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A Novel Console
A Novel Console
Games and Stuff: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories with Eric Gess
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On this special episode of Games and Stuff, Chris is joined by Eric Gess from The Unlockables to get gaslight to oblivion by Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. They go over why the combat system works, how the story sets up the future of the series, and how the characters have to deal with such huge and heavy themes. Check out Eric's show in the link below!
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Hello, hello, welcome to another console, your weekly podcast, where we talk about books, games, food, and stuff that caught our attention of your week. And at this point, it might be bi-weekly. I don't fucking know. I don't know what's going on with the show. The show is growing and shrinking and doing all sorts of stuff all over the place. But uh today, like I promised a few days ago, we're talking Kingdom Hearts chain of memories for the Game Boy Advance. And of course, I had to bring on Eric Guess from The Unlockables since he is the authority on Kingdom Hearts, and he's the one that can tell me when I'm wrong, when I'm right, and when stuff is actually not supposed to be stuff that's happening, but I don't know because it's Kingdom Hearts. So here's Eric. Eric, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Chris, I'm doing amazing. Thank you so much for having me on. I love coming on your show. It's always a great time. I think this is like my third or fourth time being on, so it's very, very exciting. I must be doing something right because you keep asking me back. So I really, really appreciate it. And uh, authority might be a bit of a stretch. Uh, insanity, yeah. I'm the insanity on Kingdom Hearts, definitely. That is guaranteed. So, um, of course, whenever anybody in the community shines the old Kingdom Hearts spotlight up in the sky, I uh I am uh contractually obligated to come running. So uh it's awesome to be here and talk about uh this game specifically.
SPEAKER_01Sweet, sweet. No, I would have you on more if I actually did the podcast more and we both had more time.
SPEAKER_00So literally meet my show too. Like I same thing. I would have everybody on more if like my show was more than just at the point, it's just like I kind of feel like we're kindred spirits. It's just kind of like, yeah, I'll put something out there whenever I got fucking time. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Right. I've gotten a couple of review keys recently, and they're like, you need to make content for this. I'm like, I mean, I just wanted the free game, but I guess I can speak that just sounds like work. Right. Like I got the one that I I talked about a little bit, I talked about it for like 10 or 15 minutes was uh Alien Breed, the 35th anniversary collection. Oh, okay. Super fun game. And I was like, I don't really have any other place else to speak about this. I'm gonna have to talk about it now.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, but that hey, that's perfectly fine. You're fulfilling contractual obligations, so it's all right.
SPEAKER_01I just now I just need to like take the link and put it on the website so they know that I make content about it, and then hopefully they give me other stuff. And I also have another game that I need to play that I'm probably gonna play while on text. It's a whole lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_00Nice, nice. Hey, if you're listening, go check out that link and go check out that thing that he just said. There, there we got the call to action. The call to action.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Go listen to Monday's episode. It was it was something. It was yes, yes. Yeah, we we talked Mandela effects and how Sinbad is technically uh uh uh real life djinn because he said that he wasn't in a movie where he was a genie, but everybody remembers him being a genie.
SPEAKER_00I remember that, yeah, yeah. I remember a movie with like him being that, but then it ended up being like it was like Shaquille O'Neal or something, right? Because it was he was like in Kazam or some shit like that.
SPEAKER_01I thought it was both. Like I thought there was one with Shaquille and one with Sinbad.
SPEAKER_00It's like a very distinct like childhood memory of like watching a VHS and like all the uh the advertisements for movies, and like that's one of them where it's like the Sinbad genie movie. It's just in all of our collective consciences, consciousness, right? But apparently it doesn't exist, right?
SPEAKER_01Maybe it's maybe it does exist, and it's one of those like tricks are for kids kind of things where uh you can only see the shape of the tricks if you're a little kid, and now that you're an adult, they're all like pellets instead of fruit-shaped.
SPEAKER_00Or maybe it's like actually uh like the movie The Matrix, it's the glitch in the matrix, and they're changing the simulation around us as we speak.
SPEAKER_01Might might be at this point. I'm I'm convinced that anything's possible. So just like uh maybe, hey, good segue, which I I should have thought about. Maybe we are being gaslit like Sora was gaslit the entire game of Kingdom Hearts chain of memories. Because holy shit, what the hell?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when we we were talking about this, we were just kind of like uh yeah, this really is like an abusive relationship because Sora is just mentally manipulated to like if a therapist was to play this game, they'd just be like, Yeah, that's textbook gaslighting. This is not this is not great what's happening to like a 14 or 15-year-old boy, whatever his age is. That's like the that's like the prime of your life when you're changing. So to have a group of mysterious cloaked people just gaslighting you and telling you that what you see is not actually what you believe, not not great for his mental state.
SPEAKER_01No, so uh just a little bit about the game uh Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories is a 2004 action role-playing game developed by Square Enix and Jupiter and published by Square Enix in collaboration with Disney Interactive for the Game Boy Advance. It is the second game in the Kingdom Hearts series. It is a direct sequel to Kingdom Hearts, whose ending is set about a year before the events of Kingdom Hearts 2. Chain of Memories follows Sora and his friends as they explore Castle Oblivion while battle battling Organization 13, a new group of antagonists. The game uses a new cart-based battle system rather than its predecessor's real-time combat system, and it was one of the first GBA games to incorporate full motion video. That is crazy that that laid into the GPA. Uh, they were putting full motion video in games. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, this one's um in the in the overall role lore of the creation of Kingdom Hearts. This one is uh is certainly an interesting one for sure. Um it's uh it's something that was kind of always planned by Nomura. Uh he knew he had this, he'd already kind of mapped out what he wanted the story of Kingdom Hearts 2 to be, and he had this like he knew he wanted to have the year time skip, so he knew he had this like year of time to play with, in which he wanted to like kind of tell a story, and then they were experimenting with some ideas. Um it originally he never wanted to make a game for the Game Boy Advance, he was he was opposed to that idea because he didn't think that um the the 3D action combat platforming of Kingdom Hearts 1 could translate to the mostly 2D uh locked gameplay style that would be required of the of the Game Boy Advance. But um the interesting thing about that was he like heard a lot of people that he knew personally in his life had kids that wanted to like play a Kingdom Hearts game on the Game Boy, and that ultimately kind of like what led him to to go that route and and the the the um development history kind of goes on from there. So uh yeah, it kind of kinda just this this one's really interesting in the overall grand scheme of of Kingdom Hearts.
SPEAKER_01I have strong feelings about this game. Um honestly my my negative feelings about this game are very minimal, if any. Oh, interesting. Okay, yeah. Uh one of the reasons I really like this game is because it's the first Kingdom Heart that I actually played. That I actually well, I played the original Kingdom Hearts, but like for five minutes at a friend's house, and he was stuck in that secret boss in Agrabah, and he's like, I can't beat it. Can you try it out? I tried it out for like five minutes and I was done. So um, so that was the extent of my Kingdom Hearts, and then I played this one and I I fell in love with it, and I I have big feelings not only because it was my first one and that I also bought it with my own money, but also I feel like it sets up a lot about where the story in Kingdom Hearts goes that the first game didn't set up.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, I yeah, I wouldn't agree with that. It really, it really kind of uh it does kind of fit in nicely to the Kingdom Hearts timeline. So this one for me is interesting because uh I played Kingdom Hearts 1 and then I played Kingdom Hearts 2 without the background knowledge of this game, which I tell people is doable. Uh if there's I always tell people if you're looking to play the Kingdom Hearts series to play them all, play them in order. Uh if you're looking, if like your time crunch or like you just absolutely just refuse to like play all of them, and you're looking for ones that you can like get away with skipping. I skipped this one. Uh Kingdom Hearts 2 is a little bit confusing at the beginning, uh, because like organization 13 shows up, but like there's there's only like six of them left, and you're like, why are they called 13 if there's just six dudes left? Like what like what the fuck happened? So it's a little bit weird like that, but it's not it's not undoable, it's not impossible. Um personally, I think the Game Boy Advanced version of this game is really cool and really fascinating. Uh, I think it is way better than what they did later for uh the final uh mixed version of Kingdom Hearts 2 is they included a remake of of Chain of Memories, a full 3D from the ground up remake for the PlayStation 2. Um, I think this version is immensely superior to that version. Uh I don't know if we're gonna talk about that one a little bit later, but spoiler alert, uh that version is boring as fuck and awful.
SPEAKER_01And I feel like that's why a lot of people hate this game, because they probably try the PlayStation 2 version, or like, oh, this shit sucks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's the PlayStation 2 version is the one that's like included on all the collections, so that's the way you're primarily experiencing it, which sucks because I think the GBA version is like really, really fascinating because it's the only game in the series where it is 2D, so the artwork is different and the gameplay is different, and just the way that it presents itself is different than any other game in the series.
SPEAKER_01So before we get into it, so you played one, then you played two, and you were like, Oh, there's a hole here. When did you decide to go play Chain of Memories? What version version did you play first? All that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I played one and two, and then I think I don't think I played this one till after I played Birth by Sleep, which was the one on the PlayStation Portable, the original PlayStation Portable. Uh, I have a distinct memory of saving up all of my grass-cutting money one summer just to buy a PSP to play the new Kingdom Hearts uh PSP game. Yeah, so that's how like kind of devoted I was to the to the series. And the PSP is a kind of a neat uh piece of hardware. I think the PS Vita is probably the more like definitive version of that hardware, um, just for like more of the stuff you can like homebrew stuff you can do with it. But uh I so I remember playing one, two in Birth by Sleep. Uh I didn't play the direct sequel to Kingdom Hearts 2, which is 358 Days Over 2, which is actually a prequel to that game, the DS one, till uh till much later as well. So I kind of played a lot of the games out of order, which is weird coming from the person that like so emphatically like professes and tells you to play them all in order. Uh, I probably played Chain of Memories like as the fourth or fifth game that I played in this series to go back and like fill in those holes. And by then I had like gone on YouTube and like I knew the story, I just had never played the game, and then a friend lent it me the GBA cart, and it's funny, I lost touch with that friend, but I still have the GBA cart to this day. Uh oh with with with a promise to eventually return it to him if I ever like run into him in life again. But uh yeah, he just moved away and never asked for it back, so I just hung on to it. Bad terrible friend I am.
SPEAKER_01You just keep the cart in your pocket just in case you run into him. Every single day you just go out with a card.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just randomly out in the out in the wild, or like if like all of a sudden I'm walking out the street and he's like, Hey, you fucking stole my game, and then yeah, that's but um, but yeah, just really kind of played it uh like not the way you're supposed to, like out of order.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, so I started with this one, then I I obviously went into two because two was right around the corner when I put from when I played this one. Um I I tried going back to one a bunch of times and I just couldn't get into it. Like I told you before, and and like the listeners know I the first time I beat the first Kingdom Hearts was for this show because the patrons chose it as uh the backlog of Doom game, and I played through it, and I I I think I had a good time, and there were like some moments that I obviously knew what happens because they tell you throughout the story, but seeing them in that original version, like the like playing through it after going through the entire journey, it hits harder, like when they close the door to darkness and Riku and the King are on the other side, and then yeah, that that was like this this is awesome. This is heavier than it has any right being.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the the first game is interesting, it's it it's very much like uh a lot of people have described it, and I can definitely see it as like when you think of like the PS2, there are just certain games that you just think of, and I think that's the one probably more than two, uh, just because like the time it came out is like one of those games that is very like definitive PS2 game, probably alongside like Final Fantasy X. Um, when I think of PS2, I think like Ratchet and Clank, Jack and Daxer, so like games, games it's kind of in that category. Uh, and one was really like Square Enix's first attempt, like the one was inspired by Mario 64, they wanted to make a game like that. So one was very much like Square Enix's first attempt making like a an action RPG in a 3D environment like that. And it I think it shows it's it's definitely one of the more difficult games to go back and play today, especially considering how many quality of life improvements they've introduced in this series going forward. So um, yeah, I have a soft spot for it though. But yeah, that's interesting that you played this one, then two, then went back to one. That's that's fascinating.
SPEAKER_01I actually think I went chain of memories to maybe the the PSP one, then 358 358 baseover 2 is so good. I that that game I've been wanting to get a copy, and uh they are like $90 for just a cartridge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I got my cart like just before COVID kind of like drove all the prices for collecting stuff up. Um, so I think I got it for like 15 bucks or 20 bucks. So I'm I'm very fortunate. Um that game's kind of rough around the edges just because they're literally maxing out the space on that they're using the DS card, but the story in that game is oh yeah, like you want to fucking like cry and be crushed.
SPEAKER_01That the ending, the ending like holy fucking shit, that ending, and then it just it it ends as two starts and they just continue on as if like if you if you don't know if you know what happens in 358 over two days, uh, and then you play two the starting of two just feels so much more emotionally hollow because of what happened at the end of 358.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you realize that like like Roxas has just been like suffering basically his entire existence, and like like it goes straight into two, or basically like the last like spoiler alerts for a 25-year-old game. So if you don't want to be spoiling King Warts 2, turn away now, I guess. But like literally like the last seven days of his life. Yeah, like it's like that's like that's what it is, that's what you're experiencing.
SPEAKER_01So uh and he doesn't remember all the suffering that he went through before living out the last seven days of his life, like what the hell?
SPEAKER_00No, but you do, and that makes it somehow way worse.
SPEAKER_01See, and and that's why three bothers me so much, because all of this pain and suffering and everything that these characters went through is basically undone in three. Like, why?
SPEAKER_00I man, I have I my relationship with three is really complex, and I think if we go down that route, Chris, that's gonna end up derailing this podcast on Shane Memories. But um, if we get to that point, I would love to talk to you about three if you ever want to do that, because yeah, I have some things with three that uh I I think gameplay mechanically wise, it's a really sound, really fun game. I just think that the way it's structured and the way it resolves itself is is it does a lot of disservice to really great characters and it's very frustrating.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. It it uh when I get there eventually, probably next year at some point I will because I I I'm gonna get the the collection with all the games in it for the I'm probably gonna get it for Xbox because fuck Sony right now. Absolutely and just go Nexus 2, then the PSP, then I I really want to get a copy of 358, then go from there. So at some point, yeah, I'll I'll bring you for three because uh please do. I have I need to talk to somebody that understands me about three because uh I yeah, I I will be there because I have some things I need to say. So, chain of memories. Um you get deck a deck of cards that you can edit and you can put cards together to make stronger combos and slays, and they're ranked zero through nine. Uh, and it's kind of like a regular deck of cards where the ace, even though it's the first card, is stronger than it's worth more than all the other cards. So zero is worth more than all the other cards, but it's not. If you throw a zero and somebody throws a one, it gets knocked down. But if somebody throws a nine and you throw a zero, then the nine gets knocked down. So it's really easy to understand after you play it for like maybe an hour or two. Um, then you have the deck building, of course. You have points for how many cards you can have in the deck based on the value of the cards, which is based by what type of card it is, plus the number assigned to the cards. So you can build a very large deck of really weak cards, but then you're not gonna have a good deck because all your cards are weak, or you can have a deck of a small deck of very heavy cards, but you'll only have very small a small deck, and if you use the slight the slates, slights, how how is it pronounced?
SPEAKER_00I've said it both I've said it both ways, and I still I think I've always just deferred to slights, like sleight of hand. That's how I've thought of it. But I I honestly have no idea.
SPEAKER_01Slight slights sounds right, being that it's cards. So if you use the slights, um the first card on the slight that you use gets removed from play unless you use an elixir, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um so yeah, but yeah, the way that works is you know you have your set uh card deck, and as you use them, it like it diminishes them. And then if you get to like the end, it's just like a black, like blank card, and you have to like hold it for so long to like reload your deck again. Um, but if you're yeah, if you if you use the the slights, it's usually like the first card in the slight, you have to use like three of them. Um is like permanently removed from your deck unless you you use like an elixir or like equivalent heal, like one of the like standard Final Fantasy healing items to like completely like reload your deck. So uh the slights are like that risk reward where it's like the they're more powerful attacks, but like you're actively reducing your your deck size. Yes. I think yeah, is how that works in my brain. I think.
SPEAKER_01So that the slights are whenever you because you can stack the cards, you can stack three at a time, so the first one on that stack gets removed. Um, so there are some slides where the game will let you stack three nines, but you might only have three nines in your entire deck, so you'll search for them, stack them up, use it, and then that one first nine card is gone, so then you only have the two nine cards, and you won't be able to use that slide anymore because you don't have any other numbered nine cards to use. Um, and it has to be specifically attack, or specifically summon, or specifically magic, or whatever the game tells you exactly how to use that slight, which you get more slights as you level up and you select if you want to increase your health, your points for the cards that you can have in your deck, or if you want to get a new slight, if it's available at the level you're at, which I think they come in fives, right?
SPEAKER_00Uh for the like how many points you can have in your deck?
SPEAKER_01No, for the the slights.
SPEAKER_00The slights come in fives, so you get uh Oh yeah, I I think so, or something like every so many levels, yeah. Something like that. I don't remember off the top of my head, but um yeah, so at it at its core, uh what they tried to do was fuse a deck building game with what was in the first installment a 3D RPG action platformer. And I can kind of see the logic behind this as to why uh this was like early 2000s, so like the trading card games were like really blowing up around this time. You know, you had Pokemon Trading Card game, and I think like Yu-Gi-Oh was pretty hot around this time.
SPEAKER_01Magic Yeah, this this was like peak Yu Gi Oh when I was in in in this came out when I was in middle school. My last year of middle school. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think this is like the the first like golden age of like trading card games where it's like you're actually buying cards to like make decks and not just buying cards to like create fake scarcity and drive prices up, which is like what trading cards are all about now. Uh that's probably a that's probably a separate episode we could talk about on all that stuff. Um so yeah, it's like you're building this deck which enables you to do the action RPG portion of the game. And that's a really fascinating concept because me personally, I've always been bad at anything when it comes to deck building. I just I've never been good at like building decks in real life. I tried to play magic for like two years and just I never for whatever reason I cannot wrap my brain around building like decks that synergize together. I'm a simple creature. I just want to be like, oh, I want deck with big powerful monsters that bonk really hard. So like I just I'm just like I want a deck full of like big powerful monsters. Like that's that's it. And then that somebody builds a deck of like, oh, here's like flowers, and you lose like 10,000 hit points, and then you're dead. So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think I've I've told this before on the podcast, but there was a Yu-Gi-Oh game for the Game Boy Advance that I got really into, and my cards basically my entire deck was just a bunch of monsters that were, I think, four stars. Because four stars, you don't have to sacrifice. So there was a bunch of four stars that did like 1700 damage, so I was just destroying the AI with my deck. There was no beating me.
SPEAKER_00It's like it doesn't know how to respond because it's just like no logical the way that they programmed this was not not meant to like respond to the way you're playing it.
SPEAKER_01Like I I thought, like, what if I did this in real life and just went to tournaments and just completely destroyed people?
SPEAKER_00That would be that would be really funny.
SPEAKER_01It's like you start and you have a 1700 uh hit point monster on the field, and you're like, What?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what like what am I trying to do here? But now now it's gotten like way more complicated than like a base Yu-Gi-Oh! is so much easier than like what it is now, based on my very limited understanding of how Yu-Gi-Oh! works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's it's very, very different. Like, I I worked at a call center and one day was super slow, so somebody whipped out like two decks of Yu-Gi-Oh! and started playing with somebody else, and and they like they started and they were done. Because the like one of the guys like pulled a hand that just let them win automatically because of the combinations he could do with the it's like, what the hell?
SPEAKER_00If you aren't winning in the first two turns, it's like you're you're playing the game wrong.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So, but I think this game does a great job of telling the story of Kingdom Hearts 1, telling a new story, and introducing a whole bunch of concepts that are going to be incredibly relevant throughout the rest of the series.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I would agree because it really the first Kingdom Hearts game is kind of like if you're looking to play any kind of one of these games that can really stand by themselves, um, Kingdom Hearts 1, I mean, obviously it's the beginning, but really just the way it's structured, a classic hero's journey, like light versus dark, ends up just like being answered. It's very easy to kind of like play on its own, and then uh chain of memories really kind of introduces like the main group of like protagonists, or at least like the main group that will be like causing problems for like the foreseeable future. It's organization 13. It's you know, the people in all the black cloaks that you see. It's just like if you're bad in Kingdom Hearts, like you're probably wearing one of those black cloaks, but oh wait, not everybody bad in Kingdom Hearts wears those because sometimes good people do, but for the most part, like if you had to take guess the bad guys are wearing the the black coats, which look I mean, I think they look pretty sick, by the way. Uh so yeah, it introduces this new threat that you're just like, oh, like in the first game, it's like we saved the worlds and we defeated the handsome guy, and like, oh, we saved the worlds from darkness, and now our best friend and Mickey Mouse are like trapped in like basically hell, uh, which is a kind of which is a bold move. Uh that Disney, like a like no more is just like, yeah, I want to trap Mickey in hell, and Disney's just kind of like, yeah, we're cool with that. Uh so pretty bold move, but uh yeah, it it starts to like expand the world, and it makes you feel like the world's like a little bit bigger and like there are more now, they're like more original characters. Uh yeah, the one of the knocks against this game I see often in the community is that it basically it doesn't really add anything new in terms of like uh like the world, like it's just a retread of Kingdom Hearts 1, which I think is fine, especially like if it's somebody like you uh playing on the GBA for the first time and that that's your first Kingdom Hearts game, like that that was probably the intention. You want to just get like a retread of like what kind of what happened in Kingdom Hearts 1, and then the the new stuff is like what happens uh on the floors in between. So the whole game takes place, and this is kind of uh cool too. The whole game takes place in one location, it's Castle Oblivion, and like the gimmick is like the or these people in the organization have like Lord Lord Sora there, um, and you know he gets a warning right when he goes in the door. He's looking for his friends, he's looking for Riku and Mickey. So of course, like they're just gonna go in the fucking scary-looking castle because of course they are. Uh like why would you not? Uh and the the the guys in the black hoods like start showing up and telling them, hey, like you'll find the answers if you go higher up on the floors, but that every floor you go, like you'll lose something that's really important to you, and it's like revealed throughout the course of the game that like they're like stripping Sora's memories like slowly away from him so that he like doesn't like in between every floor, every like world you go through goes to the next floor. Like, there's cutscenes where they're like, Oh, wait, did that fucking happen? Wait, did that? And they start like questioning themselves to the point where it's like, yeah, the the whole like gaslighting thing you said comes into play, and then the whole like yeah, you you as a player you kind of get frustrated because you're just like, Yeah, you you did experience that because like I played it in the first game. So uh it adds this very interesting concept of like Nomura likes to play with like these metaphysical ideas of like the heart and like light and darkness and like kind of all that stuff, and now he's like introducing the role of like memories and like what memories mean in your heart, and like the the concept of the memories too was also a device that Nomura could use because he knew in Kingdom Hearts 2 he wanted to like reset Sora to level one. It's the it's the Samus problem in every Metroid game, right? It's like every Metroid game, Samus gets super powerful, but like every game you have to find a way to like take all our powers away from her. Uh same thing with Sora, like every game he gets like super powerful and is basically like fighting like multiversal level like fucking deities by the end of every game. And it's like, how do you reduce him down to uh that at for the next game? And then this was like his solution for Kingdom Hearts 2. It's like, oh well, if he just loses all of his memories, that'll affect like his power, and then he has to like build himself back up in Kingdom Hearts 2. So that's like more or less like the really Cliff Notes version of like what is happening in this castle, what they're doing to Sora. Uh like that's a very like broad, like high-level like Google Maps view.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I I did I remember having when I played this originally a bit of an issue with when you start the game, the first world you go into is Traverstown, which is the first world you go into in Kingdom Hearts 1. And when you're in Traverstown, Sora still remembers the people that he meets, and he he's like, I know you, you're Leon, and you're Yuffie, and you're Erith, whatever. But then after that, it never happens again. He goes to all the same worlds that he's been to already, and he doesn't remember anybody, and nobody remembers him. Which is which I I would have understood if they did that progressively in as the game continued, not just right off the bat, first world's done, he doesn't remember anything. Um which that that might be like my biggest complaint about the whole game, which is not much, because the real story is happening, like you said, in between uh the floors, uh and basically in the stairwells between levels. Um But I I just remembered when I said Erith, one of the biggest moments of gaslighting is uh at the beginning of the game when after they kill the first big shadow and Aerith is there, and she calls Sora over, and he's talking to her, and then Donald Goofy are like, hey, let's go, we're we gotta go. And he's like, I'm just talking to Earth, let me say goodbye. And they're like, Erith left Earth left like 10 minutes ago. What the fuck are you doing? And he's like, What? It's it's insane the amounts of gaslighting that they do to this guy. This whole the first whole first half of the game, it's just pure gaslighting. I have a another one of my notes is uh in Agrabah when Aladdin Aladdin uses two of the wishes for stupid shit. The first one is like get me out of here. The second one is kill these four heartless that showed up.
SPEAKER_00As he does, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. And then the last wish, Jeannie says something along the lines of go ahead and wish to be a prince, Al. I w I want to be free, but go ahead and wish to be a prince. Like, like in the text, he's like, make your wish, be happy.
SPEAKER_00I want to be free, but be happy. Please, like, please, please free me. Like it is in like really small letters, like in between all the like you can be a prince, please free me. Please free me. Right? Yeah, it's yeah, I and I think that's more of like uh um there are several points in this series, and this is especially a prevalent criticism of Kingdom Hearts 3 for me, where it's just like you have to fulfill the crossover Disney contract obligation rights, like you have to you have to feature the Disney Worlds and the Disney stories, right? And um, I'm just assuming, just based on the space they had with this cartridge and like how they wanted to structure the game, that it would have been very cool to see like Sora like slowly losing his memories like while he traverses through the Disney Worlds, like rather than them happen in bunches between the floors, where it's just like all of a sudden, like near the end of Agabra, he's like, Like, wait, like, who like who the fuck are you? Like Aladdin? Like what like that. I think that would have been like a really cool way. Again, I don't know if that's like too difficult for like a story for a kid's game. Like I'm saying about Kingdom Hearts, it's already a difficult story. Uh or if it's just like, yeah, man, we gotta fulfill our like Disney obligations, and like the only space Nomura has to tell his like crazy story that he wants to tell is like in between the the worlds. So yeah, I would have liked to see a little bit more of that. Like just it would have felt like a more natural progression. Um, because but yeah, the scenes like in between the stairwells, like basically what's happening is they're like we spoke about organization 13. They're clearly working towards something. We kind of like discover that as the game goes on. Uh, but ultimately what they're trying to do is they're trying to like replace Sora's memories with ones that they have like handpicked and created so that they can like manipulate him and control him, because they want to control the person that controls the keyblade. Like, that seems like a very like powerful thing that you could possibly do. And the organization in this sense is led by a pink-haired guy who carries a scythe name named Marluxia. He's like the leader of this kind of group of people that are at this castle oblivion that are called Organization 13, but there are not like 13 of them here. You don't know where the other half of people are, they're being saved for Kingdom Hearts 2, because we have to have bad guys for Kingdom Hearts 2. Um, so that's basically like what they're doing, and the way they're like trying to accomplish things accomplish that is like by replacing his memories of Kyrie with this other girl, Namine, who's like also present in the castle, and like that's the thing is like, oh, she has the power to like fuck with people's memories, is basic is basically like the the plot point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It you know, I I don't know if if it's because I'm older and I'm looking at this, you know, with with 36-year-old eyeballs instead of you know a 14-year-old that's never played a Kingdom Hearts game. But there there is like so much shit, like these people have to be traumatized.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01So one of uh one of my notes, uh, where is it? Okay, at one point so throughout the game, like you said, nominee's altering, Soros Memories. Um one of the bad guys, one of the organization 13 members, creates a replica of Riku, who Soros best childhood. Oh yeah. The clone Riku, that's right. Right, right. And he creates him, right? And his basically creates him to fuck with Sora's head even more so that he's easier to have his memory swiped so they can control him and and whatever. Later on in the game, uh, Sora finds out that the Riku he's fighting is a fake. And that was after he realized Namine isn't real. So he has to deal with this girl that I thought that I made a promise to that I completely forgot. It made me feel like shit for the past like two days isn't real. So these feelings, I don't know if they're what to do with them, and then I found out that who I thought was my best friend who was trying to actively kill me is not real, and it's just a clone. Like, dude, that's super traumatizing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It's like uh, yeah, you're like slowly replacing his memories of the girl that he likes that is actually as of right now, like safe as of the first game, and then you're replacing his memories with this this blonde girl nominee, and then like the organization members are showing up and they're like, You're a piece of shit. I can't believe that you forgot about her, like you broke your promise to her, like you don't want to like go and save her. And Sora's like and and like to Sora, that's like the most devastating thing because like Sora's whole character is that like he like cares about his friends, and that's like his literal superpower is like the more he cares about his friends, like the more unstoppable he becomes. And he just it's like this game you is like the one of the the games where you see Sora at like his most like angry and unhinged because he gets like super angry and super unhinged in some of these cutscenes, and then you make a clone of the his best friend that the last time that he saw him was you were closing him in the door to like literal hell with Mickey Mouse, and then he's back, and then his best friend is saying, like, no, F you, like, you're a bad friend. I'm gonna go save Nomine because I made the promise to her, and then Sora's like, No, F you, I'm gonna go save her. Yeah, so it's just like they they put Sora in like this mental like torture chamber and just literally, like you said, it's gaslight. They literally gaslight him for like his entire story arc, and you're just like, oh my god, like this is like some horrifying stuff that they're doing to him. Like, it really, it really is, and even even like in the context of like, oh, this is like crazy Nomura stuff, right? Like a clone of your best friend, like replacing memories of a girl with like a different girl, like that's textbook like Nomura batshit crazy stuff, and it's just like he's using it to just like put Sora into like the blender, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there was a I made another note because like and this ties into what you said about him being so angry and like focused, and it's like he has tunnel vision, yeah. They kill, they straight up kill Larksine, who's an organization 13 member. They they fucking murder this lady, right? They don't care, they just kill her and they don't care, they just continue on, like they have no idea that she's a nobody because she they don't know what nobodies are. No, sorry commits straight up murder as far as we know. Yeah, it it is like I'm sure that it's that at some point if he wouldn't figure it out that nobodies were a thing and that organization 13 or all nobodies, he would have woken up one day and be like, oh shit, I killed that blonde lady in that one castle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it's not it's not like the end of Kingdom Hearts 1 where it's like, yeah, Ansom is this guy who's just like pure darkness. Like, okay, that's like technically not murder. And like you're fighting all of the the heartless throughout Kingdom Hearts 1. Like, that's like you can you can like hand wave away like fighting like literal like demons that steal hearts. Like that's that's fine, like, and that's an exaggeration, but like that's what it is. But he does not know Lark Scene isn't is not is like a nobody that's just like a husk, right? He's straight up, straight up murders her. And then like there's this subplot going on in the background, which I actually really do enjoy because like I I love the the dynamic between like all the different organization members in this castle who like they have their own agenda apart from like the rest of the organization members that aren't there. Like Marluxia straight up like wants to like take over the castle and like run the organization, like that's his whole like thing, and he wants to like control Sora and use him to do it. And like all the individual organization players have like their own motivations for why they're there, and they're all like they all like very clearly don't trust each other. It's like a very like I refer to it as like a very messed up episode of The Office because like they're all co-workers, but they kind of want to like all kill each other and do their own thing. And like you're introduced to Axel, who's like one of the best characters in the series, and he's there and he is just going around like murking people too. He kills like two people two of his own like co-workers uh in the story. He kills Vexen, and I think he kills uh Zaxion, who are like kind of the two people responsible for like the clones.
SPEAKER_01Yes, he did kill Saxon because Laxius was killed by Riku.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, yes, okay, and so you you don't know any better. You think these are just like regular people, and they're just like getting like everybody in this castle, like spoiler alert for like the end of it, but like everybody in this castle dies except Axel. Like Axel's the only person from the story that like carries forward into Kingdom Hearts 2, like everyone else gets fucking marked, and like it kind of gets hand-waved away in Kingdom Hearts 2 because it's like, yeah, these are nobodies, they lost they're people that lost their hearts, they're basically husks. They, by the definition of existence in Kingdom Hearts, don't exist as people, so like then you don't feel as bad about killing them, but yeah, in this game, you don't know, and Soros just like doesn't like care, like straight up murdering people. Donald and Goofy are like, hey, maybe we need to slow down a second. Yeah, and Soros like, no, we're like, I need to save nominee. I like I will kill anyone in my way. Like it's I'd never thought of it like that before, but you're a hundred percent right. That's so fascinating.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like like I was playing this game and I was like, what in the fuck? I played it on the Steam Deck, and I was laying in bed for a lot of it and just playing it with my wife sitting next to me, like reading something or watching something, and I would be like, What the fuck? And she's like, What? And I would tell her, and she's like, This is a kid's game, yeah. This is Disney. What in the fuck is happening? Um, it it's it gets dark, it gets really dark.
SPEAKER_00It it's it does. Like it does, yeah. It's um but it's it creates such a like I'm I'm pretty hard on this game because I have mixed feelings on the the card combat, and I I would like to go back and play the GBA version uh more fully because my most recent experiences with this game, like the last three times I played it, have been the PS2 version, and the PS2 version is like just so there's something weird about taking an experience that was originally designed for 2D and making it 3D. Uh I'm sure there are exam- I'm sure there are examples of where that works. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but the PS2 version and like the one that's included on the collections is just like you're like revisiting the same rooms over and over. Like there's no variety in music, like the voice acting isn't very good because I had to like do voice acting for it very quickly. Uh and it like towards the end, it kind of turns into a slog, and like there's one dominant strategy where you can just build the uh sonic blade uh sl uh slight that like Cloud does to you in Kingdom Hearts 1 when you fight him in the Coliseum, and he's just like flying back and forth. You can just build that move and just it clears every single encounter. Uh, but there are just so many encounters where it's like transition to 3D field, must-fight 3D battle with cards, and then it's like you need the door, the different card uh the you can get cards to unlock the doors, and you like just you have to unlock like all the doors in the rooms and stuff, and how whatever cards you use on the doors like affect what kind of room it is, and then it just it in for a 3D game, it just drags on like too long. Where uh I don't even remember like the original point I was was making now because I just started complaining about the PS2 version. God damn it.
SPEAKER_01While you get your your thoughts together, um I've never played the PlayStation 2 version, but if it's Kingdom Hearts 1 with just giant. Open rooms with a bunch of enemies that you have to chase down and hit, and then you have to use three combo cards, plus chase down cards that land on the field, and the field is just a 3D arena. That sounds fucking insufferable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the the card is awful. The card combat it works well enough on a 2D plane when there's up, down, left, right. Uh, when you start throwing in like Z-axis stuff and like enemies that can fly that aren't on like the same plane, uh, yeah, that that becomes I think a whole different can of worms that that almost make it a like a separate experience. Like it's not a it's not a one-to-one experience because just because of that that 3D factor, and yeah, like the rooms are like very lifeless. And I think in a condensed version, like the retelling of the Kingdom Hearts 1 story, again, for a Game Boy Advance, for a system that was designed to like be played on the go and put down and like picked up and played in like more short bursts. I think that works. Uh what a game where you're locked on this game when you're locked in front of a console in front of a TV playing it uh in that fashion is just not not enjoyable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I don't I I wouldn't I've never played the PS2 version, I'm probably never gonna play it because I feel like the GBA version is so well done, it it's it does exactly what it sets out to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I I so when you get into the fights, like you're in a small condensed arena, and basically everything that falls, like uh extra cards from from your teammates or from guest characters that you can use, they're easy to catch. You don't have to chase them down, they just fall and you run towards them. There's also kind of like the enemies can be layered, so you'll have an enemy standing right in front of the other, and they'll be slightly layered on the arena. So when you do the combo, you're basically healing both of them or however many there are in the same go instead of you know chasing down enemy by enemy and using your your three-hit combo. So if the fights go by quick later on in the game, I think I finished the game like a level 80, and I wasn't even trying to get that high in levels, right? Like it just happened because I was fighting everything I came across, which I never got tired of the fighting either. I I managed to understand the system well enough to build decks well enough where I would have fun with them, and I could use them as either just a slight deck or as a three-hit combo deck, right? So, and it got to the point where my card setup was so good that I didn't even need magic, and I just had a couple of elixirs at the end, and I just, you know, either if I wanted to fight to go quick, I would just shoot slides non-stop. If I wanted to take my time and enjoy the fight, then I would just use the attack button. Like it it's really easy to tailor it to the way that you want to play it, and I feel like on a PlayStation 2 it'd be a fucking nightmare.
SPEAKER_00Just and just imagining like some of those like more difficult fights too on the on the GBA, because it's like you're only having to worry about it in four directions, and then when the bosses or the enemies, like they are able to do slights too, and like use three card combos that will do like a move and they'll shoot across the screen or whatever, and it's like you're able to like very quickly identify like where they are, and because you don't have to worry about that z-axis, you can kind of like while you're running up, down, left, right, and dodging, you can kind of like flip through your deck and get the cards that you need and to like form a response. Uh just adding like a third dimension, like a z-axis to that makes that so much more complicated because if a boss in the PS2 version like does like a three-card move and they like shoot across the room, it's like you lose sight of them for a second. So then it's like not only do you have to like swing the camera and your body around to find them, you also are trying to like also thumb through your deck and like try and figure out like a what a response is gonna be to that, whether you need to like heal or you're trying to cue up your next card combo. It just it changes the entire dynamic of the game, whereas like, yeah, when you only have it in two dimensions, you're worrying about four directions, that flow feels a lot more natural just just because you don't have to worry about that one extra dimension. Everything is happening on the plane in front of you, and you like you hit the nail on the head. Like, basically, they're the the two like crafting theories around this game that uh all the Reddit posts and all the analysis of the game I've read it by is like either stack your deck with just like the highest pop like powered keyblade cards you can, like the nines and the eights, and just wail away, and then uh to get rid of the big uh card combos the bosses do, just load the front of your deck with zeros because zeros just beat everything if you play them second. Uh, or if you just build a deck that can fire off like very specific slights, like the slights are like so broken that if you just build like a pure slight deck, like you said, with elixirs, that will just carry you through the like most of the game. Like I remember I did that with like uh I had a deck that was purely the strike raid slight, and I had like seven or eight like cloud cards that I could summon cloud in, and when you play those in three card combos, he just flies around the arena and just like murders everything. Yeah, so like that was the dominant strategy.
SPEAKER_01The the first time I beat this game, I didn't fucking understand what the hell I was doing. I didn't know how to set up the cards or whatever. I just knew that if you had three cloud cards, you could do Opni Smash. So exactly. So I stacked my deck with as many cloud cards as they let me put in it, and that's how I beat Marloxi at the end. Yeah, you can do that, like the game lets you do that. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. Does it feel cheap? Yeah, do you did you beat the game? Yes.
SPEAKER_00So who cares? But it's cool that the game like lets you do that, though. Like they had to have known that that was a like they they play tested enough to know that that would have been like a strategy. Oh yeah, and so they let you do it. So at the same time, I do appreciate like Namura and the team giving us the latitude to like experiment just doing dumb stuff like that. So yeah, I mean it it's it is interesting. Me as a person that hates the concept of deck building was unbothered by was largely unbothered by the deck building.
SPEAKER_01I honestly I really don't don't care for deck builders or or whatever, but I don't know if it's because it's Kingdom Hearts or because it's the first Kingdom Hearts that was mine that I played. I I don't I don't mind it at all. I quite I enjoy it actually. I enjoy the the deck building, and I didn't have a hard time with any of the bosses except for Ursula because that boss fight is just terrible.
SPEAKER_00Um even in one, it's terrible, like just Ursula in general.
SPEAKER_01It's it's just a sh fuck ass shitty ass boss fight. It it's terrible. Um, I didn't have any issues until I got to the Captain Hook fight, and it was because I didn't have cards high enough to break his slights. So I loaded a safe right before the fight, I looked through my cards, restructured my deck, and then it was a piece of cake again. Like it the if you understand how the cards work and how to best cheese the game, it's not a hard game.
SPEAKER_00No, and and there, like if you do get stuck like that, you can just look up dominant strategies that people have come up with to kind of do that. And um if you don't have the right cards, like going to grind and get cards can be a little a little tedious. Uh that in the in the PSU version, that is incredibly tedious, but uh less so, I think less so in the in the GBA version. Like you need to like you can either like find cards um like in the wild or you can get points as you're going throughout the rooms, and then if you have a Moogle card, you can make a Moogle room and you can buy card packs off the Moogle, and they have like different you can buy like attack card packs or magic or cure, like combinations of all of them, and like that's how you get your cards. So this is there is like a little bit of like a gotcha random element to it. Um, I I was never in a scenario where even if I did go grind, if I was looking for specific cards, it took me all that long. Like they're usually pretty good about giving you cards that you need.
SPEAKER_01It did, it did for me. Um I uh I was having a tough time with Marloxi at the end because I I would get to the point where you jump on the back of a ship and then you can hit them. But I didn't know not that I didn't know, like I he summons like the the little flying enemies, and they kept pushing me back. So I would waste my cards breaking their attack cards instead of actually hitting Marluxia. So I looked up some guides, and basically they just said, just stack your deck with fire shots, and that's how you get through it. And I was like, I'm not gonna do that because uh that that that just I'm not gonna farm to get a bunch of fire cards. Um, so I just built my deck in a way where every other card was a zero, so I would always have something to break and immediately hit. And I it it took me like maybe a minute to put down more looks, yeah. In the last fight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, by the end, by my playthroughs, I remember by the end of the game, I would always just like I know the front like seven or eight cards in my deck, I'm just gonna have zeros in reserve just in case I need to like pull like do a counter, and it's super easy to to get to that point. And I think the thing that maybe for me made it tolerable as like a game where you do build a deck was the way that the deck informed the the real-time action combat. I think it's I think it's a fascinating marriage. Uh, they did try and do something like this again, similar in uh based on my understanding. I haven't played the game yet, but uh The World Ends With You has kind of a card uh structure battle system that is incorporated into it. I definitely want to go check it out because as big of a Nomor fan as I am, I'm disappointed that I haven't gone and played it yet. Uh so like this idea didn't it didn't come back in Kingdom Hearts in this way, but they kind of revamped it and reutilized it in a different game. Um the influence from this card system though is kind of seen throughout the rest of the series because uh in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, they introduced something called the commands deck, and it's like a very simplified version of this, but uh instead of like having specific abilities that are like slights that do things, you can build a deck of like commands where all you have to do is like hit triangle and then it executes like that move, and you get like different moves where you can like combine them like together. So like you have your standard like combo of attacks, and then you always have like this deck of like uh commands that you can do that are like more powerful moves. So it kind of comes back in that fashion. And I think in uh Dream Drop Distance they do the same thing too with like this like command deck, and then that it kind of gets carried forward and simplified into like Kingdom Hearts 3 with like the uh triangle commands that pop up on the side when you fulfill like certain like combos and stuff. So spiritually, like they kind of carry this idea for just not in this like strict of a you're literally building a deck of cards, it's you will have uh like a command menu, like the similar the way you had your card deck, like on the side, and you can like flip through it and have like abilities and stuff uh in that deck to like use it, use it anytime. So it was something they like did carry forward into other games, just not not to this not to this extent. Uh yeah, not definitely not not to this extent. So it just thinking about thinking about that, and that's something I really love about the Kingdom Hearts series too, is that they like try things in different games and they kind of like reuse and recycle and repurpose them for like other games. And really, when you get to like Kingdom Hearts 3, if you've like played all of them, you can kind of see like the culmination of all the different kind of gameplay systems that they tried in the past, like in Kingdom Hearts 3. So it's really cool how like the games like evolved over the years. That's like one of my favorite parts about like playing it from beginning to end, is you kind of see how like the gameplay systems kind of all slowly build and like evolve on each other until you get to like Kingdom Hearts 3.
SPEAKER_01See, I I never noticed any of that. I also didn't like I said, I never really played the games in order, and I probably wasn't even paying attention to it because I'm I I just want to hit stuff with a giant key.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and that's and that's most of the time that's fine, but like when you're a psychopath like me and you've analyzed every game so many times, you like start to notice how things kind of like build off of each other, which is which is pretty cool. But um, yeah, I I I do I'm curious now if like my harshness towards this game is based on the PS2 game. Because like I'm not talking about talking about the GBA game with you, it's like I do have like really fond memories of it, and just because too, like the art style is so oh it's so good. It looks so good. The Pixel 2D art style, which is like you never see again in in Kingdom Hearts the series, is is very cool. I I love it. It's uh some beautiful pixel work, uh beautiful like pixel representation of like all the characters, and like they still manage to make the characters when they're talking in their text boxes like really expressive and stuff. So um I I really enjoy that about this game. The art is fantastic.
SPEAKER_01I forgot that you go to Twilight Town for like two minutes in this game, yeah. And when they show the mansion, do they show the clock? I think they also show the clock tower, it just looks so good. Like everything in this game, the the pixel art just looks so good when it's it's detailed and it's supposed to show something, not just the empty rooms that you run through the entire game. It it looks very, very good. Um I I I really fucking like this game a lot, man. Like every time somebody's like, oh, I don't I don't like chain of memories, it's either you didn't play it right or you don't understand it. Because, dude, this is the second game in the Kingdom Hearts uh series that was released, right? And immediately they let you play as Riku after you beat the game.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. Which yeah, that would have been a nice surprise, I think. Something you wouldn't expect.
SPEAKER_01Right? Like it like some games take forever to let you play as as somebody else, like uh Devil May Cry, you knew about NeloAngelo and how he might be uh Dante's brother, and then you got to play as Virgil in Devil May Cry 3, Dante's Awakening special edition. You didn't even get to play as him in the base game, so you had to wait three games to even play as the cool character. Right in this one, they let you play as the cool character in the second game, and you get your whole like what is it, like a 20-hour campaign? It's short, but it it adds so much to the story as well, and to Riku is and all the shit that he's had to put himself through to even to just even he Riku deserves what he's gotten so far. Like every every single good thing that has happened to Riku, he has worked for it. He has he has put in the blood and the work to get all the good things that he's gotten so far.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the thing I appreciate most about Riku's side of the story, which I think is called it's called something like reverse rebirth or something like that, which a very fitting to, of course, very Nomora-esque uh naming convention there. So where Riku's story is different and a little more streamlined, is each world you visit and go to, uh, you get a pre-built deck rather than like building your own deck. And it should be noted too well, Sora is starting on floor one and climbing up Castle Oblivion. Uh symbolically, Riku is starting in the basement and climbing up to the main floor, kind of like symbolizing the work he has to do to like redeem himself as a character, because he was he was a dick in Kingdom Hearts 1 and he made every possible wrong decision that you can make, he he made. Uh, but what giving the character uh pre-built decks or giving the player pre-built decks does is I think um it forces you to think about the the gameplay and the mechanics a little bit more and understand truly like what you can do. Cause they don't just give you like a random assortment of cards, like each deck is built specifically to like do something, uh, whether it's to like get Riku into like his dark mode or like utilize like his slights, each deck is built with like a specific purpose to handle like a specific challenge for that floor, and it adds kind of like a little puzzle element to figure out like how best to utilize that deck when you're used to having the freedom with Sora to just build, like you said, you could just build like a super cheesy deck or just have 10 clouds in your deck or whatever. Like with Rico, you had Riku, you have limited resources, so how do you utilize and because again with the same thing with like if you use slights or go into dark mode with him, like you lose cards out of your deck, so and you don't have the option of just putting in a bunch of potions or elixirs in your deck, so it teaches you uh to just think about the mechanics of the game just a little bit more with scarce resources, and I think that's a really cool way to not only like add additional content onto the end of the game, but also give it like its own unique flavor. I think that was really brilliant.
SPEAKER_01I I I think I only found one world kind of challenging. I think it might have been like the little mermaid world because the cards that they give you for the deck are not great. They definitely want you to rely on slights, but they want you to rely on slights so much that you can run out of couch pretty easily. Um I think that was the little mermaid world, if I'm not mistaken it. But all the other ones are super balanced. If you know what you're doing, how to use the cards correctly, you're gonna have a super easy time, especially if you learn how to activate the dark mode easily and you can just run slights the entire fight.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, I was just agreeing with you, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I I have a couple of notes from the Riku campaign. The first one is that Riku was ready for all the smoke. First time he meets the replica, fights him, tries to kill him. Immediately tries to kill the replica. Um let's see. Okay, when he fights Laxius, which is a great fight, that fight was really good. I feel like the deck that they gave you for that fight is is perfect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um he killed Laxius, and Riku didn't even care at all.
SPEAKER_00Again, and he didn't he didn't know he was a nobody, he just thought he was a dude.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like like Laxius explodes, like darkness just like explodes out of him, and Riku's like, okay, let's continue. Um they give you more of a backstory about the Rik the replica Riku. Uh basically, they implanted all of Riku's memories into him against his will. They created him. He comes up, they're like, hey, we have a job for you. You gotta kill Sora. Cool, but you gotta act like you're Riku. Cool. Here are all his memories. Not cool, I don't care. Here are his memories. And they basically cut to black as he's screaming to no because he's being gonna get, you know, he's gonna lose his entire personality that he doesn't have because he's been alive for a couple of minutes. Um so that that was like, what the fuck? And then the last note that I have, which I was gonna ask you about, they say in that story that Riku was the one that opened the door to darkness on Destiny Islands in Kingdom Hearts 1. I don't remember that at all because I don't remember that from the first game, but Riku basically says, yeah, I did it.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it was because it was kind of his desire, because in Kingdom Hearts 1, it's supposed to be like, you know, when the island's getting destroyed and stuff, like he's standing on the shore defiantly, he's like, I'm not afraid, I'm ready to go out there and see. Like basically, maybe it was like his strong. I'll have to go back and investigate this, because maybe it's his like just strong will and desire that kind of like opened that door and kind of destroyed like the entire world. This like his desire to go out there and escape and see what's out there and like his like really intense, like oh man. Darkness in Kingdom Hearts is like not inherently evil, you learn, but like it's it's brought forth from like really like strong uh emotion, which isn't always bad, but like if you give into it, like that's like a really bad thing, obviously. So maybe like that's the aspect behind it. Like, he didn't physically open it though. Like my interpretation of like those events was that uh like the worlds were just getting destroyed because Ansom was just running around like destroying the worlds and Sora Sora stopped it. Um you learn a bunch of stuff like again, you in Birth by Sleep and a bunch of the uh later games, you learn a bunch of stuff that like what necessarily happened in Kingdom Hearts 1 wasn't exactly Happened at like face value. So maybe there's something I can research there. But yeah, to me, I don't I don't really put like too much into it. He probably feels like responsible for just like the way he acts. He feels responsible for everything. Uh, and this really does kind of kick start what I think is the the best character arc, at least up and through Dream Drop Distance. I think Riku kind of gets shafted in Kingdom Hearts 3, which is another issue I have with that game. But from here to Dream Drop Distance, Riku has like a really nice character arc of him just trying to be like a better person and make up for like the mistakes that he made. And that culminates really beautifully in Dream Drop Distance. And I really like the way that this game plays with the theme of memory because it's called Chain of Memories, right? So Sora ascending the floors of Castle Oblivion, he's losing his memory, and like when he gets to the top, like basically they say, We gotta put your memories back together and like restore you to what you were. Namine agrees to like do that, and she's like, Oh, but if I do this, like you'll forget about me. And Sora's like, Well, no, because like I made you a promise, and like even if like I don't have that memory of you, it's like still in my heart, and I'll still remember to like thank you and keep my promise to you. So, like that aspect of like, even if you don't remember something, like your heart remembers it and it's like still memory, and then it's like the opposite thing is happening to Riku, where he remembers everything, he's ascending from the basement, and he has to try and figure out how to like square his existence with the painful memories of all like the bad things that he has done, and he has to like start the journey of like healing and being able to move forward while carrying those like memories with him. So it's very much like the questions Namura is asking in this game is like if you don't remember something, is it still like a memory and part of you? And then if you have all these painful memories, how do you how do you internalize those as part of you and be able to like move forward and like become a better person? So I just I like the the dueling the stories between like Sora and and Riku. They feel like they're on their own distinct journeys, like Nomura asks like thematically like separate questions for each of them. It's just it's uh it's really cool.
SPEAKER_01I um I wonder I wonder if in Kingdom Hearts 4 you'll get to play as Riku at all. Because I I hope so. He's a much more interesting character than Sora. If they decide to have Sora deal with all of the bad shit that he's done, I feel like Sora would become a whole lot more interesting, but Riku being the character he he's after Kingdom Hearts 1, he's just been on a on a redemption run the entire time, and it's and it's been great. He he he spent a year working for uh Ansom the Wise uh just to fix Sora.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh after that, he tried to get rid of the darkness inside him totally, which didn't really work. Then somehow he became a Keyblade master after he passed the mark of max mastery exam. Like he's been on an upward trajectory the entire time. I just I I Sora's nowhere nearest level.
SPEAKER_00His story is more uh like emotionally and morally complex than than Sora. Like I still think Sora's a good character, but Sora is just very much like hey, like Sora's like a reminder of the themes of Kingdom Hearts where it's just like if you have friends, if you have people beside you that love you and care about you, like you can do anything. Like Sora very much embodies that he has to be occasionally reminded of that, and he does fall on some hard times sometimes. Uh, but but his journey he goes on is very different from Riku's that is like this like more or less he feels more relatable because we've all I feel like dealt with that kind of pain and and suffering, at least some level where you have things in your past that you did, you have decisions that you made that you like maybe regret, and maybe it hurt people, or maybe things you did hurt others or hurt yourself and you damaged yourself. And now the challenge is how do you move forward knowing that like you made those mistakes, uh knowing that they're a part of your past, like you can't get rid of them. How do you live with that and move forward and try to become a better person? That you're right, that's infinitely more interesting than Sora, who's just like kind of a more standard run-of-the-mill, like shown in protagonist, who is who kind of has a flatter arc across the series as a whole. And yeah, the the it's disappointing that you can't play as him in Kingdom Hearts 3 after he gets a whole again, Dream Drop Distance does the whole Sora Riku, like you can play both of them, and then the game that immediately precedes that is like Riku is kind of like sidelined for like a majority of the game, and they're like two sections where you can play as him for like very, very brief moments, but like Sora always like ends up coming in and like taking over the spotlight, and it's just really frustrating because Riku had this incredible arc that didn't deserve to just get sidelined in in Kingdom Hearts 3. So, yeah, I hope he does have more to do in in four. I just whatever four has its own litany of stuff that people are trying to understand about like oh Sora's like in unreality now, and he might be dead, and this other place he might be is maybe like he's dead, but maybe he's not. And then did didn't Sora die twice in Kingdom Hearts 3?
SPEAKER_01I don't so yeah, so he died the one time, and then uh and he went to mirror hell, right? Where where everything was a mirror and it was awful.
SPEAKER_00It was basically it's basically the world before the afterlife is like the they're like it's basically like like almost like purgatory, I would say. And then he's just like, No, screw this. I have the power of friendship, and uses the power of friendship to literally like change time, which you're like not supposed to be able to do per the established rules of time travel in the Kingdom Hearts universe, but he does it anyways, and Xanaort tells him, Yo, you're not supposed to do this, something very bad is gonna happen to you, and then because he does that at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, he just basically just gets it. You don't know if he dies, he just vanishes from existence and uh appears in modern day Tokyo, and you don't know, and there's this guy who looks like the original the original Noctis from uh versus 13, and then there's like the Shibuya crossing, and then like the the new bad guy might be like standing on top of the square Enix building. Yeah, it's four is gonna be like I might have to like start doing drugs again for four because that might be like some of the craziest. Yeah, that like if if we're going like full Nomora on four and like the theory is he's like pulling in stuff from versus 13, that that might be one of the trippiest games ever. Uh we'll have to see though. So, but yeah, Riku's arc, I mean, it it kind of gets left in limbo and one, and then really his arc of redemption starts in this game, and for like Namora to include that in this game, I think is was a very, very cool choice. Uh, because they could have easily just like relegated Riku to like a background character status, and then like then he shows up in Kingdom Hearts 2 again. And I don't think that would have worked as well if it didn't have his part in this game.
SPEAKER_01Man, it's uh it's not complicated, it's just told in a very poor way.
SPEAKER_00If I think if you play if you play them all in order, I don't think it's that it's that complicated.
SPEAKER_01No, it's not that complicated. It's just a lot of there's a lot of small details that you forget, and a lot of proper nouns, uh, for sure.
SPEAKER_00Um, but any JRPG deals with like kind of very complex like metaphor. Like I always tell people it's like in Persona 5, you're like literally going into people's subconsciouses, and like that that's not any less crazy than anything that happens in like Kingdom Hearts.
SPEAKER_01So it's a little bit more understandable than Kingdom Hearts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like it's fine.
SPEAKER_01The the Tokyo Underground is it's uh it's a giant dungeon fill of people's subconscious. Uh yeah. For some reason, you go to the frozen world and air and Elsa singing, let it go. And Sora, Donald, and Goofy are as confused. They're as confused as everybody else about why somebody's singing in the middle of a fucking blizzard. Like, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_00I hate the frozen world more than I hate the Little Mermaid World in Kingdom Hearts 2. Oh that's how much I hate the frozen world, but that's besides the point.
SPEAKER_01I got I started the level and I'm like, what the fuck is happening? And then Sora Donald and Goofy are like, what the fuck is happening? I'm like, at least I'm not alone.
SPEAKER_00It's the worst world in that game by far. It's not even close.
SPEAKER_01It's not it's not good. But dude, I I I've really, really enjoyed replaying this game. I I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought that I would. I thought that I was gonna have a hard time with the limited combos, having to build decks and everything, but it it's it's not hard to figure out. And when it flows, it just flows, and it doesn't hurt that I'm a lot older than I was when I first played it, and I have a way better grasp of the English language than I did when I first played it. So it it it just hits a lot harder, and there's a lot of very heavy stuff in this game, and these characters go through some horrific stuff. They they they go through things that would drive a person insane, um, and somehow they're still expected to to chug along. I I would really love to see Sora deal with the shit that he's had to go through in just these two games. Um it looks like Riku is like shit, I did this, my bad, let me do better. So I feel like Riku has has a good understanding of it, but Sora's just like a fucking limbo.
SPEAKER_00He doesn't even remember what happens in this game.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00For the rest of the entire series. Yeah, like like Riku has to remind him whenever he has a question about stuff, Riku's like, no, no, you you were there for that, but you don't remember. So just that's why that's why it takes so long. Like the one of the lingering plot threads of Kingdom Hearts 2 is that uh before Nomine like uh started putting his memories back together, they had written in the Jiminy Cricket journal, Thank Nomine.
SPEAKER_01Thank Nomine, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they were they were like they're like, we have no idea what this means. It's because he d literally doesn't literally doesn't remember it. So uh that's very interesting. Yeah, I uh I my memories now I I like the GBA version way more than the PS2 version. I think if if you're gonna play this game, I think that is the superior version to play for sure. Especially if you're if you're on a Kingdom Hearts journey, I think it's really cool to see one of the only Kingdom Hearts games in this style, uh, in this type of play. Because all the other games, uh for the most part, are 3D action RPGs, more or less. Uh except the mobile games, but we d that's a different that's different. We don't that's not the that's not the same. Uh that's like maybe again its own episode. Uh when it came out, it was it reviewed pretty well. It's got a 76 on Metacritic, uh, it's got sevens and eights mostly across the board for for major reviewers. Uh it it's the least commercially successful Kingdom Hearts game, but it it still sold like almost two million copies, uh, which is which is pretty good. So um yeah, I I just think that it if you're looking at the games individually, I I think there's a lot that it does well. I just think where it kind of gets the reputation it does is when you compare it to all the other Kingdom Hearts games and what people love about all the other games, uh what they do well, especially Kingdom Hearts 2, which comes after it, which is considered by many kind of the the best game in the series, uh in terms of narrative, story, uh mechanical wise. Like many consider Kingdom Hearts 2 to kind of be the peak. Uh, and then to go back and see that this is the game that precedes it kind of puts a weird taste in people's mouth. That's that's kind of that's what I think some of the discourse for this game comes for sure. It's certainly not my least favorite Kingdom Hearts game. Uh I I have a special place of loathing for recoded. I don't like that.
SPEAKER_01I think everybody does.
SPEAKER_00Um recoded has some interesting mechanical things, but it's just if you are to skip any game, if you want to play uh all the games and skip them, I I think recoded is completely unnecessary. Uh and then I I like the story stuff that happens in the mobile games, but the gameplay uh and like mechanically, the mobile games are just kind of like like gigantic nothing burgers. So um I I I do like I do like Chain of Memories quite a bit. I think it's I think it's better than most people give it credit for. And I think and I think uh if you're just experiencing it on the collection on the PS2 remastered version that they include in there, I think that's a disservice because I don't think that was the way the game was originally intention uh to be played intentionally. It wasn't it was designed to be played on that story, that gameplay was designed for Game Boy Advanced, and I think if you're doing a Kingdom Hearts playthrough or diving into the series, I think that's the way it should be played.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I I think the copies for the Game Boy Advanced version go for like $14, so it's not an expensive game to get.
SPEAKER_00No, and yeah, I I wouldn't uh legally I'm not telling you to do this, but also GBA emulation is not difficult. You can run it on your phone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, any modern modern phone can run it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's it's and that and even on the phone, it's it's probably relatively easy to to play. So um yeah, that this if you're experiencing chain of memories, this is the way, or you know, I guess just don't play on do what you want.
SPEAKER_01You're watching your free will. So yeah, um I I played through the whole thing. I I beat both campaigns. Um I gave this game an eight on my uh games beaten this year thing, it an eight out of ten. I think this game is fantastic. I was kind of dreading it, kind of excited to replay it, and it I think I was playing other stuff just because I had paid a lot of money for them, like games that come out, you know, because games now are insanely expensive. And while playing those other games, I was thinking I want to play Kingdom Hearts, and yeah, I was sp strictly holding off Kingdom Hearts to play in the recliner while my wife was watching TV or reading a book so we can both hang out together. So I was I was saving the game and I had an amazing time with it.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, there's a lot of excitement around the series now with with four and the animated series that got announced recently. So I'm very I'm very happy to see and and I've seen a lot of like social media posts about people picking it up and playing it for the first time and experiencing it for the first time. That's been it's been very cool to to see the renewed interest in something that I that I love so much. Uh it's never been easier. The the whole thing that people used to have, the whole knock was like, oh, if I want to play it, I used to have to have like seven different things because it's on the DS and it's on the PS. Yeah, not anymore. You can get it all. I remember when it finally came to Steam, uh the first weekend it was on sale, and I bought the entire series collection for $70. One all the way through three, all of them. And that's incredible value. I recognize that $70 is a lot of people, but that's for maybe a lot for some people, especially in this economy. That's a lot of games. That's like that's like 10, like 20 to 25-ish hour JRP action JRPG games for $70. Uh, incredible. And I I always track them on Steam too. So if you want to get them online, like I bought them for the Steam Deck, it's very affordable. Like these it's very affordable to be like be able to like buy these games and and experience them now if you want to. And I think it's doable to do them all before four next year, which seems to be like Q3, Q4 later. So um, but I if the only shame is that if you want to play this specific version of the game, it's not included in the the collections. They do push the and I understand why, like it's it's gotta be hard, like aggregating all those games in one place to play them. Uh I would still like you said, if you have if you have a G ABA laying around, like you said, you can get a cart for pretty cheap. Or I I am not legally again, I'm legally required to tell you to not emulate, but if you take that route too, it's it's it's relatively easy.
SPEAKER_02So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I'm excited for it too. I can't wait to get my hands on the collection and and play two because uh that's that was that's what I compared three to, and it was nowhere near as good. Um yeah, I'm excited to continue with Kingdom Hearts. It's been a very, very long time since I last.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad I'm I'm excited for you. I think yeah, two is uh like it I've said it a million times on my show, uh Kingdom Hearts any given day, Kingdom Hearts 2 or Final Fantasy IX is my favorite game of all time. Just depends on the day. Uh yeah, yeah, two is two is what most people compare the entire series to. Um, my opinion of two is very high. I think two is the best uh square game on the PlayStation 2. I know it's blasphemy because Final Fantasy X is there, but the bouncer is fair.
SPEAKER_01The bouncer is on PlayStation 2. Okay. Would you play anything else?
SPEAKER_00Listen, fair. Uh I I might have to rethink my take there. I forgot about the bouncer. So, but uh yeah, man, I'm I'm excited that you're playing it. That's very, very cool. I'm always so happy to hear about anybody else's Kingdom Hearts journey. So if you're playing it, if you start playing too, feel free to just text me shit. I will I'll respond.
SPEAKER_01All right, all right. I will I'll let you know what all psychological Chris, this is the danger of having me on.
SPEAKER_00I will ramble about Kingdom Hearts for hours, so I apologize.
SPEAKER_01That's that's right. I'd rather have that than than not at all. Like sometimes I have to coerce my wife to say stuff because she just won't. Um, but Eric, thank you so much. Uh I I I wouldn't have had anybody else to talk to with about Kingdom Hearts because uh I don't think anybody else understands it as well as you do, or has the patience to explain stuff about it as well as you do. Um so go ahead and and plug your socials, tell people where to find you, uh what you do, what you don't do, all that good stuff, and uh I'll have all that information in the show notes. So uh floor cheers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so uh the easiest way to find all the stuff that I do is you can go to linktr.ee forward slash unlockables podcast. All of my links to the stuff are there. Uh the show. Um I do have a Discord server, but it's it's pretty uh it's pretty dead. It's on life support. People will pop in and post some stuff sometimes where we talk about football. Uh, but it's I mostly just use it for show updates. Uh the podcast can be found wherever uh pods are available. I think it's on like most most podcatcher services, um, all big ones, Spotify, Apple, you know, all those big ones. Uh my big fame to my big claim to fame with my show is that I do have the my Guiding Keys series, which is where I replayed all the Kingdom Hearts games and I podcasted about all of them. I think there's like 30 Kingdom Hearts episodes that cover the entire series that total up to about 50-ish hours of content. Uh, so it really does kind of just walk you through the entire series. Uh, so it's a it's a good companion if you're if you're playing along and you know, just listen to those episodes as you play. Uh a lot of people have reached out and said like that's what they're doing, and that's still kind of crazy to me to this day that people are like, yeah, I started playing King of Hearts, and then I'm like listening to your podcast is like a companion to it. I'm like, that's fucking crazy, but okay. Uh so and then the podcast is just kind of like like you say, it's kind of like earshots whenever I get around to doing it or having people on. Uh it's kind of just uh really kind of become like an audio diary for stuff I just feel like I want to talk about. And uh I have been dabbling a little bit more in YouTube, so if you go to that link and go to the unlockables YouTube and subscribe, I've been trying to do more video content, uh more like kind of essay style stuff where I can like sit down and write and like throw a bunch of video together. And uh that's been really cool because I've learned like new skills in writing and like editing videos. So that's been that's been pretty neat. So go and check uh go and check that stuff out. I think the most recent video I did was I did uh one kind of like a mini like little review philosophical thing on the latest Star Fox game that came out. So that was uh that was really cool. And I had a lot of that was fun.
SPEAKER_01That was a very funny.
SPEAKER_00I had fun doing that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um you also did the uh Ocarina of Time where you've played it as an adult for the first time ever.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah. That was uh that was a good one, too.
SPEAKER_01That was a very good one.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, and I I think the most successful one I have is I again did the same thing, but I did with Chrono Trigger for the 30th anniversary. And uh that was by far and away the most like successful thing I've ever done on the internet. So that was that was pretty crazy. Um, but yeah, I can't believe it took me 30 years to play that game. It's kind of crazy. But but anyways, yeah, um, you can find it all there. Um, and thank you, Chris, for letting me come on here again and and ramble about something that I love very much. I always love coming on your show. You have an awesome community of people. You're uh you're an awesome person. So thank you so much for having me on, man. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. And I'll we talked about doing some other stuff, uh Game Boy Advance related, so we'll we'll figure that out too. Not just Kingdom Hearts. Uh I want to subject and subject you through some interesting stuff that you've never played.
SPEAKER_00I would love, yeah, I would love to. I'm I'm always looking to dive into my backlog and scratch more stuff off. So yeah, I'd love to do that.
SPEAKER_01All right. So uh you'll find all of the information in the show notes. Thank you, everybody who supports us on Patreon. Your two bucks a month keeps the lights on the show, and uh everybody on Discord, thank you for hanging out, being awesome. Uh, all the listeners and everybody who's listened, downloaded. Uh, to the few people that have recently found the show and have downloaded the entire catalog of a novel console, all almost 200 something episodes constantly uh for the last like three months. Thank you. We really appreciate that. But you you don't have to listen to everything, it's it's it's a lot of us.
SPEAKER_00So, but yeah, you do know I'm gonna say I'm gonna say this. You do have to listen to everything. Keep doing that.
SPEAKER_01Just the downloads is enough. You don't have to listen. Just download. Just like I get the like I get the download. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just give me the download number after that. You can throw the episodes in the trash. I don't care.
SPEAKER_00That's so funny.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh, do you want to say goodbye to everyone, Eric?
SPEAKER_00I will. Goodbye, everyone, and I'll see you uh the next time Chris drags me on the show.
SPEAKER_01Goodbye, everyone.