In the last three months, I have spent a whopping six hours on this game. I have had so little motivation to play it, and I feel like I'm forcing myself to get through it because I want to have beaten this game, you know what I'm saying...
The thing is, I loved Re:CoM. I played it four years ago and at the time I liked it more than KH1. There's a lot that I praised the game for back then that I still hold now. The setting and premise are really cool: it's this disorienting castle where Sora slowly loses his memories and has them replaced by fabricated ones. Both Sora and Riku go through much more compelling arcs compared to the original; we get to see this side of Sora that we never see again because of how he's being mentally manipulated, and Riku continues to struggle not only with the darkness but also with himself. On top of that the mystery is more interesting than in the original, and Naminé and the organization are great new characters, making this story overall one that I enjoy much more than the original.
In a way, this game is very ahead of its time. It's a deck-building semi-roguelike, genres that the indie scene would flourish in over a decade after this game came out. Learning new sleights and optimizing your deck to make the most use out of them was what made this game so fun for me when I played the remake. The difficulty balancing is non-existent, as the game is way too hard at the beginning when enemies all have higher value cards than you, and way too easy in the middle and end when you have access to so many sleights that break the game (lethal frame, sonic blade, freeze, raging storm, etc.), but that's the whole fun of it. Learning all the broken sleights and cramming as many of them into your deck as possible was awesome.
What's apparent to me now playing the GBA version is how tedious standard battles are. I surprisingly found the boss fights ok, but on every floor I eventually found myself running away from enemies as much as I could because of how dull and dragged out each one is. What's more frustrating is that you're never guaranteed to have the cards you need to open up new rooms, and it's really difficult to get new attack cards to flesh out your deck with. All things considered I think that Jupiter did a really good job with this game given the hardware it was developed for, but much like The World Ends With You, the gameplay systems are a bit too big for their britches. I think there's a lot of potential with this game, but that potential is handled sloppily, lacks in risk/reward, and doesn't prepare the player properly.
I doubt I will finish this game, despite how much I would like to. I feel like I could say so much more about it, but I'm just not having fun, and it's not worth it to push through for a game I've already played. If I ever pick it up again, I'd rather just play the remake instead.
The thing is, I loved Re:CoM. I played it four years ago and at the time I liked it more than KH1. There's a lot that I praised the game for back then that I still hold now. The setting and premise are really cool: it's this disorienting castle where Sora slowly loses his memories and has them replaced by fabricated ones. Both Sora and Riku go through much more compelling arcs compared to the original; we get to see this side of Sora that we never see again because of how he's being mentally manipulated, and Riku continues to struggle not only with the darkness but also with himself. On top of that the mystery is more interesting than in the original, and Naminé and the organization are great new characters, making this story overall one that I enjoy much more than the original.
In a way, this game is very ahead of its time. It's a deck-building semi-roguelike, genres that the indie scene would flourish in over a decade after this game came out. Learning new sleights and optimizing your deck to make the most use out of them was what made this game so fun for me when I played the remake. The difficulty balancing is non-existent, as the game is way too hard at the beginning when enemies all have higher value cards than you, and way too easy in the middle and end when you have access to so many sleights that break the game (lethal frame, sonic blade, freeze, raging storm, etc.), but that's the whole fun of it. Learning all the broken sleights and cramming as many of them into your deck as possible was awesome.
What's apparent to me now playing the GBA version is how tedious standard battles are. I surprisingly found the boss fights ok, but on every floor I eventually found myself running away from enemies as much as I could because of how dull and dragged out each one is. What's more frustrating is that you're never guaranteed to have the cards you need to open up new rooms, and it's really difficult to get new attack cards to flesh out your deck with. All things considered I think that Jupiter did a really good job with this game given the hardware it was developed for, but much like The World Ends With You, the gameplay systems are a bit too big for their britches. I think there's a lot of potential with this game, but that potential is handled sloppily, lacks in risk/reward, and doesn't prepare the player properly.
I doubt I will finish this game, despite how much I would like to. I feel like I could say so much more about it, but I'm just not having fun, and it's not worth it to push through for a game I've already played. If I ever pick it up again, I'd rather just play the remake instead.