kingdom hearts chain of memories: storming a certain blue-haired keyblade master's castle
So last week on a whim I thought I'd start a playthrough of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories (the GBA version, because sprite Kingdom Hearts characters are totally awesome, okay?). I first played the game in December 2004 on my cousin's GBA, and I played it intermittently whenever I saw him over the next year. I never got further than the second Riku Replica battle in Riku's story mode, so I actually had never beaten the whole game before. But now, in an incredible short amount of time because I am a bored college student, I have finally completed the entire game. Yay.
It's a fun game, I'll have to admit. It goes by incredibly fast, especially when playing as Riku because he doesn't have all the dialogue in the Disney worlds. I'm also pretty sure I ended up getting myself overleveled for most of the game, so the game for the most part was a breeze, barring the battles with a certain silver-haired replica. Sora's playthrough became especially easy once I got myself a deck of mostly 8, 9, and 0 cards. Of course, the fact that I couldn't customize Riku's deck made some of his battles a lot harder, especially because of the lack of healing except for the Mickey summon card and the Oogie Boogie enemy card that only had available for the last two floors anyway. But nothing in the game was ridiculously hard. In fact, the most frustrating part of the game was finding a goddamn 1-value blue map card to access the second Axel battle in Castle Oblivion in Sora's story. At least that gave me an excuse to get Sora to very high levels, making the final battles against Marluxia laughably easy. For that matter, the last Ansem fight in Riku's story was surprisingly easy too due to me spamming Dark Firaga over and over again. (And Billy Zane screaming "SUBMIT!!!" over and over again in that battle? LOL. There's so much creepy rape subtext between Ansem and Riku.)
As for the story, it's the kind of thing where everything makes so much more sense after playing Kingdom Hearts II--who the Organization are and what they want, what's up with Namine, who DiZ is, etc. (Like there was a moment when Riku was speaking to Ansem in Twilight Town and he was suddenly like "You're not Ansem!" and it turned out to be DiZ... which becomes hilarious after you've played Kingdom Hearts II and find out that DiZ is actually the real Ansem, and the person who you thought was Ansem is actually Xehanort... who you find out in Birth By Sleep is actually a fusion of Master Xehanort and Terra... damn, this series is complicated). And after playing 358/2 Days, it's kind of funny to think that after Axel's done toying around with Sora, he goes right back to eating ice cream and having moments of Ho Yay with Sora's Nobody. And of course there's the fact that Birth By Sleep reveals that Aqua was actually the creator of Castle Oblivion, and she's keeping Ven safe in a room that only she can access. Which was probably a good idea, because otherwise Sora would probably end up finding it and being all "LOL WHO'S THIS BLOND KID? WHAT? I'M HOLDING ON TO HIS HEART? AND HE LOOKS JUST LIKE MY NOBODY WHO I HAVEN'T MET YET?"
But one thing that this game did for me is make me realize how awesome Riku is. He goes through so much development during his story, the cool kind of beginning to repent for the wrongs he did in the first game. I kind of see him as some kind of combination of Cecil and Kain from Final Fantasy IV. And of course he's awesome in 358/2 Days too. I think now Riku and Roxas are tied for spot #5 on my list of favorite Kingdom Hearts characters (behind Aqua, Axel, Xigbar/Braig, and Mickey). Because they are just made of awesome and are much better characters than Sora (sorry, Sora).
Now, onto the list of stuff regarding the game.
Favorite character (story): Riku (see above). And Axel deserves a special place on the list too, considering that this game was what made me an Axel fangirl almost six years ago.
Favorite character (gameplay): Sorry, Riku, Sora totally beats you out here, just because he has a customizable deck that can deal out consistent, non-randomized asskicking.
Favorite location: Twilight Town, which makes its first appearance here. Castle Oblivion itself is cool too.
Favorite method of totally annihilating enemies: Cloud summon cards with Sora (especially at the end of the game when I had four of them in my deck, valued at 6, 6, 8, and 9), and I also totally spammed Trinity Limit in every single random battle after arriving at the thirteenth floor. With Riku, all of his Dark Sleights were pretty awesome, but nothing beats using the Lexaeus enemy card to sometimes insta-kill enemies at the end of a combo. There's nothing more satisfying then watching an enemy disappear into nothingness as its EXP fall from the sky.
Character with the best lines: Hmm, there's no character with any stand-out awesome lines... so I'll have to say Axel only because of his "it's about time you gave me one hell of a show" line. Also Riku's statement at the end about taking the road to dawn was pretty badass.
Favorite music: "Namine", which is an awesome piece of character theme (especially the PS2 version, when there's a harp part in the background that sounds a bit like the Final Fantasy prelude). Some of the shorter scene pieces are nice too, like "Scent of Silence" and "La Pace."
Level that I completed the game: Level 75 with Sora and 55 with Riku. I'm pretty sure the reason that Sora is 20 levels higher is because it took me an incredibly long time to get that damn 1-value blue map card in Castle Oblivion.
I was going to post some screenshots, but I actually didn't take a lot. I thought I had one of Axel giving his "it's about time you gave me one hell of a show" line, but it disappeared for some reason. I'll just have to show my screenshots of Roxas at the end, just because I had no idea that Roxas showed up at the end of Chain of Memories until reading it on the Kingdom Hearts Wiki a few days ago.
Awww. I love him.
It's a fun game, I'll have to admit. It goes by incredibly fast, especially when playing as Riku because he doesn't have all the dialogue in the Disney worlds. I'm also pretty sure I ended up getting myself overleveled for most of the game, so the game for the most part was a breeze, barring the battles with a certain silver-haired replica. Sora's playthrough became especially easy once I got myself a deck of mostly 8, 9, and 0 cards. Of course, the fact that I couldn't customize Riku's deck made some of his battles a lot harder, especially because of the lack of healing except for the Mickey summon card and the Oogie Boogie enemy card that only had available for the last two floors anyway. But nothing in the game was ridiculously hard. In fact, the most frustrating part of the game was finding a goddamn 1-value blue map card to access the second Axel battle in Castle Oblivion in Sora's story. At least that gave me an excuse to get Sora to very high levels, making the final battles against Marluxia laughably easy. For that matter, the last Ansem fight in Riku's story was surprisingly easy too due to me spamming Dark Firaga over and over again. (And Billy Zane screaming "SUBMIT!!!" over and over again in that battle? LOL. There's so much creepy rape subtext between Ansem and Riku.)
As for the story, it's the kind of thing where everything makes so much more sense after playing Kingdom Hearts II--who the Organization are and what they want, what's up with Namine, who DiZ is, etc. (Like there was a moment when Riku was speaking to Ansem in Twilight Town and he was suddenly like "You're not Ansem!" and it turned out to be DiZ... which becomes hilarious after you've played Kingdom Hearts II and find out that DiZ is actually the real Ansem, and the person who you thought was Ansem is actually Xehanort... who you find out in Birth By Sleep is actually a fusion of Master Xehanort and Terra... damn, this series is complicated). And after playing 358/2 Days, it's kind of funny to think that after Axel's done toying around with Sora, he goes right back to eating ice cream and having moments of Ho Yay with Sora's Nobody. And of course there's the fact that Birth By Sleep reveals that Aqua was actually the creator of Castle Oblivion, and she's keeping Ven safe in a room that only she can access. Which was probably a good idea, because otherwise Sora would probably end up finding it and being all "LOL WHO'S THIS BLOND KID? WHAT? I'M HOLDING ON TO HIS HEART? AND HE LOOKS JUST LIKE MY NOBODY WHO I HAVEN'T MET YET?"
But one thing that this game did for me is make me realize how awesome Riku is. He goes through so much development during his story, the cool kind of beginning to repent for the wrongs he did in the first game. I kind of see him as some kind of combination of Cecil and Kain from Final Fantasy IV. And of course he's awesome in 358/2 Days too. I think now Riku and Roxas are tied for spot #5 on my list of favorite Kingdom Hearts characters (behind Aqua, Axel, Xigbar/Braig, and Mickey). Because they are just made of awesome and are much better characters than Sora (sorry, Sora).
Now, onto the list of stuff regarding the game.
Favorite character (story): Riku (see above). And Axel deserves a special place on the list too, considering that this game was what made me an Axel fangirl almost six years ago.
Favorite character (gameplay): Sorry, Riku, Sora totally beats you out here, just because he has a customizable deck that can deal out consistent, non-randomized asskicking.
Favorite location: Twilight Town, which makes its first appearance here. Castle Oblivion itself is cool too.
Favorite method of totally annihilating enemies: Cloud summon cards with Sora (especially at the end of the game when I had four of them in my deck, valued at 6, 6, 8, and 9), and I also totally spammed Trinity Limit in every single random battle after arriving at the thirteenth floor. With Riku, all of his Dark Sleights were pretty awesome, but nothing beats using the Lexaeus enemy card to sometimes insta-kill enemies at the end of a combo. There's nothing more satisfying then watching an enemy disappear into nothingness as its EXP fall from the sky.
Character with the best lines: Hmm, there's no character with any stand-out awesome lines... so I'll have to say Axel only because of his "it's about time you gave me one hell of a show" line. Also Riku's statement at the end about taking the road to dawn was pretty badass.
Favorite music: "Namine", which is an awesome piece of character theme (especially the PS2 version, when there's a harp part in the background that sounds a bit like the Final Fantasy prelude). Some of the shorter scene pieces are nice too, like "Scent of Silence" and "La Pace."
Level that I completed the game: Level 75 with Sora and 55 with Riku. I'm pretty sure the reason that Sora is 20 levels higher is because it took me an incredibly long time to get that damn 1-value blue map card in Castle Oblivion.
I was going to post some screenshots, but I actually didn't take a lot. I thought I had one of Axel giving his "it's about time you gave me one hell of a show" line, but it disappeared for some reason. I'll just have to show my screenshots of Roxas at the end, just because I had no idea that Roxas showed up at the end of Chain of Memories until reading it on the Kingdom Hearts Wiki a few days ago.
Awww. I love him.