Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, the 3D remake of the GBA title Chain of Memories, is a strange, disjointed, complex beast. It continues the story of Sora directly from where the first game left off, but with even more bizarre characters and plotlines, while introducing a new combat system that is cumbersome and unbalanced.

The story starts with Sora, Donald, and Goofy chasing Pluto for some news on the whereabouts of Mickey and Riku. Eventually, they end up finding a strange castle called Oblivion, where they start to gradually lose their memories as they explore the place in search of their friends.

Chain of Memories’ narrative continues to explore the same themes of the first game, but looking at them from a new angle. Kingdom Hearts’ universe, for example, seems to be built on the ambivalence of its most important elements, and here it is no different. When he first enters Castle Oblivion, Sora is told that “To find is to lose, and to lose is to find,” a warning that comes full circle during the climax, when the boy must make a difficult decision. Sora’s journey has him clinging to his most beloved memories in the hope that they do not fade away with the rest. Being Sora, though, he never backs away and stops his search for Riku, even knowing that he is risking not only his life but also his memories – and with them, his personality.

In a climactic scene in the first Kingdom Hearts, Sora claims that his friends are his power, but here he begins to understand that this power exists only because of his memories of them. Without remembering his friends, he has nothing. That is why they boldly claim that “No matter what happens, you won’t forget your friends”: Sora, Donald, and Goofy have to believe that everything is going to be okay because their friends are everything to them. And they are helplessly optimistic.

However, as they swiftly discover, things are not that simple. Friendships, even those that seem that will last forever, can one day fade away and be forgotten. Sora learns that the hard way, forgetting not only the places he has visited but even his most beloved friend, Kairi. In return, he begins to remember a girl he met in his childhood and who suddenly vanished one day. A girl he made a promise to, but one who he couldn’t remember before coming to Castle Oblivion. The mystery surrounding this girl quickly grows and becomes the protagonist’s obsession.

Sora believes he must find this girl no matter what, knowing deep down that his purpose in life is related to her. That makes him so certain of his righteousness that he inevitably becomes unbearable as a character. His struggles in Castle Oblivion show that a little bit of doubt can go a long way in protecting oneself from darkness. After all, it’s precisely because Sora is so certain that he must chase that mysterious girl, being shackled by his memories of her, that is easy for malicious forces to manipulate him.

The game’s antagonists, which are the members of a sinister organization, intend to make Sora their pawn so they can overthrow their leader. Unfortunately, this is the part where the narrative falters, since the Organization XIII, as it is called, is not fleshed out in any way, being instead surrounded by numerous questions and mysteries. That is a big problem because it makes their plan – the coup – devoid of any sense of urgency. The player doesn’t know what exactly these characters are fighting for, what it’s at stake, the reasons behind the plan to take control of the organization, and even if that is a good thing or not.

And if the narrative of the previous game also faltered when it came to the Disney worlds, Chain of Memories makes no efforts to correct that mistake. As in the first Kingdom Hearts, the story set in each world that Sora visits has no impact whatsoever on his journey. To make matters worse, here he revisits almost all of the worlds of the first game – almost all, because Tarzan’s is absent – meeting their inhabitants as if it was the first time since they don’t remember ever meeting Sora. These worlds are illusions created inside the castle with Sora’s memories, so their events are slightly different retellings of what happened in the first game. The main difference being the term “heart” being replaced by “memory”. In Halloween Town, for example, instead of Oogie stealing a fake heart, he steals a memory potion. It’s all useless and repetitive.

Chain of Memories’s gameplay, on the other hand, is completely different from the first game. Now, everything is structured around cards: they are used in battle and during exploration. Here, Sora doesn’t fight monsters directly on the map anymore but is instead transported to a battle arena. There, the combat happens in real-time, and to attack or use magic or even an item you have to select and use the appropriate card. Each one of these cards has a number, which is compared to the card that one of the monsters is using. The biggest card wins and breaks the action of the other party. To complicate things, the Zero card can break any other if used after them or be broke by any other card if used first, and you can stack three cards together in a combo to add their numbers and maybe trigger special attacks called “sleights. The excellent endgame theme has a title that symbolizes everything that this system is not: “Simple and Clean”.

During normal battles, players can forget about cards altogether and just spam the attack button that they will triumph nonetheless. Those fights are easy and quick affairs. The problem is the boss battles late in the game, which mark a gigantic difficulty spike compared to their respective levels. To start, during boss battles, players must not only choose the correct card but also be in constant movement in the arena, dodging attacks with a dodge roll while keeping an eye on the enemy cards:  in Re:Chain of Memories, multitasking is a must. Since the bosses attack relentlessly, players must also have come to the battle with their deck completely organized in sleights, because if they stop to select the cards mid-fight the game-over screen will certainly appear in a few instants. And to make matters worse, the first time you fight a boss, you usually don’t come with the deck prepared to the battle because you don’t know beforehand which magical attacks are effective against them and which are not. And the difficulty doesn’t stop there, since each boss is very different from the other in a lot of irritating ways.

For example, there is a boss called Larxene. She has a specific thunder attack that is very complicated to dodge because the camera angle doesn’t help, so you have to break it with a higher combo or with a zero. If you can’t do that in time, not only you take nearly one-third of your health in damage but also become stunned, vulnerable to her next attack. In an infuriating detail, even if you use a card that revives you, Larxene has an attack that doesn’t stop with your death, so you will die again without any chance of escaping her grasp. After all, if you died for that attack the first time, it means that you couldn’t break it then, so you won’t be able to do it now.

This is an everything-or-nothing combat system. You are either wiping the floor with your enemies or losing in a matter of second. Coming with the deck prepared in sleights, therefore, is a must in boss fights: without doing it, rage quitting is inevitable. Besides that, in normal battles, you can’t see the next card in your enemy’s deck – probably because the screen would have become cluttered –, which means that you can’t prepare a strategy, so spamming attacks is even more encouraged.

The exploration is also governed by cards. Each world has a set of rooms separated by doors and each door can only be opened with a card or group of cards acquired in battles. For example, a door may require a +seven red card to be unlocked, which means you can use red cards numbered seven to nine. The cards are divided by color, number, and type, as they dictate what that room will contain (a place with strong enemies, for example, or a save point). This design, however interesting, has a glaring flaw: the cards received after battles are random. In other words, if the room you want to enter needs a zero green card and you don’t have it, you’ll need to grind through countless enemies until the game decides to reward you with it. And this can happen often. There is a roulette room that facilitates the process, but it is still a cumbersome system. The lesson here is a simple one: tying RNG with main story progression is never, never a good idea.

Another problem is that the rooms are very similar to each other in shape and size – even between worlds, which only offer a pallet swap –, so the environments become very repetitive and uninspired after a while. “It’s just me or all the rooms are starting to look the same?” Sora asks one time, and it’s certainly not just him.

The game doesn’t end with Sora, however. After you beat the game, a very small campaign centered around Riku is unlocked. His story is much simpler than Sora’s, but better in certain aspects. Unlike Sora, for example, Riku has a clear character arc, in which he must deal with his past and fight the darkness that lies inside him. In the beginning, a mysterious voice keeps teasing him about the choices he’s made: “Behind you, you left family, friends, home – everything – all in pursuit of darkness.” Riku’s journey is one of self-discovery and acceptance. He starts to fight his dark side, but gradually begins to understand that human beings are not entirely good nor evil, but are ambivalent creatures, with a bit of both inside them. In a way, Riku is a much more complex character than Sora, not only because of his shifting narrative role – in one scene he’s the antagonist, but, in another, he’s a friend –, but also for being painted in grayer shades than his rival.

It’s a pity, then, that the Disney worlds are even more underutilized in his campaign than they are in Sora’s: they don’t have a plot whatsoever and you go quickly to the boss battle without any context – what doesn’t even make much sense, since Riku never fought those characters; it was Sora who did. But his campaign at least has some differences in the gameplay department to make things feel a bit fresh: you can’t customize your deck, having instead to deal with premade decks, which are different in each world; and you can activate “darkness mode” during battles by breaking enough enemy cards, which makes your attacks quicker and stronger and is the only way to use sleights.

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories not only has a strange title, but also a strange narrative and strange systems. It may be deeply flawed, but it’s also ambitious, complex, and very moving. In other words, it’s Kingdom Hearts.

February 27, 2019.