Review: Kingdom Hearts: Re: Chain of Memories

MercFox1

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Jun 19, 2008
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These replies are really disappointing; it's like you guys just treated it like a deck of Bicycle playing cards and threw them together. No strategy, no foresight, nothing that would indicate you guys slowed down going into a battle to evaluate what you're doing.

In many ways, it takes even more skill to excel at Re:COM than KH1 or KH2. Susan brought up the point that you have to cycle through your deck to find a high-value card to break an opponent's card. Why in the world would you have to do card hunting? Place all your 0 attack cards at the exact end of the deck, and all your other attack cards at the beginning or middle. When you hold down the cycle key, your deck will automatically stop at the "Reload" option. It's only one click to the nearest ultimate breaker card (it'll stop those 27 Sleights which are pesky), and thus, it boils down to some thinking, some evasion, and not losing focus. The only place you don't get the option to exchange your cards around is the more difficult, yet optional Reverse/Rebirth mode.

Sleights are very powerful, are difficult to break by the enemy, and the only downside (loss of the first card) can be easily negated. Say you wanted to fire off 4 or 5 "Sonic Blades" (one of my favorites, other than Ragnarok, Trinity, or Omnislash); this sleight requires 3 different cards totaling 24-20, but you don't want to waste 9s or 8s on them. Fine, just organize your cards in groups of 3 like this: 3,9,9; 3,9,9; 4,9,8; 4,8,8; etc. At the immediate start of the battle, you can fire off an enemy card like Maleficent or Jafar, and chain 4 of your desired moves in rapid succession. The elimination of each of the first cards in the sleight leaves you with a perfectly ordered, high-power deck. If you so desire to revisit this strategy, pack a Hi-Potion and use it in a Cure-Cure-HiPotion sleight, which brings HP back as well as all the lost cards.

Everyone blames the card mechanic because it's not exactly tried-and-true, but the biggest problem is that no one can see how much potential there is in this mechanic. It's just boggling to see everyone blaming the cards, when the holder is to fault.
 

Nechti_Visara

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May 1, 2008
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You mentioned that the other two games might not be quite as frustrating, which I find to be incredibly untrue. In fact, Riku's battle against Zexion in Reverse/Rebirth is the most fun I've ever had playing a video game by myself. I lost like eight times, and it just kept getting more fun. (On the other hand, this could be because I'm so obsessed by the Organization that, in order to get people to believe me, I swear on the Proof of Existence.)

Also, the first Kingdom Hearts is far more frustrating, in my opinion. The entirety of the second one's a cakewalk compared even to the beginning half of the previous two.

Actually, I was surprised that Reverse/Rebirth wasn't even mentioned, because that really was what set the game apart that wasn't the incredibly frustrating card system (except for Wonderland, which kicked my butt into the next Tuesday). The only thing that was really bad was that your deck was done for you and you didn't have any magic cards, but getting The King as the helper with the addition of EPIC RIKU mode (as I call it) completely nullified any complaints I had about the lack of Cure cards.

My reply here is probably flawed because I never played it on the GBA, by the way.

(Also, the Re: in the title makes the word Re-chain, as in chaining again. It's sort of an allusion the the Final Mix status of the other two games. The memories had already been chained in the GBA game, so to speak, so they are chained again on the PS2.)
 

theunreliablecritic

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Jun 13, 2009
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unangbangkay said:
I think the "Re:" in this game's title is a Japanese truncation of "Rebirth". It sounds better than "Remake", at least, and I've seen its usage elsewhere, namely the second season of the Code Geass anime series. In it, the characters have a plan they've titled "Zero Re:quiem" (yes, with the colon), and given the symbolism in that usage (an explanation would be a spoiler), "Rebirth" seems appropriate.
re means remake, not rebirth
 

TrailerDrake

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Aug 26, 2009
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Ugh, the card system. They should have added the option to choose between the standard and the card based format.