AN ASS IN THE HOLE
My greatest feat of gaming this year must be powering through this abominable action-card-role-playing game all the way to the end. Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories not only bears a hideous title more akin to an e-mail subject line. It also shamelessly retells and distorts the events of the first Kingdom Hearts and bundles it with the most frustrating combat mechanic I've wrestled in a long time.
It has a complicated history of releases and re-releases. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was originally a 2D card-based tactical RPG shipped in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. Following up the original Playstation 2-hit Kingdom Hearts with a Game Boy title was an odd move, but I can understand the temptation for creators Square Enix to cash in on the popular handheld device. The remake, Re:Chain of Memories (2008), put the content of the Game Boy-game into the original game's engine, allowing the Playstation crowd to finally catch up with the story canon.
This Playstation 4 HD release (as part of a 'The Story So Far...'-package) I'm reviewing is a remaster of that remake. That makes it the third release, at least, of the same game, and they still can't get it right. Enough with the horrible attempts, already. This game is unsalvageable. It makes me think of all the great ideas out there that have never even once seen the light of day.
If the gameplay was any fun at all, maybe I could've been bothered to accept the profound meaning behind such hogwash. Instead I choose to interpret it as nothing but a lazy excuse to recycle the same story. Sora simply "forgot" what happened in the first game, so we need to relive it once more alongside him and his friends.
It has a complicated history of releases and re-releases. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was originally a 2D card-based tactical RPG shipped in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. Following up the original Playstation 2-hit Kingdom Hearts with a Game Boy title was an odd move, but I can understand the temptation for creators Square Enix to cash in on the popular handheld device. The remake, Re:Chain of Memories (2008), put the content of the Game Boy-game into the original game's engine, allowing the Playstation crowd to finally catch up with the story canon.
This Playstation 4 HD release (as part of a 'The Story So Far...'-package) I'm reviewing is a remaster of that remake. That makes it the third release, at least, of the same game, and they still can't get it right. Enough with the horrible attempts, already. This game is unsalvageable. It makes me think of all the great ideas out there that have never even once seen the light of day.
SETTING AND STORY
You once again control Sora, the Keyblade-wielding boy who tried to save the world from darkness in the first Kingdom Hearts. This game has him, Goofy and Donald Duck advancing through Castle Oblivion, a place ruled by the esoteric Organization XIII. Castle Oblivion is "where you go to forget, only to remember". All memories of Sora's friends and why he set out on his quest are mysteriously fading.
If the gameplay was any fun at all, maybe I could've been bothered to accept the profound meaning behind such hogwash. Instead I choose to interpret it as nothing but a lazy excuse to recycle the same story. Sora simply "forgot" what happened in the first game, so we need to relive it once more alongside him and his friends.
Most floors of Castle Oblivion hold a world featured in the original Kingdom Hearts. This gives Square Enix an opportunity to also recycle enemies and textures from that game. And then the last few floors tacks on some new content explaining the strange goings-on. It gets cheesier by the minute, as they try and coax the player into believing this was their plan all along. That there's deeper philosophical meaning to the concept of memory, and we forget things for a reason, and yada yada.
Using the narrative tool of a fading memory feels weird, since this is the second game of the franchise. A lot of what happens becomes a glorified recap of something we recall all too well. Watching Sora, Donald and Goofy struggling to remember is frustrating. Paired with the godawful combat this experience seems like a parody of, or a blueprint to, a scrapped version of the first game.
FRANTIC CARD COMBAT
Most infamously the game features a card-based combat system practiced in real-time. You have to constantly juggle your gaze between a number of spots on the screen. It is a literal eye exercise. If your vision gets wet and blurry, it might not be because you forgot to blink. You might not even be crying. It might just be your aching eyes sweating from the physical strain of all the saccades.
This mechanic pits your cards against the enemy's deck. You can use weapons, magic or item cards, all with a number assigned to them. If you and an enemy attack simultaneously, the card with the higher value nullifies the lower and gets the desired effect. If you chain up to three cards you can add their values together and perform powerful combos, called "sleights", which are paramount in defeating the game's numerous bosses.
Now, imagine juggling your entire deck of 20-40 cards in a real-time scenario, all the while paying attention to your enemies' card deck and running around the combat arena, dodging area effects. If it doesn't sound overwhelming you should consider a career as an air-traffic controller.
Combat is needlessly complicated, but in all fairness it's just ported straight from the Game Boy Advance original. The Nintendo handheld had technical limitations that made it unable to support the exciting action combat of the first Kingdom Hearts. Nonetheless, this fact doesn't help this remake. The real-time card system might have worked on a small handheld screen, but on a regular sized TV it doesn't. Square Enix should have removed the action combat arena entirely and made it play out automatically, or something to that effect.
Naturally, this ensures you keep leveling up your character at a steady pace. This is a quick but dull process where you choose between putting a few points into maximum hit points, card points, or learn a new sleight. Since you're helpless without cards, anything but an increase in card points feels like a level wasted.
And as a final nail in the coffin Re:Chain of Memories is brutally hard, at least until you find the winning combos to cheese the game - including most bosses. Truth be told, the game is won (or lost) by the way you arrange the your deck of cards. I'd say spamming the same attack chain makes the game unbearably repetitive, but that is the case no matter how you approach it. Room after room of identical prefab visuals and monsters is the epitome of monotony. Finding a quicker way through is the only way to improve the experience.
Until you do, be prepared to get stuck on some frustrating difficulty spikes. This game engine is not known for supporting good platforming, and yet there is precise platforming involved even in certain boss encounters. Now, imagine juggling your cards, responding to enemy cards, avoiding area effects AND jumping between platforms with poor jumping controls all at the same time, and you've got some of the most infuriating boss battles of all time. Not even your most powerful combos can help you there.
The only thing that kept me from giving up was the prospect of writing this review, and for that I get to feel some sense of accomplishment. In hindsight, I cannot believe I stuck it out. I know from previous experience that the next installment in the series, Kingdom Hearts II, is among the good ones. After suffering through this disaster, I'm bound to appreciate it even more. So at least it gave me that. Thank you, Re:Chain of Memories. Now, please sod off back into oblivion.
This mechanic pits your cards against the enemy's deck. You can use weapons, magic or item cards, all with a number assigned to them. If you and an enemy attack simultaneously, the card with the higher value nullifies the lower and gets the desired effect. If you chain up to three cards you can add their values together and perform powerful combos, called "sleights", which are paramount in defeating the game's numerous bosses.
Now, imagine juggling your entire deck of 20-40 cards in a real-time scenario, all the while paying attention to your enemies' card deck and running around the combat arena, dodging area effects. If it doesn't sound overwhelming you should consider a career as an air-traffic controller.
Combat is needlessly complicated, but in all fairness it's just ported straight from the Game Boy Advance original. The Nintendo handheld had technical limitations that made it unable to support the exciting action combat of the first Kingdom Hearts. Nonetheless, this fact doesn't help this remake. The real-time card system might have worked on a small handheld screen, but on a regular sized TV it doesn't. Square Enix should have removed the action combat arena entirely and made it play out automatically, or something to that effect.
CARDS ARE EVERYWHERE
But not only combat is affected by the card curse. The entire game's foundation consists of them. Every new room of the castle, you need to assign a "room card" to determine what features it will hold. It determines the layout of the room, as well as enemy strength and numbers, and other things. The only surefire way to collect room cards is to fight enemies, which makes grinding an essential part of progress.Naturally, this ensures you keep leveling up your character at a steady pace. This is a quick but dull process where you choose between putting a few points into maximum hit points, card points, or learn a new sleight. Since you're helpless without cards, anything but an increase in card points feels like a level wasted.
And as a final nail in the coffin Re:Chain of Memories is brutally hard, at least until you find the winning combos to cheese the game - including most bosses. Truth be told, the game is won (or lost) by the way you arrange the your deck of cards. I'd say spamming the same attack chain makes the game unbearably repetitive, but that is the case no matter how you approach it. Room after room of identical prefab visuals and monsters is the epitome of monotony. Finding a quicker way through is the only way to improve the experience.
Until you do, be prepared to get stuck on some frustrating difficulty spikes. This game engine is not known for supporting good platforming, and yet there is precise platforming involved even in certain boss encounters. Now, imagine juggling your cards, responding to enemy cards, avoiding area effects AND jumping between platforms with poor jumping controls all at the same time, and you've got some of the most infuriating boss battles of all time. Not even your most powerful combos can help you there.
The only thing that kept me from giving up was the prospect of writing this review, and for that I get to feel some sense of accomplishment. In hindsight, I cannot believe I stuck it out. I know from previous experience that the next installment in the series, Kingdom Hearts II, is among the good ones. After suffering through this disaster, I'm bound to appreciate it even more. So at least it gave me that. Thank you, Re:Chain of Memories. Now, please sod off back into oblivion.
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