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zdbztumble · 5 years

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“Chain of Memories” revisited

(NOTE: My only experience playing this game is with the remake for the PS2, and so all my comments, and all my memories, derive from that, not the GBA original.)

It’s been interesting, going through the Kingdom Hearts series again this year, to see lines of praise and criticism I wasn’t aware of before. In the case of Chain of Memories, I wasn’t aware of some of the objections made to this game’s story and gameplay. Apparently, it’s been faulted for abandoning the set-up at the end of KH I in favor of a completely new story, it established the series’ penchant for nonsensical mystery and needlessly convoluted plotting, and the gameplay is too divorced from the rest of the series.

I can’t say that I find the first and the third to be justified critiques. To begin with the third point, I really enjoy the card-based mechanic. It took me longer to get the hang of it this time than I remembered from my teenage years, but once I did, it was a lot of fun to play around with. If I have any complaints about the mechanic, it’s that the game becomes a little too easy once you unlock enough sleights and grow your deck to a certain size. By the time I reached the end of the second set of world cards, it was only boss battles that offered any real challenge. But I still enjoyed building decks and watching the sleight animation.

As for the idea that the game abandoned the set-up from KH I - I just can’t see that at all. It’s stated more than once that Sora and friends came to Castle Oblivion on the trail of Riku and King Mickey, and until Repliku is revealed as such, he feeds into their feelings about that search. This game was also produced when KH II was already announced, and was conceived of as an intermediary title; even if it had deviated wildly from the set-up at the end of KH I, this would have been the place to do it.

And that is something worth remembering when assessing CoM - the state of things at the time it was made. It’s easy to look over the entire series, with all its strange naming conventions, egregious retcons, and neglected and abandoned character lines, but when CoM was made, there was only the one game, and an upcoming sequel. To think of CoM as a side game, was appropriate at the time, even with the impact it would have on KH II’s story.

However - with that said, hindsight has not always been kind to CoM, because the game did set trends that would end up metastasizing and bringing the whole series down. It did indeed establish the precedent of teasing future titles and stories with vague allusions, set-up without a pay-off. In this case, with KH II on the way - and the fact that KH II did pay off the teasing in CoM - the mystery made for an effective element in the larger series. But efforts to replicate the success of that mystery in later titles were often abysmal. A very similar story goes for this game’s attempt to have its cake and eat it too with the question on whether Sora would ever remember Namine - KH II found a way to pull that off in a satisfying manner that preserved a bittersweet and sacrificial element, but other games could never duplicate that feat.

This game also started to demonstrate the pacing issues that later games would make far worse. One aspect of the pacing was out of the developers’ hands - the loss of the rights to Tarzan cost them a world, and by moving Halloweentown up to fill the empty slot in the first set of world cards and sticking the 100 Acre Wood into the second, that set of world cards feels light and rushed compared to the first. But there are other pacing problems within this game. The ratio of cutscenes to gameplay is often awkward, especially with the need to pass through two sets of scenes every time you move up one floor. The repetitive nature of these cutscenes, with stilted dialogue covering things the player already knows, also emerged here, in a more pronounced way than in KH I that would only grow and fester.

I also found some of the leaps of logic more of a strain on credulity here than in the first game. To complain about logic in Kingdom Hearts is always going to be a little ridiculous, I know, but the first game did manage a better internal logic, at least up until the very end. It was a fantasy world’s logic, well freed from many normal constraints, but it held up. Some of the moves here, from Goofy’s deductions about memories early in the game, to when Donald and Goofy do or don’t appear in cutscenes, to Sora’s assumptions when he offers to let Namine wipe his memories, just didn’t hold water even internally, and that’s another trend that would worsen with time.

And then...there’s the villains.

Organization XIII has always been better as a concept and a collective than broken down into its individual components IMO. In this game - where it was still just “the Organization” - that collective is never truly dealt with. Its plans and its threat are the tease, the shadowy image on the horizon that will ultimately be addressed in KH II, its only representation within the game being Axel and Vexen. The villains here are a renegade faction within the Organization, and that faction is essentially only two members, Marluxia and Larxene. And I have to be honest - they just don’t work for me.

Playing through KH I again this year led me to finally love and appreciate Riku as a character, but no such change of heart happened with these characters. Axel and Larxene remain utterly repellent to me. I get that Axel is meant to be smug, and Larxene’s meant to be a sadistic bitch, but such characters tread a very thin line between being effective and compelling antagonists that enhance a story, or being insufferable black holes that derail a story. Both fall firmly in the latter category IMO, and the only reason they don’t do more damage is because of their limited screen time. As for Marluxia - I was shocked, playing through this game again, how little screen time he has, and how limited the build-up to him is. Couple that with his non-existent personality, and I really can’t believe that this guy was brought back in KH III, let alone the greater lore. This, of course, marks another trend began in this title - underwhelming and/or detrimental antagonists in black cloaks given one too many monologues.

There are also issues unique to this game, and in some cases to the remake of it that I’ve played. Summons are much more hit and miss than in the first game (Donald and Genie are essentially worthless in my experience), and not having some of them available for most of the story in a given world can get frustrating when you want to play with them but the game moves so quickly due to the ease of combat. Line readings in cutscenes are often awkward, and Sora’s teenage voice, while unavoidable, is incredibly distracting.

And there is one criticism I’ve seen of this game’s story that I have to agree with: the lack of a role for the Disney worlds in the story. I don’t always agree with the way this criticism is put. The fact that none of those worlds and characters are really there, and are constructed from fragments of memory, put some limits on what agency they could have in the larger plot. And I don’t object out of hand to the fact that this turns a good chunk of the game into covering old territory; the level design, world-plot tweaks, and battle mechanic all make it a unique enough experience from KH I. But while some of the Disney worlds tie in thematically to the larger story (Halloweentown and Neverland in particular stood out on that point), there was a huge missed opportunity to tie them into the actual narrative.

Consider this possibility: in each Disney world, there is a fragment of Sora’s memory - his memories of his past, before the first game - that is unlocked by completing the world. These could give us some backstory on his life on Destiny Islands, show more of his friendships, and give more detail on Riku and Kairi’s character - for example, Alice tricking the Red Queen (an excellent scene and character beat, BTW) could trigger a memory of a time when Kairi displayed similar quick thinking, early in her friendship with Sora. As the game goes on, these unlocked memories would become more distorted, with Namine gradually worming into them - first as a figure on the periphery, then co-existing with Riku and Kairi in their childhood, then ultimately replacing Kairi. This idea already exists in the game through dialogue - some of it quite well-written - but this would have been far more impactful IMO, and expanded the lore of the series in the areas that actually deserve it.

Now - that’s a lot of negatives, and you may be thinking right now that I became disenchanted with CoM after this play-through. But in fact, I didn’t. As I said, the flaws it has that became trends aren’t nearly as ugly here as they would become, and the flaws it has unique to itself aren’t deal breakers. And this game has elements that are executed so well, that they make up for nearly all of these flaws, and turn this game into what I feel - at least at this point, with more games to revisit - is the best character piece in the series. And the character in question is none other than our hero, Sora.

To begin with - even more than replaying KH I, replaying CoM demonstrates how far Sora’s IQ has fallen in recent titles. The Sora of DDD and KH III would have been slack-jawed and buggy-eyed, constantly baffled by the nature of Castle Oblivion, throughout the game. This Sora catches on quickly to how these projections of memory and people work, which is quite welcome. As in KH I, he is still clearly a childlike teen with a lot of zest and optimism, but he isn’t incapable of getting down to business, and he’s realistically triggered by setbacks and trauma.

And boy, does he come in for trauma on this game. If other aspects of this game suffer in their pacing, the slow build to Sora’s disoriented, lost, and broken state of mind when the truth about Namine comes out is fantastic in this game. The way Namine is revealed over time plays a big role in that, even if the player can see it coming, but the timing on when Sora shifts gears is wonderfully placed, the dual memory moment being a highlight. When he breaks with Donald and Goofy, it feels truly earned, and that dovetails nicely into the Destiny Islands story material. Prior to this playthrough, I actually remembered Sora going even darker - for some reason, I thought he was the one to kill Vexen. But the grim, even ruthless, look on his face when he defeats Axel and finishes Marluxia are enough to sell that having his mind scrambled leaves Sora in a dark place. I daresay that the angry and fragmented person he becomes over the course of the game should have been the model for Roxas’s personality...but my unpopular thoughts on Roxas are best saved for after I replay KH II.

It’s the breaking of Sora’s mind, more than any scheme of Marluxia’s, that really drive the conflict in this story, and Namine’s role in that as the reluctant breaker turned savior is quite effective. I can’t say she’s at the top of my list of favorite characters from this series, but she is a unique and engaging presence, who I’ll have more to say about after replaying KH II. The role Repliku plays in the story is even better IMO, even if clustering all his material in the back half of the game seems a poor pacing decision. I don’t know whether this was intentional or not, but the sheer level of vindictiveness and hatred that Repliku expresses towards Sora, and the reactions that draws out of him, were a great way to indirectly express any lingering fears or doubts Sora might have developed about his friend after the events of KH I. (Though one must ask why the real Riku didn’t appear in Sora’s memories of Monstro or Neverland.)

Lastly, we come to Kairi, who plays a significant role in this game without ever actually appearing in it before a clip during the credits. That Kairi, and Namine, serve almost entirely as objects for the hero to save is unfortunate, as is the fact that Kairi is more intrinsically tied to the heart of this game’s story than she is KH III’s. But that said - at least she is relevant. I’ll also credit this game for, intentionally or not, showing how unhealthy a single-minded obsession on protecting and saving the “princess” can become.

Where Kairi’s role really comes home to roost is in this game introducing the phrase that Kairi is the most important person to Sora. That they were more than friends, and that they were bound together, was well-established in KH I, but the point is really driven home here, largely through Namine’s machinations but also in smaller details, such as the dialogue given over to the three friends on Destiny Islands. This side to their relationship is so stressed, and so central to this game, that I really can’t understand all the comments about KH III “finally” making it canon - Sora’s side of it, at least, has been so from Day 1 of this series.

The one missed note in this aspect of the plot is in the dialogue right before the final floor begins, discussing the fake memories. Just a word from Namine about how her fake memories held the power they did because they were built on truth, with herself grafted over Kairi, would have been nice. But even without that beat, it’s a wonderfully handled story element. I really can’t put into words how satisfying I find Sora’s arc in this game, or the fact that it actually is central to the game, the primary thread in its narrative, something that shouldn’t have to be remarked upon in a series with one central protagonist. For the strength of that arc, and the joy of the gameplay, I still give Chain of Memories high marks. It can’t compare to its predecessor for overall quality, but what strengths it has overpower so much else about it.

I suppose now I should revisit Reverse/Rebirth...the tax one has to pay in a proper re-visit before getting to KH II...bleh.

#z's crits #kingdom hearts #chain of memories #sora #critique #commentary #disney #square enix #kairi #riku

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