REGARDING MICKEY VA: I was not under the impression that Mickey's voice actor was suffering from diabetes and was practically dying during the recording of the remake. Which makes me feel like a dick, but honestly I didn't know any better. I thought it was an entirely different actor they contracted. I truly do apologize. I'm gonna keep the video up in its current form, because I do think they probably should have just found a different voice so the complaint stands, but not toward him. That sucks. He did a good Mickey for a long time.
Yeah, the first KH game that has Mickey's new (and current) VA is BBS. Mr. Allwine's last credited performance in the series was Days, though I have no idea if it's recycled audio or not.
They held auditions in 2009 , Nolan North came close to being the new Mickey but in the end Disney got someone from in-company rather than a freelance voice actor
About King Mickey's voice actor.... That is actually Wayne Allwine the main voice actor for Mickey at the time. But he was suffering from diabetes and this was when he was getting really sick. He died around a year later. So even though the voice is not his best, please understand this was at the time when his health was rapidly declining. Just wanted to clear the air.
Wayne Allwine was beyond the best Mickey, especially in KH. Every time I heard him say “OH BOY” in KH2 when he saves you and you get to play as him shortly, It always put a big dumb smile on my face. He obviously wasn’t the first Mickey ever, but he was the best in my opinion. I just can’t enjoy Bret Iwan’s performance as him in the slightest. No disrespect to the guy, his voice just doesn’t work compared to Allwine.
I agree with your point, making a perfect video game is harder than it looks, especially with getting perfect voice actors. You have to work with what you got
Oh hell yeah dude, while it wouldn't capture the gameplay of kingdom hearts, it would be infinitely more fun. At least for the bosses. If done on regular encounters though, I could see it getting old, but at least card collecting could be a good incentive, maybe the level up system would give some neat perks like more life points and active and passive abilities for use in the duel? maybe sonic blade could be something that allows your monster to attack three times, at the cost of some of your cards.
@@zaxentothegreedy7816 I feel like they could do it like the Paper Mario games, where all encounters are turn-based and battles with regular enemies would be fairly quick. The card game doesn't have to be that deep either.
Easily the best part of this game is the new story and characters. Axel makes an immediate impression and quickly becomes a fan favorite character. The other Organisation characters are memorable and have personalities instead of being generic baddies. Namine is a tragic character, who brings out a level of depth in Riku Replica.
If only they elaborated on the human counterparts of the Organization, like they showed designs on how they wanted them to look and act in some cutscenes of other games, like Axel looks like Crow, Siax, and Xaldin look way different too but they scraped the idea I call Roxas, Xemnas, and Namine true nobodies for that reason
I do think the gba version is the better of the two. I think most of the mechanics and card systems are really made for the semi side scroller combat of the gba game.
Definately. Played the heck out of the gba version and the spreadsheets alone make nostalgia heartbreak. The ps2 version is too much KH1 looking not to be a partly clone. Gba felt authentic and less boring.
I definitely felt this too when 90% of my strike raid sleights would completely miss because the enemy is flailing 20 feet above and around me >_< maybe I was doing it wrong but.. surely I'm not alone in this lol
Fleer Ultra They're probably longer. KH1 and KH2 are both longer due to the size of the disc. The PS4 version has very quick load times though, since the game installs to the hard drive.
The way Chain of Memories handles memory loss is way more interesting than flat out amnesia plots we get in stories nowadays. Would be cool if more games take the Chain of Memories approach to it.
I think amnesia used right is what you get in stories like KOTOR and Gunnm, where it's less a resource to explain to the audience what any character living in the world should know, and it's more a way to have both a backstory to unfold and a chance to be reborn through redemption as a new person or to double down on the things you did prior. I'm not sure exactly what COM does so well, to me it seemed to just repeat itself about "forgetting to remember... But then what Sora was rememebring, not at the beginning, mind you but by the last third, were false memories so... What the heck?"
When I first played it this year I legit felt uneasy, with how much it reminded me of how dementia slowly attacks the memory and the like, I know a lot of people think Sora is too gullible in this game but I think it was managed really dang well. He's not falling for somebody's tricks because he's dumb enough to believe lies, it's because his memory is being replaced with something else I definitely enjoyed myself a lot with the game, the Riku route did feel like a sour note, but I honestly did like the game a lot despite its flaws
actually if you pay attention to what the Chesire Cat says in wonderland he mentions that if you try to hard to remember your memory might lie to you and this is exactly what happens to Sora through out the game which I thought was a cool detail that they added
Yeah. Don't want to say that he's hating the game for no reason, but it looks like he just wanted to play the regular game, and not something with a different battle system.
Yeah, that's fine except it was still pointless because by that point, that was already just a retelling of "To lose is to find, and to find is to lose" or however it goes. We had already been told this kind of thing, but this was done so Alice could use it since Sora, Donald, and Goofy are too stupid to think that much. lol
You think sonic blade was broken? My guy, and anyone who is struggling with this game: unlock lethal frame. Use a bounty card in wonderland to get the stop card. I can't remember what the exact requirement is to use lethal frame, but essentially what it does is this: it's a long windup. But when it executes, it stops every enemy on the screen *including bosses*. This attack does so much damage to a single target, I'm talking about 1 and a half health bars. It's absolutely ridiculous
Never tried Lethal Frame (didn't get the stop card). I just used Strike Raid to stun the bosses and then used either Thrunder or Blizzard Raid right after.
My farming strategy was Mega Flare (mushu fire fire) as it hits the hole room and does a good chunk of damage. This was on the GBA however so idk how effective it is in the remake
Sonic Blade, Lethal Frame, Blizzard Raid. Fill your deck with weak Ars Arcanum filler cards (make sure you arrange your deck around your sleights and losing the first card of each sleight etc). Lastly, stock up on a few cures and elixirs. GG EZ.
being able to play as riku and actually using "the darkness" for a change was one of the best and most memorable kingdom hearts experiences for me ngl. having no prior knowledge, it was a very welcome surprise to come to after finishing sora's arc
This really rings wrong to me. There's no RNG in using the deck itself. There's no card draw. In fact, your power level before a fight is a very set and strict amount, and you have perfect control over what sleights you have avaiable. But oh yeah, obtaining cards is a piece of shit.
One thing I've always admired about this game's story is how it subverts the "hero's journey" formula by going out of its way to show Sora in a moment of weakness. When Sora said his friends are his power, turns out he meant it quite literally; as COM demonstrates that Sora absolutely *FALLS APART* without his friends. It's so rare to see Sora cynical and distrusting that it almost felt like he had been forcibly transformed into another person entirely. Then again, it's hard to get mad at him because this game fundamentally demonstrates that NOBODY in this series (not even the protagonists!) are above fault despite their good intentions. Ultimately, I think this speaks to the core message of the series Nomura tries so hard to get across: the idea that everyone has a light and dark side to their personality, and letting either one grow excessive is a bad thing. No one is below redemption, no one is above fault. ...It's just a shame you have to suffer through hours of recycled Disney filler and mediocre gameplay to get to it.
That is actually true. This is what the ending of reverse rebirth told us. When DIZ asked riku which path to take between light and darkness, he chose the middle. This must be one of my favorite scenes in the game. We all have done something bad, but that doesn't mean you are a bad person. That's why people ask for forgiveness every time they do something wrong. The ones who keep doing bad things or staying in darkness are the bad ones. That is what makes a human. It is not wrong that you can't be the kindest one of all. But you can be perfect. When the lights of a room are shut, it is your choice if you want to switch on the light or keep it dark . But that doesn't mean you will never switch off the lights again.
@@adamdavis1648 think of Master eraqus as an example he was so blinded by the light that he went out of his way to try and eliminate ventus for something he had no control over and then tera for trying to protect him. Xehanort was right when he said there must be a balance between the two in birth by sleep. The fact that there was an imbalance in the worlds and he was trying to create the x-blade, shows this (Even though it was handled kind of poorly). But if written better I definitely would enjoy a story where xehanort was morally gray and his main flaw was his ambition. Like if xehanort genuinely regretted attacking his friend and splitting ven in half and by some tragedy was forced to share a body with Terra, and xehanorts ambition is what caused Terra-nort to be obsessed with his research and committing the heinous acts he did that later carried on in his heartless and nobody halfs. I know I went off on a separate tangent it's just something that came to mind when I really thought about it.
Funny how i play for the 'disney filler' and drag trough the rest😂 like in 1, hollow bastion and end of the world felt like forever while the other worlds felt like fun, but everyone enjoys different things
Well...to explain why Mickey sounds bad, it's because his VA at the time (Wayne Allwine) had complications with diabetes and was dying of it. That was the mickey mouse VA for the past 30 years, but he was barely able to do it at that point.
Yeah, he managed to finish through 358/2 Days before he passed, and this sadly won't be the last case of voice actor death before your retrospectives are done.
So that's what Wayne Allwine died of. Took me a bit to get used to how Bret Iwan did the voice after he was given the role of Mickey Mouse, but I'm a fan of it now. I always thought it was neat how Wayne's wife, Russi Taylor, also voiced Minnie Mouse. Does anybody know if she's still doing the voice for her?
Yeah not making note of that or anything, just really blows that this series has had the misfortune of voice actor death for multiple characters, between Wayne Allwine, Leonard Nimoy and Christopher Lee. Been a sticking point in my mind lately from Dragonball Super, who lost the seiyuu for Bulma recently, as well.
Oof, sounds like your luck was so bad that you never got a Random Joker Card, either. Those cards conform to whatever value you use them for. RNGesus must've hated you during this playthrough.
@@tuxedocatproductions2665 Yeah the RNG can be straight garbage. I went through every room using a fair share of heartless, treasure, and Moodle map cards and still was missing well over half of the cards present in the game (a lot of them being attack cards)
I find the RNG comment fascinating. I've gone through Re: Chain of Memories about 3 times now, and I have NEVER had to grind. Not for necessary map cards, not for attack cards of certain values, nothing. That being said, you are absolutely correct, it IS all RNG. My point is that I find it interesting that the RNG was never a problem for me so I never thought about it that way. Now I'm curious, was I super lucky? Were you super unlucky? I was always under the impression that if you just fought most heartless in a room struck as many things as you could find for moogle points and put down one or two moogle rooms, 99% of the time you would have what you need. I'm really sorry it worked out like this and completely understand your frustration.
Based on the description of how he played at 8:32, I'm pretty sure he just didn't clear out the rooms. He probably ran from one keyroom to the next avoiding as many heartless as he could until he was forced to fight them to open up new doors. Tbh this explains A LOT of his criticisms
He also shows footage of opening a new room and spending a treasure card late in the game, and having no treasure rooms but a stack of 0s and it's like, oh this man probably spends every treasure and moogle room as soon as he gets it. Less fights to be able to run past, and also explains why he didn't have a blue 1 at the end. I also assume that they way he describes just spamming triangle through the majority of the game and not actively participating in normal fights, he never realized the al friend card was a munny making machine if you ever need it. When he showed footage of going back to grind in hollow bastion and not agrabah, that really screams something's off.
@@DaBoweh I guess the thing is that while it *is* rng dependent and one could argue softlocking yourself into grinding for potential hours just to open a door is an issue, that's also kind of the appeal. The levels themselves are pretty repetitive, most enjoyment comes from smart use of your cards. I got stuck on a few of the later boss fights for quite a while, playing the game on the hardest difficulty while also going for the *no continues* achievement. I rarely even bought moogle packs. Over the course of the whole game I used maybe 3 moogle rooms, cleaned out the shop twice. Didn't get anything particularly crazy I thought. Later on I ended up having to grind as I was stuck on one of the final riku bosses, but frankly it was my fault as I had realized I didn't use the treasure rooms at all and filled up an entire world with nothing but treasures and got underleveled and under-equipped. Besides that I still struggled on some bosses but never really had to grind, just threw different strategies I came up with until something started to give. I never really bothered with the sleights, really I almost wished I could turn some of them off even. Idk, just seems like it's a game you need to meet halfway I guess. It's easy to try and take an easy way out and then get annoyed when a tough boss stops your repetitive gameplay and forces you to actually learn and engage with the mechanics. Personally it ended up being one of the most engaging and satisfying combat systems to learn. Sure I could have just grinded for better cards and more hp but unless you let yourself fall far behind I don't think it's as necessary as this video portrays. I don't mean to try to discredit the whole video with a "git gud" argument but I feel there is more nuance to it than *You have to grind for rng drops or else you get nowhere. Also side note do people actually find the final boss hard? As someone that struggled with a good chunk of the end game bosses I shredded the final boss pretty much first try without using any sleights whatsoever.
I think the most compelling aspect of CoM (My experience is solely /w the GBA version btw) is the really cool approach to dungeon-crawling (since, in essence, every level is a dungeon crawl). The ability to strategically use certain cards to unlock doors and control what lies ahead is really cool, and I'd love to see another (better) game build on that idea.
I still find it not enjoyable and fustrating due to the fact that focusing on cards and on the battle at the same time is 10 times more complicated than leveling up spells and other attacks
I also think that it is an amazing game. People are just afraid of thinking these days when it comes to games. Hence why the debate about an easy mode in Dark Souls is always coming up once a new entry is announced...
The GBA versions will forever be the best version to me. So much nostalgia for me with the GBA version, remember coming home and playing it. The only Kingdom hearts game I’ve beaten more than once.
KingK, my good man, I love your videos. I find that you do a good job articulating what I already feel about a game and on that level I connect. You put great effort into the videos and it shows. I look forward to any of your videos because content from you is just a joy. ...that said, halfway through the video I wanted to grab you by the shoulders and shake you while screaming “IT’S PRONOUNCED ‘SLIGHT’ FOR FUCK’S SAKE, NOT ‘SLATE’!”
I really love this game's combat and the mechanic of the cards you use to open the doors actually affecting what you will face beyond it, about the combat, a "action cardgame" is something really unique and fun, just the limitless possibilities of decks and the creation of sleights made eveything so good, and honestly I don't care what people say, this game will always be awesome (and underrated).
Man, I have to entirely disagree. Ive never ran into a situation where my deck was so bad that I needed to do extra grinding. Theres a lot of options to pick from besides just sonic blade. I barely saw you use any magic sleights or summons, and you can shortcut to your 0. Why were you putting your 0 into sleights while complaining about not being able to break Vexen's attacks?
15:30 You also get cards from random drops when you destroy shit in rooms, and you can sell cards you don't want for more packs. So there's a _little_ more going one there.
The GBA version is lightyears ahead of the PS2 version IMO. It was so damn fun and difficult on the GBA. The PS2 version felt like a soulless cash grab, and was ridiculously tedious. The game did NOT translate to 3D well at all. I honestly feel like they should have just made it an “HD” sprite remake of the GBA style gameplay. It’s basically a side scroller beat-em-up with a unique battle mechanic. As far as the story goes… Namine is replaying Sora’s memories of the first KH, and rewriting them… it’s not for everyone, but I mean… it makes sense.
This game gets so much flack and lord knows it was my least favorite when I was younger, but after replaying it recently about a week ago (both Sora and Riku’s stories), I found myself actually enjoying it, probably since I was able to understand it a lot clearer and better than I previously did. People hate the RNG aspect of the cards but I actually enjoyed it. And I like that rather than just being “hey, spam X and you’ll probably win”, the cards give it more of a strategic sense of battle, which I fully came to appreciate. The introduction to the Organization (well in the GBA version at least they were) was also implemented really well. I agree with the sentiment about Marluxia and that’s why he grew to be one of my favorite antagonists. Also in my opinion, the story is one of if not the best in the series. Plus I love the unique music in the game (outside of the Disney worlds of course). I really feel they actually impact the scenes and fights in such a way that they work amazing for those fights and scenes. Overall, people hate the game, but I love it and think it’s pretty great.
Honestly, I was just so done with CoM by the time I finished Sora's story that I didn't even start Riku's. The game completely wore me out and broke me down that I just about cried when I beat it just out of relief moreso than anything sad actually happening. Not very many games get me to that point. The only other game that destroyed me the way CoM did was Bloodborne.
I spammed a deck with exclusively low values. I used the enemy/boss card that prevents your sleights from being broken and then used that one really powerful sleight that is for the sum 1-3 (I think). Then, after my first run through the deck, I used the enemy card that flips the scale so that my 1-3 cards are 7-9s. It got me through all of Sora's campaign.
As someone who's beaten Re:COM like 10 times in the last 3 years, Here are some ways I've found to make this (admittedly flawed) game more fun 1. SKIP EVERY DISNEY CUTSCENE I really have no disagreements with you here. The Disney stories in COM add almost nothing to the overall game, so once you start skipping them, the game becomes a much smoother experience in general. 2. NEVER LEVEL UP YOUR HP OR YOUR SLEIGHTS. I started doing this because I hated how I couldn't really control when different sleights were activated, but it also completely removes the Sonic Blade cheese and forces you to learn how to beat bosses without it. You might be surprised how well designed some of the boss fights are if it wasn't for that one sleight attack. Doing this also keeps you constantly engaged even in the heartless fights because enemies like the Defenders and the neo shadows can one hit you if you're not careful. 3. MANAGE YOUR MAP CARDS/STOCK UP ON MOOGLE AND ROULETTE ROOMS While I agree that the RNG for this game can be awful at times, it' doesn't have to be as bad as you make it sound. Consistently using roulette rooms and making sure you have as close to a complete range of map cards in every value as possible is how you avoid being forced to back track for specific values in specific colors. using at least 1 moogle room per world should also get you attack cards in every value. 4. GET ALL OF THE ITEMS IN EACH ROOM This is the only unavoidable annoying part of Re:COM. Emptying out every room you enter for all the possible rewards. Fight EVERY heartless, Hit EVERYTHING that rewards you with items. This might get a little repetitive, but its WAAAAYYY better than having to continually backtrack before the boss fights of each world. It sounds like you have no interest in replaying this game, and based on what you went through I don't blame you lol. But if you do ever try playing Re:COM again, I think you might actually enjoy yourself at least a little bit more if you do these things. Thanks for the dope video.
JWR I only played the gba version so i have to ask why should you never level HP? I get that it makes the game harder but i think in the later parts it wouldn't be hard , just frustrating .
Like I said in my first post, this game is unfortunately flawed and it becomes way too easy in later levels if you know how to play and your HP is too high. You'll basically never die past level 40. 1 of KingK's biggest complaints (and 1 I definitely agree with) is that the heartless battles have little to no excitement because they're too easy. They become the most boring and monotonous aspect of the game. Keeping your HP as low as possible forces you to stay on your toes in every battle, and thus, makes the game more engaging throughout. Certain boss fights may make you want to pull your hair out if you play the game this way, but that challenge forced me to learn the patterns and mechanics of each boss fight and it made me respect the game a lot more than i did before.
you basically summed up my second run of this game, minus the not using sleights thing. I used sleights but intentionally didn't use Sonic Blade because of how fugging OP it is.
Agree with this comment. I really, really struggled to get into Re:CoM at first, but when you get the hang of it you can easily enjoy the good parts and greatly minimise the bad. It's a shame that Riku's story is locked behind Sora's because IMO it does a much better job of showcasing how the card system was designed to work without sleight spamming or excessive grinding. You learn how to use the deck you're given surprisingly fast and suddenly the concept of reacting to enemies' cards and your own deck state doesn't seem like a pipe dream. And it feels great spinning that card wheel to break enemy attacks and set up on the fly sleights to well and truly outplay an opponent. I can't say I've ever run into a problem with map cards either, though I hear a lot of complaints about them. The game gives you a bunch of tools to fulfil specific requirements and with the smallest amount of planning you can ensure you are well stocked with everything you need without relying on farming RNG drops. (Though maybe if you don't realise roulette cards are NOT random - you can time them - you'd have more trouble.)
NabsterHax Yeah I feel like the people who hate this game just didn't get the complexities of it during their first play through. Even though I wouldn't say it's a great game, it's definitely much better than a lot of people think it is. Definitely better than 358 Days lol
Honestly I think there's a fundamental flaw with the card mechanic in battle in the first place, and it is this: it is a finite resource that can be easily rendered useless. I'm not talking about breaks. I'm talking about flying enemies and other such misses. Sora's ability to do any sort of aerial damage is worse in this game than in any other Kingdom Hearts game, but the enemy design did not compensate for that. He can't even really do an aerial combo and has to jump for every card he wants to use in air. This makes dark balls, wyverns, and musical heartless to be royal pains. And the end game is absolutely in love with all three of these. If we consider a normal card game (i'll use magic), the expending of resources ALWAYS results in its intended action. You play a card, the card plays out. The ONLY way that this doesn't happen is by interference from the opponent. THEY have to expend a resource to make your card fall flat. This, however, is not the case in CoM, where your card can fail to play out simply due to the enemy being a bit too high. Instead of Sora instantly jumping to be able to hit the enemy with his attack, he remains firmly planted on the ground. Something that doesn't even happen in other Kingdom Hearts games. In KH2, Sora will automatically do a rising attack if he attacks an airborne enemy. Not so in CoM. This is probably my biggest gripe with the combat system in the game.
28:27 I've never really gotten why people think that Sora's playthrough is a 20+ Hour romp. On my most recent playthrough (on Proud), I clocked in at about 13 Hours, 1 of those hours was grinding for the last Castle Oblivion Door. Yes, the Door issue is a thing, but in the 3+ runs of done of this game, it's never a huge issue until the end as long as you fight a decent amount of battles along the way. Like, I don't think this game is great, but I don't think it's bad either (I still think Days is the worst KH has to offer)
Andrew Kos At least for me, I ended up with 22 hours because I run through every room in every world regardless of my level and cards. Don't know if that makes a large difference but 15 - 20 hours sounds about average to me (especially if you're not just breaking the game).
I'm glad you stuck with this game despite the struggle. I know you were dying with this game for awhile, and even tho I do enjoy this game I agree that a lot of these elements make for a frustrating game. I hope some of my advice was helpful in the end.
This was a pretty good, well thought out video my man. I disagree with almost virtually everything you said, but hey, everyone has their own valid opinions! I am almost shocked out of all the things to gripe about, you didn't go into the utterly bland and lifeless map/room designs of the game. That is easily one of the biggest complaints I have about this title.
Based on what you said at 8:32, I'm guessing that you just ran from one room to the next, ignoring most of the heartless because you wanted to get to the next keyroom as soon as possible. This might seem as a good strategy, as it saves time and any time saved on a game you don't wanna play is time earned, but I believe that decision is the love it or hate it for this game. If you skip most heartless encounters, constantly going back to get the right cards to open that one door or getting just enough moogle points to afford lne more pack will feel like hell. You're constantly going away from the main story to do these boring things because you're forced to in order to proceed. But if you instead decide to clear out all the heartless in every room, the majority of your criticisms would probably go away. If you do this, not having the right map cards would never be a problem, you would always have enough cards and moogle points, your level would be significantly higher and better balanced, and most importantly your own understanding of the battle mechanics would improve significantly, as would your skill in using them. There wouldn't be any boring backtracking having to fight heartless after heartless, it would instead become this sort of routine which for me at lease actually became kinda soothing and meditative. It was the perfect thing for me to just calm down to and enjoy. I agree that the Disney plotlines are horrible, but the Organization makes up for that in spades. It is just THAT good. It introduces all these new characters amazingly well and it even shows you Twilight Town BEFORE Kingdom Hearts 2 (With what I believe to be the greatest version of Lazy Afternoons, maybe even the greatest piece of original music from any game). As a 15 year-old complete newcomer to this franchise I absolutely loved this game from beginning to end and I believe it to be by far the most underrated game ever. I think it has a lot more to offer than what people give it credit for, and I just had to leave my thoughts here.
Definitely agree, you kind of have to meet this game halfway. The bosses confronted his playstyle and he thought it was bad design. When in reality his playstyle was just mindless button mashing and rushing through major sections of the game without a second thought, which would end up just being a repetitive game at best but since the game actively punishes you for doing this it was both repetitive and extremely grindy on top of that.
The original GBA Chain of Memories is the definitive version of the game. There are many reasons why, but for me personally it had a uniquely odd and even creepy atmosphere.
I never played re:com, but as a kid I absolutely loved chain of memories. it was one of my all time favourite GBA games. I was completely blown away by portable kingdom hearts and the amazing pixel art (which I still believe to be the pinnacle of GBA graphics). I agree for the most part with all of your criticisms, but I think something about the old pixel art offsets it? it is so magical being in this world with this art and these characters that I'm able to look past it and enjoy it for what it is. I love chain of memories and I'd pop that fucker in any day.
I'm so glad you're doing this retrospective series because there's no way in hell I'm replaying all the KH games but I wanna remember them and how they actually stand up, and it's kinda disheartening to know CoM sucks a bit now cause I loved it at the time but damn looking at it now does it have some problems.
HeavyEyed that's because he completely forgot to mention about the enemy card effects mechanic which basically allows Sora to effortlessly beating every bosses, you don't need sonic blade to win this game, all you need are enemy cards such as Jafar or Hades, item, attack, magic cards and it's done. He just plain sucks at this game ( specifically in Sora's story ) the game gives you plenty of resources to effortlessly make your way to the top, and such resources are the enemy cards.
One of my fondest memories is of me and a friend rushing through this game from beginning to end in a night. It was bullshit and I have never been more mad at a game than then. You are right that this game is broken, the only reason it exists is because its the glue between 1 and 2
"Sonic blade breaks the game" Mega Flare would like a word as well. As soon as I discovered that one. Life was good. I was an unstoppable GOD. Good times
Honestly glad for a hot take on this. Playing through all the games in Steam's mega bundle, and I wasn't going to bother with Chain of Memories, but then changed my mind and gave it a chance. Wanted to 100% it, but I got to getting all the enemy cards...and just asked myself, why am I doing this to myself? I'll finish it out and play through Riku's story, but I'm happy to leave it on the shelf after that. Everything is just so out of balance that you are constantly tripping over flaws.
Okay, I'm going to say something and I'm going to come across as a jerk, but I don't mean to be. It's just how it is. You are clearly very bad at Chain of Memories. The complaints about the cards from the Moogle packs can be fixed as easy as saving beforehand. But maybe you think that's cheating? Very well then. The complaint at the end about spending over an hour for one specific Map Card blew my mind. It's as easy as using a roulette map card from the beginning and selecting the proper card. Would take five fights at the absolute maximum. Again, not trying to be a jerk, but it seems to me that most of your issues with the game were due primarily to a lack of thinking on your part. If you just walk through the game and take everything exactly as it comes to you without any sort of plan, then yeah the game is absolutely terrible.
My thoughts exactly. This video isn't a traditional retrospective, it's more of a video expressing his opinion on the game (mostly in a negative light based on his clearly blind 1st playthrough.)
Vlander I even mentioned people who think that's cheating. You could just as a easily farm moogle points in Agrabah. Also, saying that you have to do that to make it "bearable" is dramatic and greatly exaggerating what I said. Twisting my point doesn't discredit it. Just because you're bad at the game doesn't mean your complaints are credible.
I'm emulating the game on my 3DS, and I absolutely believe you would have enjoyed that version much more. (I'm one boss fight away from beating Sora's story). Yes, terrible decisions like rng map card drops for specific doors exist, but there are workarounds, like black mushrooms dropping blue cards for the infamous Blue 1. If more people played at the time, it would have a giant school yard presence of "did you know you could do x, y, and z?" Beyond that, the GBA version doesn't factor in the verticality that the remake introduces with moves like High Jump and Glide. It's much more manageable to just consider card breaks and simple dodges only. Furthermore, playing handheld makes save-scrubbing moogle stores more tolerable since you can do that mindlessly while watching a show or taking a ride somewhere. It's far from perfect, but it's also far better than the general public proclaims. I think the move is to play the GBA version, watch the HD cutscenes, and play 2 Final Mix to get proper 3D fights against all of the members. Edit: D'oh, last quick thing, the GBA version doesn't require spamming Sonic Blade the whole time. The variety of the other sleights is massive, like the one that completely banishes the opponent's cards for the rest of the fight, and Judgement.
Upon replaying the HD remix of RE:CoM, I found it much more enjoyable than the GBA. But maybe that's because I wasn't a 12 year old mashing out my cards. I think one major issue the game faces is that we've been playing a button masher from 1-2.8. Even BBS just added a triangle command that was 90% variants of Balloonra. This game isn't about mashing, but more strategy. Once I started REACTING to bosses instead of running at them, it was such a better experience. Instead of swinging at them, I'd let them swing at me. I'd wait for their sleights and counter with 0s and such. The game also comes with a built in "easy mode" if you abuse special command sleights, one of the main ones, like you said, being Sonic Blade (3 different attack cards for a total of 20-23). If you build your deck with these sleights in mind, it makes the game infinitely easier and rewards players for putting extra thought in to their decks, IE building a deck with totals of 20-23 with the cards arranged in such a way that you have a X, Y, Z card to trigger that sleight. I still think it's the black sheep of the series, and it can be said that this drastic departure was too far off the path, but I enjoyed the game for what it was.
I know this is old but this is my exact take on the game, while it may be my least favorite still, I actually enjoy the game now since I'm not literally just attacking at random
20:20 There's a shortcut button that allows you to jump to a card that you designate as the shortcut card. Once you designate the card as a shortcut, you can just press Down on the DPad to instantly jump to it. The game tells you this in the tutorials and controls. I do agree that Riku's mode is better than Sora's though. He's much more fun to play as (even though I got lucky with RNG in Sora's story).
I'm kind of split down the middle with this, I have a relatively strong attachment to this game because of nostalgia as well as the fact that the card based gameplay is somewhat fun and exciting if you don't rely on the obviously broken tactic of spamming Sonic Blade. I'm just going to say it now, there's tons of games with exploits, granted some of them are not quite so easily abuseable. On the subject of grinding, though its not a complete fix and that honestly bugs me, the Roulette Room was such a great addition. Once you have it, your room card grinding troubles are over, since you can obtain Roulette Room cards FROM Roulette Rooms. Alongside that, I don't know if you're aware or just forgot about it, but Aladdin can be used to grind Moogle Points SO much quicker than the original's jump/attack everything and hope for the best. When both are combined, so long as the luck of the battle cards earned smiles upon you, you can have a really positive time. I kinda like how this is the one Kingdom Hearts game where difficulty isn't necessarily based on level either, if you had the correct cards in your deck you could take on Marluxia at level 1 and STILL win. Granted other Kingdom Hearts games have the zero EXP bonus, but that's more a challenge for hardcore players, since though your attack power increases based on the enemy's power, your defense doesn't and its still way too easy to get killed. Chain of Memories' card break system means that you don't have to rely on dodging incredibly difficult attacks in order to stand a chance. Because of this, I enjoy how fast I can get through the game, through my own skill without feeling overly frustrated. Also it does bug me how you only mention Riku's story RIGHT at the end. I can see you hate this game but it does bug me that you were obviously dedicated right from the word go to tear into it viciously. I can understand with games that were poorly designed in every single aspect such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and games with no intention other than making money such as Battlefront 2, but the anger feels unwarranted when there was no malicious intent and at least some fun aspects of the game, again Riku's story. I can agree that it is a pain that Riku's story is hidden behind Sora's story, and the one thing they SHOULD have done was allowed you to choose either the straightforward and better designed Riku's story or the more open and sandbox oriented Sora story. I feel as though fans should be allowed to choose either, and the dedication to making things mandatory to unlock significant parts of a game does damage the overall quality of a lot of games, for example Sonic Adventure's forcing players to play as Big the Cat in order to see the story's conclusion. The biggest issues with a lot of games could be solved simply by making certain styles of play optional rather than mandatory and its very unfortunate that a lot of games, particularly those with multiple stories, REQUIRE players to be on board with all of them rather than being able to pick one and still have a complete experience. I think that's all I needed to say, I'm sorry if this comes across as rude and I'm definitely not used to defending games against the rants of others, I just wanted to make my own opinions known. As for which Kingdom Hearts game is my least favorite, yeah its Days. Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories may be broken, but at least if you avoid relying on broken techniques and take the game on as you choose to, there's some fun to be had with it. Days on the other hand as far as I can see is a real slog regardless of how you choose to play it. And at least the bosses, even the broken ones in Chain of Memories, don't have HP bars comparable to Yiazmat from Final Fantasy 12 and take well over 30 minutes to beat even IF you know what you're doing. I hope I've at least made some valid points here, and would be interested to know what you think to what I brought up.
Sonic Blade isn't the most viable option actually. It's the *easiest* option but not the most viable. The most viable options are Red Nocturne (enemy card that buffs fire spells) + Firaga spam and Blue Rhapsody (enemy card that buffs ice spells) + Blue Rhapsody spam. Firaga can clear any boss apart from Axel who is immune to fire damage. Blizzaga can clear heartless insanely quickly, especially more so than Sonic Blade, and is still a pretty solid choice for bosses. The spells are very cost effective and are easy to come by. You can attain the enemy cards mentioned in Traverse Town as well - the first world in the game. Sonic Blade is still a very useful Sleight throughout the game (even against Marluxia), but the damage it deals starts to wane by the time you get to the first Vexen fight.
tbh sonic blade is amateur hour. you wanna let basically any boss do nothing in the game? just spam lethal frame. You want to let the last boss do absolutely nothing? Make a mega flame / lethal frame deck. first phase spam mega flame. second phase spam lethal frame. use ether + potion to recycle. repeat. I know these cards can be hard to get but you can get them pretty easily by farming moogle points in agrabah, getting moogle rooms from the roulette rooms, and opening tons of rooms in castle oblivion or above. employing this strategy meant i didn't need to grind except towards the very end when I needed to unlock the mega flame sleight. I do agree riku's storyline is more interesting in terms of gameplay because you need to think about what the intention was behind the setup for each bossfight. But if you just want to slam through the end of soras stuff do the above.
I really like your videos :) The past couple of days i have watched most of the Zelda and Kh videos. I Like how elaborate they are and how you portray the good and the bad stuff in each game. Keep it up!
I wonder if SE realized how off-putting Chain of Memories and its fellow spinoffs are. It took me aaaaaaaages to try a KH game because of it. When you hear: -You have to play the spinoffs to make sense of the main plot, and the plots are polarizing -The spinoffs feature weird mechanics that are frustrating and unlike the main games, with a lot of rehashing and filler -You need a GBA, DS, 3DS, and PSP to play them all My reaction wasn't "Hmm, I'll investigate more on this and make a decision". It was "oh, that sounds terrible, I can write this whole franchise off". Only after the PS3 bundles and many quality TH-cam creators evangelizing the series, made me take a second look.
Edelweiss I find the spin offs besides the mobile game and 358/2 Days to have better gameplay than the main games. You actually have to strategize in the spin-offs instead of spamming attacks.
You can play all of them (excluding 358/2 Days and Re:Coded) on PS4 with Kingdom Hearts 1.5 & 2.5 ($50) and Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue ($60). Then just wait for Kingdom Hearts 3.
that was the pain of being a KH fan back in those days. Until I got my hands in emulators before the bundles, I only played I, II, Chain of Memories (for a bit) and the Re fully.
I...kinda see where you're coming from. I started the franchise with Chain of Memories because I only owned Nintendo consoles at the time. Needless to say, it only took a few hours to realize how unwise of a decision that was. Eventually, I was introduced to the franchise "properly" with KH2, and saw what all the fuss was about.
Tetsuya Nomura and Square Enix should've just made Re:Chain of Memories into a traditional Kingdom Hearts game. I've played it all the way to Marluxia's second phase before getting fucked over by the game's stupid card system. I just gave up and watched the ending on TH-cam. Might watch Riku's story later. Seriously, this game was a grind to get through. It fucking broke me. I might go back and beat it someday, but I just can't bring myself to finish it. That's how bad Re:Chain of Memories is. Dunno how the GBA version is, but that's my overall opinion on the PS2 version.
Great video! I really loved this game, it's as hard or as easy as you make it if you understand the card system. Find a powerful AoE spell allows you to clear mobs quickly (not Sonic Blade) to grind, against bosses sure you can spam Sonic Blade but you can also look at the stats of each keyblade and set them in the right spot so that you do silly damage with each strike, attack faster andrecover instantly, much easier and quicker than Sonic Blade spamming (add in Roxas enemy card to kill him in 3 basic combos I shit you not). Also put a 0 card on the bottom of your deck, you're most likely gonna be on the right side of the reload button 99% of the time so when you see and attack you need to break all you do is rotate your deck left twice and boom, or press the shortcut button. Also I personally have never had problems with map cards or finding good cards from the Moogle shop and I've beaten the game (GBA and remake) 4 times.
I think that the GBA version, not trying to be KH1 but CARDS probably gave the player more freedom strategically speaking, not having to worry about moving inside a 3D space.
while I didnt enjoy alot of the retreading of old martial its worth it for all those great org13 battles and story. Pretty much all the original assets made for this game are really good, namine and all that, Im pretty sure this is where the 13th struggle song first appeared from and that makes the soundtrack sooo good for a gba game
I remember liking the GBA version quite a lot. But that in the days where getting a game was a commitment. As in, once every month or 2, I got to pick out a game to get and hope it was fun enough to pass time. I definitely don't plan on revisiting it anytime soon.
Despite agreeing with most every point I will say I absolutely loved experimenting with the sleights and loved (finally) piecing together the story elements between KH1 and KH2 when I realised this game existed. Also I quite enjoyed the voice acted scenes with the organisation members.
+KingK dude I agree on almost everything you said but we can all agree that this review you made is not complete at all, you completely and totally forgot to mention the enemy card effects mechanic, which I hope you know are a mechanic of this game that can easily allow you to get the upper hand on every single bosses, for example Attack Bracer prevents your opponent to break ANY of your cards, 0 cards will NOT have any effects on you provided this enemy card effect is still in play. Also, using these enemy cards effects will allow you to effortlessly beating the game without using sonic blade a single time. YOU CANNOT MAKE A KH RETROSPECTIVE VIDEO AND FORGET TO TALK ABOUT THE MOST INTERESTING MECHANICS IN THE WHOLE GAME, GET YO SHIT TOGETHER DUDE.
28:51 he didn't forget about enemy cards when playing the game. His criticism about the combat still stands tho, I don't think the enemy cards make the system better in any meaningful way.
28:10 My own approach to Ansem also involved learning the deck layout, but it wasn’t so much through dueling as getting rid of weak cards through ineffective sleights so that the 9s would be closer together once I entered Dark mode.
Ill be honest the game picked up for me when I got to rikus story, soras story I didnt like much but Reverse rebirth changed the way I viewed Rechain for the better. Oh god I never noticed mickeys voice untill you pointed it out...
Microtransactions are NEVER ok. I understand the issue with RNG, believe me, I REALLY do, but being able to throw money at it should never be the answer. Could they have simply added shops between levels? Yeah. There's a lot that could've been done, but they couldn't do a lot. I do think Re:CoM could've added some quality of life changes, but it seems to me they were going for a 1 to 1 remake. That's why there's only one music file for cutscenes. That's why rooms are big and empty. Re:CoM is basically a GBA game made 3D. I think the GBA is a better experience because expectations won't be as high regarding things, so it won't impact opinions as negatively as the 3D one does. The other handheld KH games had the benefit of being ports, so less was changed.
"oh hey it's the cheshire cat! he spouts cryptic meaningless bullshit to you then disappears" literally 90% of the dialogue in the kingdom hearts series lmao
I've been consuming these retrospective videos one by one over the last couple of weeks, and I can say with certainty that it is not Sora, but KingK, who is the best boy. Thanks for putting together such well rounded, thought-provoking, investigations of some of my favorite games! I can't wait to see your videos for DDD and BBS.
Did nobody else notice when he was talking about Sonic blade that when he mentions it takes out a whole bar of HP it literally only took out half. And even at that just barely. There was one move that I remember in the GBA game that would take out three or four bars of health that required two item cards and a summon I think. And he's over here talking about how Sonic blade is broken.
Why would anyone bother to? Clearly you made up your mind about it and it’s your own opinion. Someone coming along and try changing your mind on it sounds like a complete waste of time
@@CommanderShepard-wq3wo I'm pretty late to this, but amen to this. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Re:Chain of Memories. Gameplay wise, it's my least favorite of the series. It's not because it has a card value system, I just found it kind of boring. The worlds felt uninteresting to travel through, and combat scenarios felt samey after a certain point, even with using different techniques and slights. I do like the boss fights and the story, though. I started out really enjoying it, but it slowly got worse and worse overtime. I do understand that it was originally a GBA game, but the experience for me just wasn't the best regardless. But I'm not going to mock others and say that they have shit taste just because they feel differently to me.
You made me rethink my feelings on Chain of Memories. I remember loving the GBA version when it first came out. A lot of that was just getting to see Sora and his friends in a "new" adventure while waiting for Kingdom Hearts 2. But part of it was a feeling that I really loved the combat system. I still contend that a 2D Kingdom Hearts game with full action mechanics instead of the card system would be a lot of fun if anyone made 2D action games anymore. But when the remake came out, I bounced off it pretty quickly. At the time I felt like I couldn't wrap my head around the card system in a 3D setting as well as I had on the Game Boy. But now I'm wondering if I'd just lucked out with my deck to the point where the games systems broke themselves for me originally, and without that luck the 2nd time I was left with frustration. BTW I've really been enjoying these videos, great work.
im not even interested in card games (i’ve only played a little bit of yugioh and pokemon tcg) and i absolutely love this game. its super fun once you learn the mechanics and when to use your high number cards to break the opponent’s cards.
29:48 Or you could use, I don't know... A JOKER card? Fills out any requirements other than a key card. So if you had a joker card at any point in the game and used it before this point, that's on YOU, not the game.
Holy garbagepants, you actually responded. Also, yeah, that's a fair point. There would be no way of knowing that something like that would happen later on in the game. My apologies if I came off as harsh in my original comment.
+KingK isn't it kinda obvious that, at some point in the game, you'd have to have huge requirements to get past a door? Like the last door? When boss doors, midgame, start requiring combinations of cards to equal a high amount, it's kinda predictable that a door would require 99
how about if you were unlucky enough to NEVER GET ONE, thus not even knowing they existed seriously i didn't get one until AFTER unlocking marluxia's room, like, gee thanks, i'm so glad i got that, it's not like it at all would've been useful for the card with FOUR REQUIREMENTS INCLUDING A 99 TOTAL awful fucking design
Hey, love your video! You didn't focus too much on any one detail, and managed to cover pretty much all aspects of the game and how they fit together. One tiny tiny nitpick is that you misused the Schrödinger's Cat analogy. You said that depending on your deck layout, they were either too easy or too hard, 'both existing simultaneously'. That's not simultaneous. That's different results based on different setups. Small nitpick. Otherwise, absolutely wonderful video!
It's interesting how every single last thing in this video has me responding with "but I like that..." I like the RNG that makes every playthrough unique, I like the bosses making you stop and think and punishing you if you brute forced the game, I like Vexen, I like the cutscene music (and the rest of it), I like the card system that requires timing and thinking ahead, I like rematches with characters where it's obvious they've stopped holding back, I like the simple progression. Even with unlucky card draws, Vexen is not that hard. I don't say this a lot, but git gud. Also that's a lot of premium cards there. You can only use those once so stacking a deck full of them is a good way to force yourself to reload constantly. I only put 3 tops in my deck.
Honestly never knew you could just sleight through the heartless fights. Granted it took forever to get a decent hi potion or elixir and the CP for it so I’d chance it.
Oh wow. I had no idea sleights were the way to go early in the game. I played the game by spamming sing attack cards paying attention to what my enemies were doing. Perhaps that's why I did okay with the first few boxes. I can't recall having trouble with the number spread so I must have gotten lucky. This combat system could have been WAY better regardless. Most card games have limitations on deck building. Really wish this one would have spend more time in the oven.
I found this video to be incredibly entertaining and well thought out. Chain of memories was actually my first kingdom hearts game, and while I finished KH2 before coming back to finish this one, it still holds a special place in my heart. But I understand a lot better why I had such a difficult time with it, being a 12 year old trying to understand THAT game play was hard. No wonder I didn't finish it until years later. I think what I loved most about it was having it on the go and just that I could play a kingdom hearts game in general (we didn't own a ps2 until almost the ps3 came out.) It's not my favorite of the kingdom hearts series, but it'll always have a soft spot for me. Thanks so much for sharing your viewpoint and thoughts, it was wonderful!
this game made so angry when i was little and growing up always thought I was just a dumb little kid that didn't know how to play back then and that's why I got stuck at a certain point and never beat the game lmao. After watching this I strongly believe that I was still a dumb kid buttttt also this game is bullshit lmao
The original game on the GameBoy was a nightmare to play. I was amazed that it could play cutscenes without spontaneously combusting. The PS2 is the definitive version but...real time card combat was a neat experimental concept but it should not be brought back. In addition, I actually did not really like Sora's original English voice acting in KH1. His delivery always sounded off like the voice actor was restricted to a specific range of volume and emotional intensity. It is hard for me to explain. The one in this game and onwards is better and fits Sora as a whole. However, it gives the illusion of Sora hitting vocal puberty off-screen. Riku's story in this game is magnitudes more interesting and fun than Sora's.
REGARDING MICKEY VA:
I was not under the impression that Mickey's voice actor was suffering from diabetes and was practically dying during the recording of the remake. Which makes me feel like a dick, but honestly I didn't know any better. I thought it was an entirely different actor they contracted. I truly do apologize.
I'm gonna keep the video up in its current form, because I do think they probably should have just found a different voice so the complaint stands, but not toward him. That sucks. He did a good Mickey for a long time.
Yeah, the first KH game that has Mickey's new (and current) VA is BBS. Mr. Allwine's last credited performance in the series was Days, though I have no idea if it's recycled audio or not.
OH SNAP I didn't know that either
Yeah its recycled, it was just grunts from KH2
They held auditions in 2009 , Nolan North came close to being the new Mickey but in the end Disney got someone from in-company rather than a freelance voice actor
Mathieu Leblanc Nolan North?! I'd love to see THAT!
About King Mickey's voice actor.... That is actually Wayne Allwine the main voice actor for Mickey at the time. But he was suffering from diabetes and this was when he was getting really sick. He died around a year later. So even though the voice is not his best, please understand this was at the time when his health was rapidly declining. Just wanted to clear the air.
😔
Wayne Allwine was beyond the best Mickey, especially in KH. Every time I heard him say “OH BOY” in KH2 when he saves you and you get to play as him shortly, It always put a big dumb smile on my face. He obviously wasn’t the first Mickey ever, but he was the best in my opinion. I just can’t enjoy Bret Iwan’s performance as him in the slightest. No disrespect to the guy, his voice just doesn’t work compared to Allwine.
@@OhFrittata "no disrespect, he just sounds awful"
not the worst tbh
I agree with your point, making a perfect video game is harder than it looks, especially with getting perfect voice actors. You have to work with what you got
"I'd enjoy this game more if it was structured like Yugioh
DRAW, GOOFY CARDO
DRAW, DONALD CARDO
DRAW, MICKEY CARDO"
Sees Somecallmejohnny reference*
Ah, i see you're a man of culture
Fucking hell yes bro
Oh hell yeah dude, while it wouldn't capture the gameplay of kingdom hearts, it would be infinitely more fun. At least for the bosses.
If done on regular encounters though, I could see it getting old, but at least card collecting could be a good incentive, maybe the level up system would give some neat perks like more life points and active and passive abilities for use in the duel? maybe sonic blade could be something that allows your monster to attack three times, at the cost of some of your cards.
ZERO CARDU
ZERO CARDU
ZERO CARDU
ZERO CARDU
@@zaxentothegreedy7816 I feel like they could do it like the Paper Mario games, where all encounters are turn-based and battles with regular enemies would be fairly quick. The card game doesn't have to be that deep either.
Easily the best part of this game is the new story and characters. Axel makes an immediate impression and quickly becomes a fan favorite character. The other Organisation characters are memorable and have personalities instead of being generic baddies. Namine is a tragic character, who brings out a level of depth in Riku Replica.
We got it memorized
@@lynlyn.lynnnn Commit it to memory.
If only they elaborated on the human counterparts of the Organization, like they showed designs on how they wanted them to look and act in some cutscenes of other games, like Axel looks like Crow, Siax, and Xaldin look way different too but they scraped the idea
I call Roxas, Xemnas, and Namine true nobodies for that reason
Even w/o Namine, Repliku already has depth as himself tho
@@sammowastaken Forgetnt
I do think the gba version is the better of the two. I think most of the mechanics and card systems are really made for the semi side scroller combat of the gba game.
Fortello this
Definately. Played the heck out of the gba version and the spreadsheets alone make nostalgia heartbreak. The ps2 version is too much KH1 looking not to be a partly clone. Gba felt authentic and less boring.
encounters also go by quicker, which really helps
I definitely felt this too when 90% of my strike raid sleights would completely miss because the enemy is flailing 20 feet above and around me >_< maybe I was doing it wrong but.. surely I'm not alone in this lol
Fleer Ultra They're probably longer. KH1 and KH2 are both longer due to the size of the disc. The PS4 version has very quick load times though, since the game installs to the hard drive.
The way Chain of Memories handles memory loss is way more interesting than flat out amnesia plots we get in stories nowadays. Would be cool if more games take the Chain of Memories approach to it.
I think amnesia used right is what you get in stories like KOTOR and Gunnm, where it's less a resource to explain to the audience what any character living in the world should know, and it's more a way to have both a backstory to unfold and a chance to be reborn through redemption as a new person or to double down on the things you did prior. I'm not sure exactly what COM does so well, to me it seemed to just repeat itself about "forgetting to remember... But then what Sora was rememebring, not at the beginning, mind you but by the last third, were false memories so... What the heck?"
When I first played it this year I legit felt uneasy, with how much it reminded me of how dementia slowly attacks the memory and the like, I know a lot of people think Sora is too gullible in this game but I think it was managed really dang well. He's not falling for somebody's tricks because he's dumb enough to believe lies, it's because his memory is being replaced with something else
I definitely enjoyed myself a lot with the game, the Riku route did feel like a sour note, but I honestly did like the game a lot despite its flaws
Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories? More like Kingdom Hearts: The perpetual Gaslighting.
big missed opportunity to call this a Re:trospective
Gabriel Mann damn
actually if you pay attention to what the Chesire Cat says in wonderland he mentions that if you try to hard to remember your memory might lie to you and this is exactly what happens to Sora through out the game which I thought was a cool detail that they added
Redbandit
Yeah, that was a bad example of the shitty Disney story usage. The Cheshire Cat was the one time it really applied to the story a bit.
Yeah. Don't want to say that he's hating the game for no reason, but it looks like he just wanted to play the regular game, and not something with a different battle system.
Richter WLK that's not the case because he enjoyed Riku's boss battles
@@Rihcterwilker I don't think it's a matter of not wanting a different battle system just that the battle system of CoM was bad.
Yeah, that's fine except it was still pointless because by that point, that was already just a retelling of "To lose is to find, and to find is to lose" or however it goes. We had already been told this kind of thing, but this was done so Alice could use it since Sora, Donald, and Goofy are too stupid to think that much. lol
You think sonic blade was broken? My guy, and anyone who is struggling with this game: unlock lethal frame. Use a bounty card in wonderland to get the stop card. I can't remember what the exact requirement is to use lethal frame, but essentially what it does is this: it's a long windup. But when it executes, it stops every enemy on the screen *including bosses*. This attack does so much damage to a single target, I'm talking about 1 and a half health bars. It's absolutely ridiculous
I used to love Lethal Frame! Yeah I know it was cheap and broken but it looked so cool and even at 16/17, I was such a kid on the inside!
Never tried Lethal Frame (didn't get the stop card). I just used Strike Raid to stun the bosses and then used either Thrunder or Blizzard Raid right after.
My farming strategy was Mega Flare (mushu fire fire) as it hits the hole room and does a good chunk of damage. This was on the GBA however so idk how effective it is in the remake
Lethal Frame didn't work well on the first boss battle with Marluxia, spamming Sonic Blade was way better.
Sonic Blade, Lethal Frame, Blizzard Raid. Fill your deck with weak Ars Arcanum filler cards (make sure you arrange your deck around your sleights and losing the first card of each sleight etc). Lastly, stock up on a few cures and elixirs. GG EZ.
SORA IS B E S T B O Y
Marluxia is B E S T V I L L A I N
DetectiveEthanaterSpiritOfBobbyFulbrightGamer That's a weird way to spell Axel
False
being able to play as riku and actually using "the darkness" for a change was one of the best and most memorable kingdom hearts experiences for me ngl. having no prior knowledge, it was a very welcome surprise to come to after finishing sora's arc
*I T ' S A L L B A S E D O N R N G*
This really rings wrong to me. There's no RNG in using the deck itself. There's no card draw. In fact, your power level before a fight is a very set and strict amount, and you have perfect control over what sleights you have avaiable.
But oh yeah, obtaining cards is a piece of shit.
I mean, I was just quoting the video lmao. I'm completely indifferent to this game
Is RNG really a bad Mechanic in games vs Grinding?
Maybe the real Chain of Memories is the friends we forgot about along they way
ALWAYS HAS BEEN 👉💥
One thing I've always admired about this game's story is how it subverts the "hero's journey" formula by going out of its way to show Sora in a moment of weakness. When Sora said his friends are his power, turns out he meant it quite literally; as COM demonstrates that Sora absolutely *FALLS APART* without his friends. It's so rare to see Sora cynical and distrusting that it almost felt like he had been forcibly transformed into another person entirely. Then again, it's hard to get mad at him because this game fundamentally demonstrates that NOBODY in this series (not even the protagonists!) are above fault despite their good intentions.
Ultimately, I think this speaks to the core message of the series Nomura tries so hard to get across: the idea that everyone has a light and dark side to their personality, and letting either one grow excessive is a bad thing. No one is below redemption, no one is above fault.
...It's just a shame you have to suffer through hours of recycled Disney filler and mediocre gameplay to get to it.
That is actually well said, and I personally feel it is as vital as this video to keep in mind when looking at this game
That is actually true. This is what the ending of reverse rebirth told us. When DIZ asked riku which path to take between light and darkness, he chose the middle. This must be one of my favorite scenes in the game. We all have done something bad, but that doesn't mean you are a bad person. That's why people ask for forgiveness every time they do something wrong. The ones who keep doing bad things or staying in darkness are the bad ones. That is what makes a human. It is not wrong that you can't be the kindest one of all. But you can be perfect. When the lights of a room are shut, it is your choice if you want to switch on the light or keep it dark . But that doesn't mean you will never switch off the lights again.
But how could your light side grow EXCESSIVELY? If it were possible to have only a light side and no dark one, wouldn't it be a good thing?
@@adamdavis1648 think of Master eraqus as an example he was so blinded by the light that he went out of his way to try and eliminate ventus for something he had no control over and then tera for trying to protect him.
Xehanort was right when he said there must be a balance between the two in birth by sleep. The fact that there was an imbalance in the worlds and he was trying to create the x-blade, shows this (Even though it was handled kind of poorly). But if written better I definitely would enjoy a story where xehanort was morally gray and his main flaw was his ambition.
Like if xehanort genuinely regretted attacking his friend and splitting ven in half and by some tragedy was forced to share a body with Terra, and xehanorts ambition is what caused Terra-nort to be obsessed with his research and committing the heinous acts he did that later carried on in his heartless and nobody halfs. I know I went off on a separate tangent it's just something that came to mind when I really thought about it.
Funny how i play for the 'disney filler' and drag trough the rest😂 like in 1, hollow bastion and end of the world felt like forever while the other worlds felt like fun, but everyone enjoys different things
On the GBA, I actually find it fun grinding to be so strong you plow through enemies. I even make sure to beat every enemy in a room
Well...to explain why Mickey sounds bad, it's because his VA at the time (Wayne Allwine) had complications with diabetes and was dying of it. That was the mickey mouse VA for the past 30 years, but he was barely able to do it at that point.
Well now I just feel bad
Yeah, he managed to finish through 358/2 Days before he passed, and this sadly won't be the last case of voice actor death before your retrospectives are done.
bladeworksmaster I know about Nimoy so
So that's what Wayne Allwine died of.
Took me a bit to get used to how Bret Iwan did the voice after he was given the role of Mickey Mouse, but I'm a fan of it now.
I always thought it was neat how Wayne's wife, Russi Taylor, also voiced Minnie Mouse. Does anybody know if she's still doing the voice for her?
Yeah not making note of that or anything, just really blows that this series has had the misfortune of voice actor death for multiple characters, between Wayne Allwine, Leonard Nimoy and Christopher Lee. Been a sticking point in my mind lately from Dragonball Super, who lost the seiyuu for Bulma recently, as well.
You know what sleight is more broken than sonic blade?
-Tornado for normal fights
-Lethal frame for boss fights
Oof, sounds like your luck was so bad that you never got a Random Joker Card, either. Those cards conform to whatever value you use them for. RNGesus must've hated you during this playthrough.
I usually end up with 5-10 in my runs
i only got ONE random joker card, 30 hours in near the end of riku's section, so yeah, the luck in this game sucks.
I have 9 right now, on like 1 day of gameplay. Running out of room thinking about getting rid of some.
@@tuxedocatproductions2665 Yeah the RNG can be straight garbage. I went through every room using a fair share of heartless, treasure, and Moodle map cards and still was missing well over half of the cards present in the game (a lot of them being attack cards)
I'm definitely the minority when I say that I actually enjoy 'Re:Chain of Memories' in spite of its obvious flaws
Yeah, I actually enjoy the game as well. I personally like the mindless grind and collecting aspects of the game lol
I actually really like re:chain, it's one of my favourite KH games lol
@@BelodyEpic Honestly, same. Definitely top 5
Honestly this game gets better evert time I play it
It is an great game for sure!
Chain of Memories is incredible. Nothing better than breaking opponents 27 with a 0.
Hell yeah.Makes you feel like a rich kid flexing on some peasants.
Chain of Memories is a gem! It is one of my favorite Kingdom Hearts game. The story of the Organization was so amazing!
"Come out ansem i can smell you"
"It's the smell of darkness"
“Don’t bullshit me”
I felt so much internal rage in that line
I find the RNG comment fascinating. I've gone through Re: Chain of Memories about 3 times now, and I have NEVER had to grind. Not for necessary map cards, not for attack cards of certain values, nothing. That being said, you are absolutely correct, it IS all RNG. My point is that I find it interesting that the RNG was never a problem for me so I never thought about it that way. Now I'm curious, was I super lucky? Were you super unlucky? I was always under the impression that if you just fought most heartless in a room struck as many things as you could find for moogle points and put down one or two moogle rooms, 99% of the time you would have what you need. I'm really sorry it worked out like this and completely understand your frustration.
I had to grind like a mother fucker for map cards in the GBA game
If you consistently get rid of your duplicate map cards once you reach 99 map cards, you will almost never have a map card issue.
Based on the description of how he played at 8:32, I'm pretty sure he just didn't clear out the rooms. He probably ran from one keyroom to the next avoiding as many heartless as he could until he was forced to fight them to open up new doors. Tbh this explains A LOT of his criticisms
He also shows footage of opening a new room and spending a treasure card late in the game, and having no treasure rooms but a stack of 0s and it's like, oh this man probably spends every treasure and moogle room as soon as he gets it. Less fights to be able to run past, and also explains why he didn't have a blue 1 at the end.
I also assume that they way he describes just spamming triangle through the majority of the game and not actively participating in normal fights, he never realized the al friend card was a munny making machine if you ever need it. When he showed footage of going back to grind in hollow bastion and not agrabah, that really screams something's off.
@@DaBoweh I guess the thing is that while it *is* rng dependent and one could argue softlocking yourself into grinding for potential hours just to open a door is an issue, that's also kind of the appeal. The levels themselves are pretty repetitive, most enjoyment comes from smart use of your cards. I got stuck on a few of the later boss fights for quite a while, playing the game on the hardest difficulty while also going for the *no continues* achievement. I rarely even bought moogle packs. Over the course of the whole game I used maybe 3 moogle rooms, cleaned out the shop twice. Didn't get anything particularly crazy I thought. Later on I ended up having to grind as I was stuck on one of the final riku bosses, but frankly it was my fault as I had realized I didn't use the treasure rooms at all and filled up an entire world with nothing but treasures and got underleveled and under-equipped.
Besides that I still struggled on some bosses but never really had to grind, just threw different strategies I came up with until something started to give. I never really bothered with the sleights, really I almost wished I could turn some of them off even.
Idk, just seems like it's a game you need to meet halfway I guess. It's easy to try and take an easy way out and then get annoyed when a tough boss stops your repetitive gameplay and forces you to actually learn and engage with the mechanics. Personally it ended up being one of the most engaging and satisfying combat systems to learn. Sure I could have just grinded for better cards and more hp but unless you let yourself fall far behind I don't think it's as necessary as this video portrays. I don't mean to try to discredit the whole video with a "git gud" argument but I feel there is more nuance to it than *You have to grind for rng drops or else you get nowhere.
Also side note do people actually find the final boss hard? As someone that struggled with a good chunk of the end game bosses I shredded the final boss pretty much first try without using any sleights whatsoever.
I think the most compelling aspect of CoM (My experience is solely /w the GBA version btw) is the really cool approach to dungeon-crawling (since, in essence, every level is a dungeon crawl). The ability to strategically use certain cards to unlock doors and control what lies ahead is really cool, and I'd love to see another (better) game build on that idea.
I loved Re: CoM because of the learning curve. Once you learn the cards it's amazing and a challenge.
"Learning curve"
lol
I still find it not enjoyable and fustrating due to the fact that focusing on cards and on the battle at the same time is 10 times more complicated than leveling up spells and other attacks
Challenge? Ever hear of lethal frame?
I also think that it is an amazing game. People are just afraid of thinking these days when it comes to games. Hence why the debate about an easy mode in Dark Souls is always coming up once a new entry is announced...
@@TimmysohnLP It's not a matter of thinking, it's just that not everyone can adjust to the system a game like Re:COM demands.
2:58 Oh Ventus...
Made me chuckle
Agreed and he Almost spoiler it.
Wait what?
Of all the places.... I guess Heartless are monsters too.
Looks like you didn't learn about the shortcut button. Can't wait to see the rest of your KH vids tho
The GBA versions will forever be the best version to me. So much nostalgia for me with the GBA version, remember coming home and playing it. The only Kingdom hearts game I’ve beaten more than once.
KingK, my good man, I love your videos. I find that you do a good job articulating what I already feel about a game and on that level I connect. You put great effort into the videos and it shows. I look forward to any of your videos because content from you is just a joy.
...that said, halfway through the video I wanted to grab you by the shoulders and shake you while screaming “IT’S PRONOUNCED ‘SLIGHT’ FOR FUCK’S SAKE, NOT ‘SLATE’!”
I blame English. Can't blame people for pronouncing it "slate" when the spelling of the word literally has "eight" in it.
I really love this game's combat and the mechanic of the cards you use to open the doors actually affecting what you will face beyond it, about the combat, a "action cardgame" is something really unique and fun, just the limitless possibilities of decks and the creation of sleights made eveything so good, and honestly I don't care what people say, this game will always be awesome (and underrated).
Man, I have to entirely disagree. Ive never ran into a situation where my deck was so bad that I needed to do extra grinding. Theres a lot of options to pick from besides just sonic blade. I barely saw you use any magic sleights or summons, and you can shortcut to your 0. Why were you putting your 0 into sleights while complaining about not being able to break Vexen's attacks?
He does this a lot, doesn't change strategies or his playstyle just gets pissed at the game for not letting him win
For the Organization Battles: In the GBA version, IIRC they actually did get significantly tougher with each new battle.
All except for Vexen, as far as I remember. When I played, he was such a pushover even in his last fight. R.I.P freaky scientist man.
I love how you keep on mentioning that Sora is the best boy... more people need to repeat that...
15:30
You also get cards from random drops when you destroy shit in rooms, and you can sell cards you don't want for more packs. So there's a _little_ more going one there.
The GBA version is lightyears ahead of the PS2 version IMO. It was so damn fun and difficult on the GBA.
The PS2 version felt like a soulless cash grab, and was ridiculously tedious. The game did NOT translate to 3D well at all. I honestly feel like they should have just made it an “HD” sprite remake of the GBA style gameplay. It’s basically a side scroller beat-em-up with a unique battle mechanic.
As far as the story goes… Namine is replaying Sora’s memories of the first KH, and rewriting them… it’s not for everyone, but I mean… it makes sense.
This game gets so much flack and lord knows it was my least favorite when I was younger, but after replaying it recently about a week ago (both Sora and Riku’s stories), I found myself actually enjoying it, probably since I was able to understand it a lot clearer and better than I previously did. People hate the RNG aspect of the cards but I actually enjoyed it. And I like that rather than just being “hey, spam X and you’ll probably win”, the cards give it more of a strategic sense of battle, which I fully came to appreciate. The introduction to the Organization (well in the GBA version at least they were) was also implemented really well. I agree with the sentiment about Marluxia and that’s why he grew to be one of my favorite antagonists. Also in my opinion, the story is one of if not the best in the series. Plus I love the unique music in the game (outside of the Disney worlds of course). I really feel they actually impact the scenes and fights in such a way that they work amazing for those fights and scenes. Overall, people hate the game, but I love it and think it’s pretty great.
2:56 "at this point sora had 4 *cough* uh 3 wait did I say 3 I mean 2 hearts."
Honestly, I was just so done with CoM by the time I finished Sora's story that I didn't even start Riku's. The game completely wore me out and broke me down that I just about cried when I beat it just out of relief moreso than anything sad actually happening. Not very many games get me to that point. The only other game that destroyed me the way CoM did was Bloodborne.
I spammed a deck with exclusively low values. I used the enemy/boss card that prevents your sleights from being broken and then used that one really powerful sleight that is for the sum 1-3 (I think). Then, after my first run through the deck, I used the enemy card that flips the scale so that my 1-3 cards are 7-9s. It got me through all of Sora's campaign.
That's actually super smart, I would not have thought to do that.
Genius
"Yes I've played 358 Days..."
Oh no. That's my favourite game.
As someone who's beaten Re:COM like 10 times in the last 3 years, Here are some ways I've found to make this (admittedly flawed) game more fun
1. SKIP EVERY DISNEY CUTSCENE
I really have no disagreements with you here. The Disney stories in COM add almost nothing to the overall game, so once you start skipping them, the game becomes a much smoother experience in general.
2. NEVER LEVEL UP YOUR HP OR YOUR SLEIGHTS.
I started doing this because I hated how I couldn't really control when different sleights were activated, but it also completely removes the Sonic Blade cheese and forces you to learn how to beat bosses without it. You might be surprised how well designed some of the boss fights are if it wasn't for that one sleight attack. Doing this also keeps you constantly engaged even in the heartless fights because enemies like the Defenders and the neo shadows can one hit you if you're not careful.
3. MANAGE YOUR MAP CARDS/STOCK UP ON MOOGLE AND ROULETTE ROOMS
While I agree that the RNG for this game can be awful at times, it' doesn't have to be as bad as you make it sound. Consistently using roulette rooms and making sure you have as close to a complete range of map cards in every value as possible is how you avoid being forced to back track for specific values in specific colors. using at least 1 moogle room per world should also get you attack cards in every value.
4. GET ALL OF THE ITEMS IN EACH ROOM
This is the only unavoidable annoying part of Re:COM. Emptying out every room you enter for all the possible rewards. Fight EVERY heartless, Hit EVERYTHING that rewards you with items. This might get a little repetitive, but its WAAAAYYY better than having to continually backtrack before the boss fights of each world.
It sounds like you have no interest in replaying this game, and based on what you went through I don't blame you lol. But if you do ever try playing Re:COM again, I think you might actually enjoy yourself at least a little bit more if you do these things.
Thanks for the dope video.
JWR I only played the gba version so i have to ask why should you never level HP? I get that it makes the game harder but i think in the later parts it wouldn't be hard , just frustrating .
Like I said in my first post, this game is unfortunately flawed and it becomes way too easy in later levels if you know how to play and your HP is too high. You'll basically never die past level 40.
1 of KingK's biggest complaints (and 1 I definitely agree with) is that the heartless battles have little to no excitement because they're too easy. They become the most boring and monotonous aspect of the game. Keeping your HP as low as possible forces you to stay on your toes in every battle, and thus, makes the game more engaging throughout.
Certain boss fights may make you want to pull your hair out if you play the game this way, but that challenge forced me to learn the patterns and mechanics of each boss fight and it made me respect the game a lot more than i did before.
you basically summed up my second run of this game, minus the not using sleights thing. I used sleights but intentionally didn't use Sonic Blade because of how fugging OP it is.
Agree with this comment. I really, really struggled to get into Re:CoM at first, but when you get the hang of it you can easily enjoy the good parts and greatly minimise the bad.
It's a shame that Riku's story is locked behind Sora's because IMO it does a much better job of showcasing how the card system was designed to work without sleight spamming or excessive grinding. You learn how to use the deck you're given surprisingly fast and suddenly the concept of reacting to enemies' cards and your own deck state doesn't seem like a pipe dream. And it feels great spinning that card wheel to break enemy attacks and set up on the fly sleights to well and truly outplay an opponent.
I can't say I've ever run into a problem with map cards either, though I hear a lot of complaints about them. The game gives you a bunch of tools to fulfil specific requirements and with the smallest amount of planning you can ensure you are well stocked with everything you need without relying on farming RNG drops. (Though maybe if you don't realise roulette cards are NOT random - you can time them - you'd have more trouble.)
NabsterHax Yeah I feel like the people who hate this game just didn't get the complexities of it during their first play through.
Even though I wouldn't say it's a great game, it's definitely much better than a lot of people think it is. Definitely better than 358 Days lol
Honestly I think there's a fundamental flaw with the card mechanic in battle in the first place, and it is this: it is a finite resource that can be easily rendered useless. I'm not talking about breaks. I'm talking about flying enemies and other such misses. Sora's ability to do any sort of aerial damage is worse in this game than in any other Kingdom Hearts game, but the enemy design did not compensate for that. He can't even really do an aerial combo and has to jump for every card he wants to use in air. This makes dark balls, wyverns, and musical heartless to be royal pains. And the end game is absolutely in love with all three of these. If we consider a normal card game (i'll use magic), the expending of resources ALWAYS results in its intended action. You play a card, the card plays out. The ONLY way that this doesn't happen is by interference from the opponent. THEY have to expend a resource to make your card fall flat. This, however, is not the case in CoM, where your card can fail to play out simply due to the enemy being a bit too high. Instead of Sora instantly jumping to be able to hit the enemy with his attack, he remains firmly planted on the ground. Something that doesn't even happen in other Kingdom Hearts games. In KH2, Sora will automatically do a rising attack if he attacks an airborne enemy. Not so in CoM. This is probably my biggest gripe with the combat system in the game.
After playing 2 and 3, it's so strange coming back to a time where Sora used his sword once in 2 hours
28:27 I've never really gotten why people think that Sora's playthrough is a 20+ Hour romp. On my most recent playthrough (on Proud), I clocked in at about 13 Hours, 1 of those hours was grinding for the last Castle Oblivion Door. Yes, the Door issue is a thing, but in the 3+ runs of done of this game, it's never a huge issue until the end as long as you fight a decent amount of battles along the way. Like, I don't think this game is great, but I don't think it's bad either (I still think Days is the worst KH has to offer)
Andrew Kos because that's what my total runtime was
Andrew Kos
At least for me, I ended up with 22 hours because I run through every room in every world regardless of my level and cards. Don't know if that makes a large difference but 15 - 20 hours sounds about average to me (especially if you're not just breaking the game).
Oh it does, trust me. The best way to tackle areas like Twilight Town and Castle Oblivion is to just use Blue Cards to skip the stupidly buff enemies
That’s probably because you’ve played it before. Nobody wants to rush through a game on their first playthrough.
I'm glad you stuck with this game despite the struggle. I know you were dying with this game for awhile, and even tho I do enjoy this game I agree that a lot of these elements make for a frustrating game. I hope some of my advice was helpful in the end.
This was a pretty good, well thought out video my man. I disagree with almost virtually everything you said, but hey, everyone has their own valid opinions! I am almost shocked out of all the things to gripe about, you didn't go into the utterly bland and lifeless map/room designs of the game. That is easily one of the biggest complaints I have about this title.
Absolutely fantastic retrospective, but the pronunciation of "sleight" killed me a little more on the inside every time I heard it lol
I really like this game. The card mechanic is fun to me and I love the story development that connects the two main games.
Based on what you said at 8:32, I'm guessing that you just ran from one room to the next, ignoring most of the heartless because you wanted to get to the next keyroom as soon as possible. This might seem as a good strategy, as it saves time and any time saved on a game you don't wanna play is time earned, but I believe that decision is the love it or hate it for this game.
If you skip most heartless encounters, constantly going back to get the right cards to open that one door or getting just enough moogle points to afford lne more pack will feel like hell. You're constantly going away from the main story to do these boring things because you're forced to in order to proceed. But if you instead decide to clear out all the heartless in every room, the majority of your criticisms would probably go away. If you do this, not having the right map cards would never be a problem, you would always have enough cards and moogle points, your level would be significantly higher and better balanced, and most importantly your own understanding of the battle mechanics would improve significantly, as would your skill in using them. There wouldn't be any boring backtracking having to fight heartless after heartless, it would instead become this sort of routine which for me at lease actually became kinda soothing and meditative. It was the perfect thing for me to just calm down to and enjoy.
I agree that the Disney plotlines are horrible, but the Organization makes up for that in spades. It is just THAT good. It introduces all these new characters amazingly well and it even shows you Twilight Town BEFORE Kingdom Hearts 2 (With what I believe to be the greatest version of Lazy Afternoons, maybe even the greatest piece of original music from any game).
As a 15 year-old complete newcomer to this franchise I absolutely loved this game from beginning to end and I believe it to be by far the most underrated game ever. I think it has a lot more to offer than what people give it credit for, and I just had to leave my thoughts here.
Definitely agree, you kind of have to meet this game halfway. The bosses confronted his playstyle and he thought it was bad design. When in reality his playstyle was just mindless button mashing and rushing through major sections of the game without a second thought, which would end up just being a repetitive game at best but since the game actively punishes you for doing this it was both repetitive and extremely grindy on top of that.
xD I love your editing when it comes to the same background music over and over, great video dude, love your retrospectives :)
The original GBA Chain of Memories is the definitive version of the game.
There are many reasons why, but for me personally it had a uniquely odd and even creepy atmosphere.
I love how at 5:58 Riku is literally laying on the floor in the background with his eyes and mouth wide open
I never played re:com, but as a kid I absolutely loved chain of memories. it was one of my all time favourite GBA games. I was completely blown away by portable kingdom hearts and the amazing pixel art (which I still believe to be the pinnacle of GBA graphics).
I agree for the most part with all of your criticisms, but I think something about the old pixel art offsets it? it is so magical being in this world with this art and these characters that I'm able to look past it and enjoy it for what it is.
I love chain of memories and I'd pop that fucker in any day.
I'm so glad you're doing this retrospective series because there's no way in hell I'm replaying all the KH games but I wanna remember them and how they actually stand up, and it's kinda disheartening to know CoM sucks a bit now cause I loved it at the time but damn looking at it now does it have some problems.
HeavyEyed that's because he completely forgot to mention about the enemy card effects mechanic which basically allows Sora to effortlessly beating every bosses, you don't need sonic blade to win this game, all you need are enemy cards such as Jafar or Hades, item, attack, magic cards and it's done. He just plain sucks at this game ( specifically in Sora's story ) the game gives you plenty of resources to effortlessly make your way to the top, and such resources are the enemy cards.
he also compares this shit to complicated games today. This game is fucking great.
yeah I hate to admit fred is kind of right. especially if you watch no slight +no damage runs you ll see the mechanics are great if you know it
One of my fondest memories is of me and a friend rushing through this game from beginning to end in a night. It was bullshit and I have never been more mad at a game than then. You are right that this game is broken, the only reason it exists is because its the glue between 1 and 2
As frustrating as Re:CoM was, it did teach me how to approach combat in the other games far more strategically.
"Sonic blade breaks the game"
Mega Flare would like a word as well.
As soon as I discovered that one. Life was good. I was an unstoppable GOD.
Good times
Lethal Frame, Tornado...
Granted, I play Re:Chain more than the original at this point.
Honestly glad for a hot take on this. Playing through all the games in Steam's mega bundle, and I wasn't going to bother with Chain of Memories, but then changed my mind and gave it a chance. Wanted to 100% it, but I got to getting all the enemy cards...and just asked myself, why am I doing this to myself? I'll finish it out and play through Riku's story, but I'm happy to leave it on the shelf after that. Everything is just so out of balance that you are constantly tripping over flaws.
Okay, I'm going to say something and I'm going to come across as a jerk, but I don't mean to be. It's just how it is.
You are clearly very bad at Chain of Memories.
The complaints about the cards from the Moogle packs can be fixed as easy as saving beforehand. But maybe you think that's cheating? Very well then. The complaint at the end about spending over an hour for one specific Map Card blew my mind. It's as easy as using a roulette map card from the beginning and selecting the proper card. Would take five fights at the absolute maximum.
Again, not trying to be a jerk, but it seems to me that most of your issues with the game were due primarily to a lack of thinking on your part. If you just walk through the game and take everything exactly as it comes to you without any sort of plan, then yeah the game is absolutely terrible.
My thoughts exactly. This video isn't a traditional retrospective, it's more of a video expressing his opinion on the game (mostly in a negative light based on his clearly blind 1st playthrough.)
Yeah I agree it's pretty obvious he's mediocre at the title.
Vlander
There's nothing inherently wrong with save scumming, if it makes the game easier I say go for it.
Vlander I even mentioned people who think that's cheating. You could just as a easily farm moogle points in Agrabah.
Also, saying that you have to do that to make it "bearable" is dramatic and greatly exaggerating what I said.
Twisting my point doesn't discredit it. Just because you're bad at the game doesn't mean your complaints are credible.
okay, the game can still be easily broken.
I'm emulating the game on my 3DS, and I absolutely believe you would have enjoyed that version much more. (I'm one boss fight away from beating Sora's story).
Yes, terrible decisions like rng map card drops for specific doors exist, but there are workarounds, like black mushrooms dropping blue cards for the infamous Blue 1. If more people played at the time, it would have a giant school yard presence of "did you know you could do x, y, and z?"
Beyond that, the GBA version doesn't factor in the verticality that the remake introduces with moves like High Jump and Glide. It's much more manageable to just consider card breaks and simple dodges only.
Furthermore, playing handheld makes save-scrubbing moogle stores more tolerable since you can do that mindlessly while watching a show or taking a ride somewhere.
It's far from perfect, but it's also far better than the general public proclaims. I think the move is to play the GBA version, watch the HD cutscenes, and play 2 Final Mix to get proper 3D fights against all of the members.
Edit: D'oh, last quick thing, the GBA version doesn't require spamming Sonic Blade the whole time. The variety of the other sleights is massive, like the one that completely banishes the opponent's cards for the rest of the fight, and Judgement.
Upon replaying the HD remix of RE:CoM, I found it much more enjoyable than the GBA. But maybe that's because I wasn't a 12 year old mashing out my cards. I think one major issue the game faces is that we've been playing a button masher from 1-2.8. Even BBS just added a triangle command that was 90% variants of Balloonra. This game isn't about mashing, but more strategy. Once I started REACTING to bosses instead of running at them, it was such a better experience. Instead of swinging at them, I'd let them swing at me. I'd wait for their sleights and counter with 0s and such. The game also comes with a built in "easy mode" if you abuse special command sleights, one of the main ones, like you said, being Sonic Blade (3 different attack cards for a total of 20-23). If you build your deck with these sleights in mind, it makes the game infinitely easier and rewards players for putting extra thought in to their decks, IE building a deck with totals of 20-23 with the cards arranged in such a way that you have a X, Y, Z card to trigger that sleight. I still think it's the black sheep of the series, and it can be said that this drastic departure was too far off the path, but I enjoyed the game for what it was.
I know this is old but this is my exact take on the game, while it may be my least favorite still, I actually enjoy the game now since I'm not literally just attacking at random
@@litboy6917 Gotta stop them big moves with a 0
@@destroyermcw626 yeah, but I never have enough and when I do have them they usually are broken immediately
@@litboy6917 I just keep five 0s
@@destroyermcw626 There is something I learned is that once you use a 0, you can be staggered with a card break because it’s a 0.
20:20 There's a shortcut button that allows you to jump to a card that you designate as the shortcut card. Once you designate the card as a shortcut, you can just press Down on the DPad to instantly jump to it. The game tells you this in the tutorials and controls.
I do agree that Riku's mode is better than Sora's though. He's much more fun to play as (even though I got lucky with RNG in Sora's story).
I'm kind of split down the middle with this, I have a relatively strong attachment to this game because of nostalgia as well as the fact that the card based gameplay is somewhat fun and exciting if you don't rely on the obviously broken tactic of spamming Sonic Blade. I'm just going to say it now, there's tons of games with exploits, granted some of them are not quite so easily abuseable. On the subject of grinding, though its not a complete fix and that honestly bugs me, the Roulette Room was such a great addition. Once you have it, your room card grinding troubles are over, since you can obtain Roulette Room cards FROM Roulette Rooms. Alongside that, I don't know if you're aware or just forgot about it, but Aladdin can be used to grind Moogle Points SO much quicker than the original's jump/attack everything and hope for the best. When both are combined, so long as the luck of the battle cards earned smiles upon you, you can have a really positive time. I kinda like how this is the one Kingdom Hearts game where difficulty isn't necessarily based on level either, if you had the correct cards in your deck you could take on Marluxia at level 1 and STILL win. Granted other Kingdom Hearts games have the zero EXP bonus, but that's more a challenge for hardcore players, since though your attack power increases based on the enemy's power, your defense doesn't and its still way too easy to get killed. Chain of Memories' card break system means that you don't have to rely on dodging incredibly difficult attacks in order to stand a chance. Because of this, I enjoy how fast I can get through the game, through my own skill without feeling overly frustrated.
Also it does bug me how you only mention Riku's story RIGHT at the end. I can see you hate this game but it does bug me that you were obviously dedicated right from the word go to tear into it viciously. I can understand with games that were poorly designed in every single aspect such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and games with no intention other than making money such as Battlefront 2, but the anger feels unwarranted when there was no malicious intent and at least some fun aspects of the game, again Riku's story. I can agree that it is a pain that Riku's story is hidden behind Sora's story, and the one thing they SHOULD have done was allowed you to choose either the straightforward and better designed Riku's story or the more open and sandbox oriented Sora story. I feel as though fans should be allowed to choose either, and the dedication to making things mandatory to unlock significant parts of a game does damage the overall quality of a lot of games, for example Sonic Adventure's forcing players to play as Big the Cat in order to see the story's conclusion. The biggest issues with a lot of games could be solved simply by making certain styles of play optional rather than mandatory and its very unfortunate that a lot of games, particularly those with multiple stories, REQUIRE players to be on board with all of them rather than being able to pick one and still have a complete experience.
I think that's all I needed to say, I'm sorry if this comes across as rude and I'm definitely not used to defending games against the rants of others, I just wanted to make my own opinions known. As for which Kingdom Hearts game is my least favorite, yeah its Days. Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories may be broken, but at least if you avoid relying on broken techniques and take the game on as you choose to, there's some fun to be had with it. Days on the other hand as far as I can see is a real slog regardless of how you choose to play it. And at least the bosses, even the broken ones in Chain of Memories, don't have HP bars comparable to Yiazmat from Final Fantasy 12 and take well over 30 minutes to beat even IF you know what you're doing. I hope I've at least made some valid points here, and would be interested to know what you think to what I brought up.
Sonic Blade isn't the most viable option actually. It's the *easiest* option but not the most viable. The most viable options are Red Nocturne (enemy card that buffs fire spells) + Firaga spam and Blue Rhapsody (enemy card that buffs ice spells) + Blue Rhapsody spam. Firaga can clear any boss apart from Axel who is immune to fire damage. Blizzaga can clear heartless insanely quickly, especially more so than Sonic Blade, and is still a pretty solid choice for bosses. The spells are very cost effective and are easy to come by. You can attain the enemy cards mentioned in Traverse Town as well - the first world in the game. Sonic Blade is still a very useful Sleight throughout the game (even against Marluxia), but the damage it deals starts to wane by the time you get to the first Vexen fight.
tbh sonic blade is amateur hour. you wanna let basically any boss do nothing in the game? just spam lethal frame. You want to let the last boss do absolutely nothing? Make a mega flame / lethal frame deck. first phase spam mega flame. second phase spam lethal frame. use ether + potion to recycle. repeat.
I know these cards can be hard to get but you can get them pretty easily by farming moogle points in agrabah, getting moogle rooms from the roulette rooms, and opening tons of rooms in castle oblivion or above. employing this strategy meant i didn't need to grind except towards the very end when I needed to unlock the mega flame sleight.
I do agree riku's storyline is more interesting in terms of gameplay because you need to think about what the intention was behind the setup for each bossfight. But if you just want to slam through the end of soras stuff do the above.
Chain of memories is my favorite. Much more deep than your usual "hit x 3 times/repeat".
I really like your videos :) The past couple of days i have watched most of the Zelda and Kh videos. I Like how elaborate they are and how you portray the good and the bad stuff in each game. Keep it up!
I wonder if SE realized how off-putting Chain of Memories and its fellow spinoffs are. It took me aaaaaaaages to try a KH game because of it. When you hear:
-You have to play the spinoffs to make sense of the main plot, and the plots are polarizing
-The spinoffs feature weird mechanics that are frustrating and unlike the main games, with a lot of rehashing and filler
-You need a GBA, DS, 3DS, and PSP to play them all
My reaction wasn't "Hmm, I'll investigate more on this and make a decision". It was "oh, that sounds terrible, I can write this whole franchise off". Only after the PS3 bundles and many quality TH-cam creators evangelizing the series, made me take a second look.
Edelweiss I find the spin offs besides the mobile game and 358/2 Days to have better gameplay than the main games. You actually have to strategize in the spin-offs instead of spamming attacks.
You can play all of them (excluding 358/2 Days and Re:Coded) on PS4 with Kingdom Hearts 1.5 & 2.5 ($50) and Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue ($60). Then just wait for Kingdom Hearts 3.
that was the pain of being a KH fan back in those days. Until I got my hands in emulators before the bundles, I only played I, II, Chain of Memories (for a bit) and the Re fully.
I...kinda see where you're coming from. I started the franchise with Chain of Memories because I only owned Nintendo consoles at the time. Needless to say, it only took a few hours to realize how unwise of a decision that was. Eventually, I was introduced to the franchise "properly" with KH2, and saw what all the fuss was about.
hearing Vexen screaming in agony when sonic blading him for 3 minutes straight makes the hole shenanigans worth it every single time!
dont stop making these videos i love em!
Tetsuya Nomura and Square Enix should've just made Re:Chain of Memories into a traditional Kingdom Hearts game. I've played it all the way to Marluxia's second phase before getting fucked over by the game's stupid card system. I just gave up and watched the ending on TH-cam. Might watch Riku's story later. Seriously, this game was a grind to get through. It fucking broke me. I might go back and beat it someday, but I just can't bring myself to finish it. That's how bad Re:Chain of Memories is. Dunno how the GBA version is, but that's my overall opinion on the PS2 version.
Great video! I really loved this game, it's as hard or as easy as you make it if you understand the card system. Find a powerful AoE spell allows you to clear mobs quickly (not Sonic Blade) to grind, against bosses sure you can spam Sonic Blade but you can also look at the stats of each keyblade and set them in the right spot so that you do silly damage with each strike, attack faster andrecover instantly, much easier and quicker than Sonic Blade spamming (add in Roxas enemy card to kill him in 3 basic combos I shit you not). Also put a 0 card on the bottom of your deck, you're most likely gonna be on the right side of the reload button 99% of the time so when you see and attack you need to break all you do is rotate your deck left twice and boom, or press the shortcut button. Also I personally have never had problems with map cards or finding good cards from the Moogle shop and I've beaten the game (GBA and remake) 4 times.
I think that the GBA version, not trying to be KH1 but CARDS probably gave the player more freedom strategically speaking, not having to worry about moving inside a 3D space.
I mean you still have to dodge, and you arguably have less room to dodge
while I didnt enjoy alot of the retreading of old martial its worth it for all those great org13 battles and story. Pretty much all the original assets made for this game are really good, namine and all that, Im pretty sure this is where the 13th struggle song first appeared from and that makes the soundtrack sooo good for a gba game
So basically a rock paper scissors game (Attack, Block, or Dodge) is far more strategic than a numbers card game LUL
I remember liking the GBA version quite a lot. But that in the days where getting a game was a commitment. As in, once every month or 2, I got to pick out a game to get and hope it was fun enough to pass time. I definitely don't plan on revisiting it anytime soon.
"Why would you not just spam Sonic blade?" Because I'm too busy spamming Lethal Frame
Despite agreeing with most every point I will say I absolutely loved experimenting with the sleights and loved (finally) piecing together the story elements between KH1 and KH2 when I realised this game existed. Also I quite enjoyed the voice acted scenes with the organisation members.
“Come forth, Blue Eyes White Dragon.”
+KingK dude I agree on almost everything you said but we can all agree that this review you made is not complete at all, you completely and totally forgot to mention the enemy card effects mechanic, which I hope you know are a mechanic of this game that can easily allow you to get the upper hand on every single bosses, for example Attack Bracer prevents your opponent to break ANY of your cards, 0 cards will NOT have any effects on you provided this enemy card effect is still in play. Also, using these enemy cards effects will allow you to effortlessly beating the game without using sonic blade a single time.
YOU CANNOT MAKE A KH RETROSPECTIVE VIDEO AND FORGET TO TALK ABOUT THE MOST INTERESTING MECHANICS IN THE WHOLE GAME, GET YO SHIT TOGETHER DUDE.
28:51 he didn't forget about enemy cards when playing the game. His criticism about the combat still stands tho, I don't think the enemy cards make the system better in any meaningful way.
28:10 My own approach to Ansem also involved learning the deck layout, but it wasn’t so much through dueling as getting rid of weak cards through ineffective sleights so that the 9s would be closer together once I entered Dark mode.
Ill be honest the game picked up for me when I got to rikus story, soras story I didnt like much but Reverse rebirth changed the way I viewed Rechain for the better.
Oh god I never noticed mickeys voice untill you pointed it out...
Microtransactions are NEVER ok. I understand the issue with RNG, believe me, I REALLY do, but being able to throw money at it should never be the answer. Could they have simply added shops between levels? Yeah. There's a lot that could've been done, but they couldn't do a lot. I do think Re:CoM could've added some quality of life changes, but it seems to me they were going for a 1 to 1 remake. That's why there's only one music file for cutscenes. That's why rooms are big and empty. Re:CoM is basically a GBA game made 3D. I think the GBA is a better experience because expectations won't be as high regarding things, so it won't impact opinions as negatively as the 3D one does. The other handheld KH games had the benefit of being ports, so less was changed.
"oh hey it's the cheshire cat! he spouts cryptic meaningless bullshit to you then disappears"
literally 90% of the dialogue in the kingdom hearts series lmao
I've been consuming these retrospective videos one by one over the last
couple of weeks, and I can say with certainty that it is not Sora, but
KingK, who is the best boy. Thanks for putting together such well rounded,
thought-provoking, investigations of some of my favorite games! I can't
wait to see your videos for DDD and BBS.
I love its story but it began that handheld/console spread...
Spinning titles off a series is fine but dont make shit crucial.
Did nobody else notice when he was talking about Sonic blade that when he mentions it takes out a whole bar of HP it literally only took out half. And even at that just barely. There was one move that I remember in the GBA game that would take out three or four bars of health that required two item cards and a summon I think. And he's over here talking about how Sonic blade is broken.
Half of the final boss, which takes less damage
GBA Chain of Memories is still my favourite Kingdom Hearts game, change my mind.
Why would anyone bother to? Clearly you made up your mind about it and it’s your own opinion. Someone coming along and try changing your mind on it sounds like a complete waste of time
@@CommanderShepard-wq3wo I'm pretty late to this, but amen to this. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Re:Chain of Memories. Gameplay wise, it's my least favorite of the series. It's not because it has a card value system, I just found it kind of boring. The worlds felt uninteresting to travel through, and combat scenarios felt samey after a certain point, even with using different techniques and slights. I do like the boss fights and the story, though.
I started out really enjoying it, but it slowly got worse and worse overtime. I do understand that it was originally a GBA game, but the experience for me just wasn't the best regardless. But I'm not going to mock others and say that they have shit taste just because they feel differently to me.
You made me rethink my feelings on Chain of Memories. I remember loving the GBA version when it first came out. A lot of that was just getting to see Sora and his friends in a "new" adventure while waiting for Kingdom Hearts 2. But part of it was a feeling that I really loved the combat system. I still contend that a 2D Kingdom Hearts game with full action mechanics instead of the card system would be a lot of fun if anyone made 2D action games anymore.
But when the remake came out, I bounced off it pretty quickly. At the time I felt like I couldn't wrap my head around the card system in a 3D setting as well as I had on the Game Boy. But now I'm wondering if I'd just lucked out with my deck to the point where the games systems broke themselves for me originally, and without that luck the 2nd time I was left with frustration.
BTW I've really been enjoying these videos, great work.
I don't know why but this is truly my favorite Kingdom Hearts game maybe it's just because I'm a card fanatic but I thought it was so fun
im not even interested in card games (i’ve only played a little bit of yugioh and pokemon tcg) and i absolutely love this game. its super fun once you learn the mechanics and when to use your high number cards to break the opponent’s cards.
It really sounds like your problem with the combat system is that you cant power through it. You became over reliant on Sleights.
29:48
Or you could use, I don't know... A JOKER card?
Fills out any requirements other than a key card. So if you had a joker card at any point in the game and used it before this point, that's on YOU, not the game.
Oh yeah, because I knew the game would dick me over later if I didn't have a joker card.
Holy garbagepants, you actually responded.
Also, yeah, that's a fair point. There would be no way of knowing that something like that would happen later on in the game. My apologies if I came off as harsh in my original comment.
+KingK isn't it kinda obvious that, at some point in the game, you'd have to have huge requirements to get past a door? Like the last door? When boss doors, midgame, start requiring combinations of cards to equal a high amount, it's kinda predictable that a door would require 99
how about if you were unlucky enough to NEVER GET ONE, thus not even knowing they existed
seriously i didn't get one until AFTER unlocking marluxia's room, like, gee thanks, i'm so glad i got that, it's not like it at all would've been useful for the card with FOUR REQUIREMENTS INCLUDING A 99 TOTAL
awful fucking design
Hey, love your video! You didn't focus too much on any one detail, and managed to cover pretty much all aspects of the game and how they fit together.
One tiny tiny nitpick is that you misused the Schrödinger's Cat analogy. You said that depending on your deck layout, they were either too easy or too hard, 'both existing simultaneously'. That's not simultaneous. That's different results based on different setups. Small nitpick. Otherwise, absolutely wonderful video!
It's interesting how every single last thing in this video has me responding with "but I like that..." I like the RNG that makes every playthrough unique, I like the bosses making you stop and think and punishing you if you brute forced the game, I like Vexen, I like the cutscene music (and the rest of it), I like the card system that requires timing and thinking ahead, I like rematches with characters where it's obvious they've stopped holding back, I like the simple progression. Even with unlucky card draws, Vexen is not that hard. I don't say this a lot, but git gud. Also that's a lot of premium cards there. You can only use those once so stacking a deck full of them is a good way to force yourself to reload constantly. I only put 3 tops in my deck.
@@zero1zerolast393 Knowing when to use those wild cards so you have them for stuff like the final door helps.
Your content is so rad, so glad I found your channel!
Honestly never knew you could just sleight through the heartless fights. Granted it took forever to get a decent hi potion or elixir and the CP for it so I’d chance it.
Oh wow. I had no idea sleights were the way to go early in the game. I played the game by spamming sing attack cards paying attention to what my enemies were doing. Perhaps that's why I did okay with the first few boxes. I can't recall having trouble with the number spread so I must have gotten lucky.
This combat system could have been WAY better regardless.
Most card games have limitations on deck building. Really wish this one would have spend more time in the oven.
I tried playing Chains of memories.
After 12 hours or so, I gave up.
the card game sucks so much.
I found this video to be incredibly entertaining and well thought out. Chain of memories was actually my first kingdom hearts game, and while I finished KH2 before coming back to finish this one, it still holds a special place in my heart. But I understand a lot better why I had such a difficult time with it, being a 12 year old trying to understand THAT game play was hard. No wonder I didn't finish it until years later. I think what I loved most about it was having it on the go and just that I could play a kingdom hearts game in general (we didn't own a ps2 until almost the ps3 came out.) It's not my favorite of the kingdom hearts series, but it'll always have a soft spot for me. Thanks so much for sharing your viewpoint and thoughts, it was wonderful!
this game made so angry when i was little and growing up always thought I was just a dumb little kid that didn't know how to play back then and that's why I got stuck at a certain point and never beat the game lmao. After watching this I strongly believe that I was still a dumb kid buttttt also this game is bullshit lmao
The original game on the GameBoy was a nightmare to play. I was amazed that it could play cutscenes without spontaneously combusting. The PS2 is the definitive version but...real time card combat was a neat experimental concept but it should not be brought back. In addition, I actually did not really like Sora's original English voice acting in KH1. His delivery always sounded off like the voice actor was restricted to a specific range of volume and emotional intensity. It is hard for me to explain. The one in this game and onwards is better and fits Sora as a whole. However, it gives the illusion of Sora hitting vocal puberty off-screen.
Riku's story in this game is magnitudes more interesting and fun than Sora's.