'Kingdom Hearts - Re:Chain of Memories' - Flick Through Review
Well. If you hadn’t heard of Kingdom Hearts before, and the concept seemed like, just, a lot… you’re going to want to strap in. These days the series is best known for its story - clips of Disney characters clumsily delivering heaps of nonsensical exposition are admittedly very funny. But suppose that we can diagnose Kingdom Hearts with an overly complicated and frown-worthy narrative. In that case, it is in the second game in the series, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, that the symptoms are first obvious and the warning signs come seeping through. I set out wanting to play through the whole series - needless to say, Re:Chain of Memories has stopped me in my tracks and won’t let go.
Starting with the story: the events of Kingdom Hearts (that I had played through only a few days before starting Memories) have been wiped from the minds of most of the characters and Sora, Donald and Goofy have to make their way through a castle of memories to save a girl that Sora mysteriously forgot. This means elaborate sequences of characters re-establishing what they can remember, replaying whole sections of content from the first game and suffering through over-written dialogue with the newly introduced Organisation XIII. The story feels like more and more of Final Fantasy is bleeding into the Disney charm and tainting it - no longer do I get the warm fuzzy feeling when I learn that the Genie from Aladdin is on my team because now it means another review of my deck and then a nightmare of optimisation and organisation.
That is more of an issue with gameplay though. The movement still feels lovely and - when the game actually puts Sora in a Disney setting - they are gorgeous and detailed (I am playing the remastered version on a PS5). But combat has shifted from snappy, combo-focused action to a clunky real-time deck building game. If that sounds like it might not work, you have had more forethought than anyone involved in the creation of Memories. You have to run, jump and fly around the battlefield while keeping one eye on the bottom left of your screen to shuffle between cards and read values that could be useful or could ruin entire plans. Fights against normal enemies drag on for eternities, with load screens leading into and out of every encounter. Fights against bosses are either eye-rollingly slow and simple or infuriating and unfair.
For that reason, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories will be the first game on Chogg.Blog that I have not completed. Maybe one day when I find the right broken strategy or somebody who will beat the last few bosses in the Sora story for me appears. But I cannot recommend Memories, other than for curiosity satisfying reasons. I guess I could just move on, and play the next game in the series… but I think I'm just too stubborn!
Next time, a book!