[UPDATE #5] Re:Chain of Memories - Fan Reviews

On December 2nd I posted an update regarding fan reviews for KH-Vids. Today I've received some reviews from members of the forums. Hopefully there will be more submissions as you guys get closer to beating the game. Below are the requirements on submitting your own review. You can click HERE to access the update.

REQUIREMENTS
- No plagiarism. Your review must be in your own words.
- Make sure you include your first name and username.
- Review doesn't need to be long or short. Write as much as you want.
- Deadline is January 2009.
- Five members/visitors will be selected and displayed on the main page.
- Send reviews to me at cgnetproductions@aol.com or pm me.

First Name: B
Username: ~The Rising Falcon

Voice Cast Review: Now I haven't beaten the whole game as of yet. I'm actually on the 6th floor, Level 21, on Proud Mode. As soon as the credits finished and I heard Marluxia first talk, I was already trilled by the new English voice cast. Marluxia to me comes off as someone with a bold, yet handsome voice. And Keith Ferguson did just that. As I have heard of him so far. As for Sora, knowing Haley Joel wasn't disappointing. It just caught me off guard how, being the voice of the 16 year-old Sora, is also the voice of 14 year-old Sora. I have yet to hear Kairi, played by Alyson Stoner, and Namine, by Meaghan Jette Martin, have sounded. But I'm sure they will be just as good as both Hayden and Brittany.

Gameplay Review: When I started out on Proud Mode, I found the challenge at first not difficult, but as I progressed thru the floors, it began getting tougher. I didn’t get a Moogle Room till the 4th floor. And I mainly keep a stack no lower than 5 or 6. But having wimpy cards like 1-4's wasn't cutting it. I could easily use them, it just meant more restocking as i had been constantly card broken. But I quickly got the hang of it all and quickly took out the first 6 floors in under 3 hours, I think? [Laughs] Using slights wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Hitting Triangle with a quick R1 or L1 wasn't tricky, but the lock-on being R2 got to me. So I changed the battle style, making R1 Lock-On, L2 and R2 being card changing. And it worked way easier.

Cutscene Review: I was impressed with the voice overs, but the scenes between levels got to me. All the reading, no listening. It was tireding. A few areas of voice would've been nice, but none the less perfectly fine. The graphics were impressive. They live up to the brother games, if not what I consider better.

I give Kingdom Hearts Re:CoM a 9/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Ian
Username: KHMasterPK

Voice Choice Review: I may not be very far into the game (Just beat Larxene the first time around.) but when it comes to the voice work I'm impressed. Axel still sounds great, Marluxia got a good voice, and Larxene's voice fits her very well. It's nice seeing that Donald and Goofy still have nothing different with their voice Sora has his Kingdom Hearts 2 voice which to me just doesn't fit with the Kingdom Hearts 1 Sora look.

Gameplay Review: Well since I played the Japanese game before this it's nice to see it is pretty much the same. Battles get handled the same way, traveling is still simple, and it all makes sense. I may not be a huge fan of the card battles system but the combat is still fluid like Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. Only problem I find is how hard it can be to get cards over 6. Within the 4 packs I end up lucky with the most being 6 out of 20 being useful to what I use. It's early in the game where the better packs aren't available yet so there is time that the minor problem will change.

Cutscene Review: Very well made. The scenes add up with the story, voices have the right tone to fit what happened and overall is just adds to the experience to pull you in. Only issue is what others have said where there are no actual scenes with voices IN the worlds just going through the castle...It gets annoying having to read most of the game. There is also the minor issue of how at times the mouths don't match the words but...That seems natural for Japanese to English games.

I give this game an overall score of 9.25 out of 10.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

First Name: Stephanie
Username: SSCeles

Voice Cast:
- It didn't take long for me to get over Sora's aged voice. When I later met up with the Riku replica, I was again stunned by hearing a deeper voice come out of character still dressed in KH1 clothing. But I soon got over that, too. They're still the Sora and Riku I remember!
- Axel... well, I think Quinton Flynn was trying to hard to make him sound suave this time. Larxene? Wow. Talk about a girl you wouldn't want to catch at the wrong time of the month. She didn't give me quite the same vibe as the Japanese Larxene, but: It's all in the laugh. At times, it could have been a little higher. Instead of the girly high pitched giggle, it was a full out sadistic , fake, preppy laugh. Both work on Larxene. It's a good American equivalent. I loved to hate her. The best highlight of this game: Vexen's voice. It's delicious.
- Marluxia. Pfft. Okay, at first, I was a little worried Ferguson wouldn't do a good job. He also did Bloo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. How could I take that voice seriously? Well, good news. I couldn't make the connection. He did a good job voicewise. But he just doesn't fit Marluxia. He also used a random french word after the whole Vexen-Marluxia arguement that kind of made me tilt my head and go, "Huh?"
- Namine. I was originally concerned about her getting a new voice actor. But she reads her lines well. Her lines struck my heart, and she is truly fitting of a Chain of Memories Namine. I can connect her deeper, yet quieter voice with the depressed and caged Namine: So it was fitting, but could have been higher.
- Bad, bad me: I snuck onto YouTube to peek ahead. I had to see how good or bad Epcar did with Ansem. MUCH better than the KH2 voiceover. Much. Still no Billy Zane, but its an optimistic 9/10 so far. (I haven't officially hit Riku's side yet.)
- Lexaeus, Zexion: Not there yet. I've heard from friends that they're great.

Gameplay:
- I started out on Easy mode because I really, really wanted to get to Riku's side. I played the Gameboy version of Chain of Memories, and I wasn't in it for the gameplay. Great news: The card based system works out a lot better on a 3D playing field. You can actually run away a safe distant to reload your deck! Currently I'm right before the last Axel battle. After that? Marluxia's epic multi-part battle. Fun fun! I've only had this game two days, but my in-game timer at the save points claim I have 24 hours in. (Man, do I feel sorry for anyone who played anything other than Easy mode if it's taken me this long.) A lot of my time was wasted revising my deck, and rebattling the Riku replica and Larxene. (Using the deck building process wasn't explained nearly well enough in-game. Took a while to even comprehend the brightly colored menus.)
- I really love the triangle button for the card combos. Far easier than the original.
- You really have to decide whether you want to attack with sleights, or just attack flat out. Remember that the first cards of sleights disappear!
- If you have to fight a boss more than once (Larxene, especially) the second battle gets harder with new attack patterns and new attacks altogether.
- Dodge roll is your key to escaping any teleport attacks, and running from ice spikes is your best friend! It may take more than one try to defeat a boss, even on Easy.
- If a boss isn't giving you time to breathe, let alone reshuffle your deck, I say plan out your deck ahead of time. (I'm refering mostly to Riku.) You'll know what cards you have, so all you have to do set them up in the order you have to use them. No scrambling back and forth. Strike raids stun. It may be your only time to heal or reshuffle before he wakes up.
- Disney boss battles: Much easier than in the original Chain of Memories. Didn't have to redo a single one, from what I recall...

Cutscenes:
- Well... in the Disney worlds there were some fun events. A shame that there was no voice acting. However, this is a LONG game, it would take up too much room on the disc or something? In any case, the stories are vaguely the same as they were last time, else predictable of the characters therein. (I've always been wierded out with KH Jafar wanting to marry Jasmine, when in the movie... bleh.) Maleficient, Belle, and Beast have a new story inside of Hollow Bastion which may shine some light on Maleficient... but then again, it's only inside Sora's head, and not really the witch herself.
- The actual scenes: There were a few lines that I think could have been translated more accurately, or lipsync better, but that's what I get for knowing the Japanese version backwards and forwards. I'm happy to say a few choice lines remained untouched and hardly different from the translations at KH-Vids. The Riku replica's, "You're always trying to worm your way into my heart!" and "Your memory is a train wreck!" Are happily the same.
- Vexen's mouth movements are extravagent near the beginning, so its hard to get any lipsyncing in at all. But the voice acting made up for it tenfold.
- In places I felt the voice acting was far more 'real' feeling than the other two games. In other places, I didn't feel much of anything at all. I'm still unsatisfied with Marluxia's voiceacting, it seemed strained and not real. But he is a Nobody. The lack of emotion... could be seen as fitting?

Overall: 9/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------

First Name: Matthew
Username: Roxas_The_Key_to_Destiny

My Review: I own the Japanese Version that came with Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ Over a year and 4 months now. Ive recently obtian the North American Version Yesterday(12/3/08). I like the game alot. Comparing the Japanese to English they made it alittle differnce like the Fonts(of the numbers). The Voice acting of the game is really good. Im not that far into the game. But I get there soon. But I've heard from my own ears of the game Sora, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, Marluxia, Axel, and Larxene, I seen some youtube. But I like to review from my own site of the game, the Voices I like, I perfer KHII Sora's Voice because I like it, cause of how gentle and funny it is. The Game Play I didnt like in the GBA, But the Ps2 on made it alot easier for me to understand and use. The graphics are really good as well better than the first KH. But the Voice I am conserned about is Alyson Stoner as Kairi, I want to hear her 3 lines or so. But I hope Hayden does more work for KH.. I adore her =3. But That is my Review.

Score: 10/10 for me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Mark
Username: TheoGary

Overview: I loved Chain of Memories on the GBA. It was actually the first Kingdom Hearts game I ever played. So I was very excited when I heard about a fully realized PS2 version coming out with Final Mix+. I figured it would never make its way stateside, but imagine my surprise when I heard the announcement. I picked it up the day it came out and I’ve just now finished Reverse Rebirth Mode.

Story: CoM has a great story. It serves as a fantastic introduction to Organization XIII and the Nobodies. And to see Riku and King Mickey getting as much screen time as Sora, Donald and Goofy is awesome. I felt like this game had even more interesting twists and turns than the other games. And to see it now, being able to put it in context with KH2, makes it all the more interesting. I caught lots of little hints about Roxas and Xemnas that I didn’t know to look for when I first played.

Voice Acting: I must say that I was slightly disappointed in some of the voice acting this time around. This isn’t something that could really be helped, but it was still jarring to hear 15-year-old Sora’s voice coming out of 14-year-old Sora’s mouth. And as much as I love Quinton Flynn, his heart (no pun intended) just didn’t seem to be into playing Axel this time around. Marluxia…he wasn’t bad, but that’s just not how I imagined him sounding at all. Though Corey Burton does a fair imitation, Christopher Lee’s voice talents as DiZ/Ansem the Wise were still missed. And, as with KH2, Richard Epcar just can’t compare to Billy Zane as Ansem/Xehanort. And I really felt like they should have added voice acting to the Disney Worlds. Going through the text exchanges got very tedious after a while. However there were some high points too. David Gallagher as Riku was the best he’s been in any game so far. Shanelle Gray as Larxene was EXACTLY how I imagined her. And Derek Stephen Prince was very good as Vexen. The rest of the voices, I was fairly neutral about.

Graphics: The graphics were very hot and cold for me. The models and animations were on par with KH2. However the environments went from really good to downright ugly. If you recall, the maps on the GBA version were basically a cross-section. Well, they translated that precisely into this version. So what you often end up with is two walls and then a random drop into nothingness. In some levels, they made this work. Atlantica and Wonderland are two that come to mind. However, in others it just looked like lazy programming. My favorite was Twilight Town where it looked like the city ended and became an endless sea of Mustard Gas.

Gameplay: They did a good job translating the card system into the PS2. They retained the spirit of it while adding some new elements. When I heard that they were importing the mechanic of Reaction Commands from KH2, I was apprehensive. I just wasn’t sure how that would work with the cards. However, my worries were for nothing. They did a good job with it. And I really enjoyed Riku’s Duel Mode. There’s also a ton of new Sleights to play around with, including instances where Sora attacks alongside his companions.

Final Assessment: While the story and the gameplay are great, I felt like the game was hurt by some of the voice acting and the bad design of the environments.

Score: 8 out of 10.