, because they determine how long that card remains in the playing field. If a card remains in “play” for a very long time, then it has more chances of being canceled out by an enemy’s card, you see. This is why you should only play such cards in stocks with a really high value, to make certain that nothing can cancel it during that time. Of course, no value is absolutely safe and can always be canceled by the right card or card combination; this is when you gauge your enemy’s strength. Bosses near the end of the game will have some of the highest value cards and frequently cancel you out, whereas normal enemies at the beginning of the game will never even use stocks against you.
As much as a lot of people will hate the battle system, I personally think that it is quite brilliant. The main problem I have with the game is how it is essentially a really lazy rehash of all the areas and characters you met in the first Kingdom Hearts, minus the intrigue. The only interest you’ll garner from the plot is given to you in droplets, and at the end of it all, the game really doesn’t add much to the entire Kingdom Hearts mythos. Players were only made to believe that it did during the opening sequence in Kingdom Hearts 2, so that they’d feel like they really missed out. The real reason most people didn’t play the original Chain of Memories most likely had more to do with that fact than anything else, I’d say. It’s for that reason that I don’t find this remake to be much of an improvement.
In fact, I found myself having a bit of a tussle with the camera system. The original, being 2D and sporting an isometric view, made it fairly easy to see everything in your surroundings, especially during battle. Here, the game is 3D and has a lazy implementation of a camera system that spends most of its time focused on the protagonist than anything else. My foes spend most of the battle off screen, typically firing projectile attacks toward me or suddenly charging me from where I can’t see them. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem during boss fights, where you have only a single target and a lock-on capability. Unfortunately, almost every boss in the entire game will have an attack or teleportation skill that resets your lock-on, so you’ll have to lock onto them again, and again, and again… eventually, you’ll just decide to forgo the whole locking-on thing altogether, because they break out of it so fast that it defeats the purpose. All of this could have been easily solved if they merely panned the camera out more, allowing you to see the entire field of battle. The battlefields are all very small, so that isn’t a tall order.
The final word here is… this is a lazy remake of an even lazier rehash that probably only existed because Square Enix was contracted into making a game for Nintendo’s popular handheld unit. If all it takes to make you like a game are 3D graphics and a bad camera system, then this will be right up your alley.
