Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories - The Review

 

Lead me into everlasting darkness…

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was the second of the long line of games released by Square Enix and is an intermediary between Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2. It is the first of a few games released on Nintendo Consoles. Melody of Memories will be the next upcoming game, but won’t be out until November. For those of you new to the series, let’s just say this game is a love child of Final Fantasy and Disney, and the story spans across several games.

The game covers the adventures of our three brave protagonists to this story: Sora, Donald & Goofy. Together, in a land between light and darkness, they are on a quest to find their missing friends. Soon, the trio stumble across a mysterious location called Castle Oblivion. Inside the building, a hooded man appears before the protagonists with a cryptic message. He tells them “In this place, to find is to lose, and to lose is to find”. After this, he samples Sora’s memories and stores a segment of this in a card. The trio are able to access a memory of a world they are familiar with from the previous game. Unbeknownst to the gang, Castle Oblivion is currently occupied by the newly introduced antagonists, “Organization XIII”. The trio has to balance facing off against the Organization, all the while losing memories of those they hold dearest along the way.

“To find is to lose, and to lose is to find”

The game didn’t meet the level of praise its predecessor did when first released on the Gameboy Advance, but proved to be an enjoyable experience to some among the community. Soon after, it received a major facelift when it was remade for the Playstation 2, much to the excitement of fans everywhere. Now, it lives on in the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 collection on the PS4.

So, is it worth playing?

Here’s my take.

One of the more powerful attacks in game when playing as Sora.

Let’s look into the gameplay first. It’s an enmeshment of action, and card-based battles. You have a limited deck of cards to fight with. These card categories can range from keyblade attacks, summons, potions, and magic attacks. Each card is numbered from 0 to 9, and your success against an enemy’s attack is predicted solely on which person plays the higher card, but there is one exception! If you have a 0, you can counter the number played by the enemy, but the enemy can do the same. You can also combine multiple cards and add the total sum to a high number. This creates special attacks called “sleights“, and for attacks, it strengthens the hits you make to opponents. There are regular cards where the numbers beside the cards are in plain white, and premium cards, where the numbers appear yellow.

There’s a lot of versatility when using the cards in game.

Some cards you collect aren’t used for battle, but for adding special attributes to rooms while exploring different worlds. As long as you have a card that meets the numbered requirement, you can make the room whatever you want it to be. It is refreshing to be able to choose any room, and turn it into save, moogle or a special kind of card boosting room. You need to collect 3-4 special golden cards to progress into parts of the story related to each world. You can progress to the next floor or boss battle once you have finished exploring the world on a floor. Each floor also has special cards that can access different worlds. It can be quite dizzying trying to remember which cards you have, so always make sure you review your deck regularly.

Side effects of entering Castle Oblivion may include: forgetfulness, brain damage, and cloning.

Now, for the story. I strongly recommend that you play the first game before this one. There are a lot of important elements in the story that appears in later games. The story also splits off into two parts – Sora, and Riku’s version of events. I found it such a shame that you couldn’t choose between characters from the start, but I can see why this direction was taken. The main cutscenes in Castle Oblivion were good, though sometimes you can catch moments where the characters suddenly have flat iron board faces. The voice acting sometimes lacked emotion too during some cutscenes. The stories surrounding the other worlds, however, were not at all impressive. It felt like watching a clip show with sloppy dialogue and you could see text copied and pasted from the previous game.

The main storyline itself was pretty interesting and had potential!

Most of the worlds from the previous game did make it to this one, except for Tarzan’s Deep Jungle world. I’m not entirely sure as to why this was the case. Regardless, it didn’t match the pacing of the main story, and some scenes felt really underwhelming. One minute you’re in Castle Oblivion, feeling the tension, and the next, you’re smashing honey pots into Winnie the Pooh’s head.

Unfortunately, many of the assets felt recycled from the Playstation 2. The graphics, the music, the assets. There were opportunities for the team to upgrade on the graphics in particular. I felt that this was a real letdown to fans. The music could have been more versatile, and match the beat to the growing tension of the story. Sadly, this was not to be. They tragically underused the talent and range of Yoko Shimomura‘s abilities as a composer.

Is it replayable? Would you want to play it again?

I really wanted to like this game more than I did. I really did. It was one of the few games I haven’t touched in the series, a missing piece in the puzzle to fully understand the story. I can’t ignore the underlying problems with this game. I felt like pulling my hair out from the card battle system mechanics. The revamped game also missed a chance at allowing the player to listen to the dialogue in Japanese for the main cutscenes. The ideas for the game are in the right places, such as the “build your own dungeon” mechanic with cards. It sadly did not survive for more than a portion of the game. Grinding for cards isn’t fun, and neither is having a limited variation of rooms to convert with cards.

It’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the game in some parts. I did. Reverse/Rebirth’s part of the story (Riku’s perspective) did an amazing job of redeeming part of the experience. It freed me from the filler hell, but sadly wasn’t able to remedy the bad voice acting, lazy soundtrack or the reused assets. I personally wouldn’t replay this, but I’m glad to have experienced the gaming fusion experiment that is Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories.

A look into the Edge of Eternity

 

Time is the moving image of Eternity.

Love games like Breath of The Wild, Ni-No-Kuni, Final Fantasy, and Horizon Zero Dawn? Want to pick up a JRPG, go on a journey, laugh and cry together? Well, that’s what I found happening to myself when I picked up Edge of Eternity. Created and developed by indie group Midgar studio, it promises to give you, the player a good kick up feels lane. Some of the fans who partook in the beta program insisted that this exciting new JRPG title is “one of the best”. So, is it? Let’s dive in and take a look.

Edge of Eternity’s story starts off heavy and dark and follows a linear questline. It is a world enshrouded in magic, mysteries, and, as you would have it, a pandemic. This virus, “The Corrosion”, originates from an interstellar species currently waging war against humans. Their knowledge and technology far advance our own, and they used this to their advantage to set siege on the mystical land. What’s more, the “Corrosion” takes over the body of the victim and kills the person or organism it has infected from the inside. If you think that’s the worst of it, you have another thing coming. The victim becomes a new host for the predator.

Sacrifice.

Now you, the player, comes into the picture. You are Daryon, fighting against extinction as a soldier. Your platoon is the last hope of humanity. I won’t spoil very much, but the prologue is immensely heartbreaking. But in saying that, one particular thing didn’t make sense to me. This was during a particular cutscene at the beginning, where a character cuts a chain on a down drawbridge. It isn’t going to make it go up. It’s meant to go down!!! Despite some of those small issues, it’s pretty straightforward. After the prologue, you meet up with your sister, Selene. This is when you find out that your mother has caught the Corrosion. She has a few days left to live. Your sister, now a priestess, claims that someone knows a way to cure the Corrosion. Together, you set off towards the edge, looking for a cure.

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity

One of the first and most prominent things that I’ve noticed about the gameplay, is that it’s a gorgeous and vast open world. It’s filled with plenty of main missions, side quests, items to craft, and things to interact with. Not only is there a map to guide players to the next destination, but there is a tracker on the screen too for all the active things you need to complete. Just like in Breath of the Wild and Genshin Impact, you have a stamina bar for running too. But get this, you don’t get to fully start exploring the world until the first hour into the game. So you’ll have to power through the first hour of content before you can get to explore the wilderness and the world.

And now, into the fighting, and skill tree mechanics. As stated, it is turn-based. So what you do, is fight monsters or people, and sometimes you get additional conditions to complete on the battlefield. This is so you can acquire extra loot, which can include things like equipment, crystals, battle items, currency and edibles that improve your overall stats. The skill tree (dubbed crystal on the menu) is unlockable, you just need specific items for it. Keep in mind though that slots also only unlock after leveling up. As for the combat system, you’ll quickly notice there is a hexagonal grid-based design. Essentially, you can use a turn to move the character to a hexagonal space on the map, much like Fire Emblem. Magic-users can attack from afar, but for characters like Daryon who predominantly use the sword, need to be out in the front lines.

Let’s travel to the Edge of Eternity together.

Like the older turn-based Final Fantasy games, once you’ve made a decision on what to do, you have to wait until it is your turn again. The combat system was at times pretty refreshing, and sometimes rather frustrating. I found it wonderful that we can use other weapons on the field. It was incredibly frustrating sometimes when entering into a battle, and the enemy UI would spam attacks to the point that it felt like I was watching the count-down till my characters died. I can probably blame this on not always equipping the appropriate equipment and gear, though!

The scenery is truly beautiful. I could look at the environment forever, and I am seriously thinking of using one of my screenshots as a background on the laptop. The art for the characters in the dialog is charming, and such a treat to look at. As for the UI and character models… The character models are mostly ok, but a little disappointing. The animation for expressions looks pretty choppy at times, and sometimes things like characters’ eyes would glitch or flicker. It was a little odd, but the developers are steadily looking to squash any and all bugs that are causing issues like what I’ve mentioned. As of writing this though, I’ve had issues with enemies glitching into walls, and buggy UI that persists where it ought not to.

All of Eternity resides in a moment.

The OST in this title is simply stellar. And it is by no surprise too, when French composer Cédric Menendez and legendary J-RPG composer Yasunori Mitsuda are thrown into the mix. Together, they were able to make a soundtrack that really elevated the whole gaming experience for me, and I thank them both for making this possible. The only drawback, in my opinion, was that the OST is in an .MP3 format (l”ossy” quality), as opposed to .alac or .flac (“lossless” quality). You do lose some of the richness of the music with .MP3, which is a shame. Developers, if you see this, please take this advice into consideration!

Corrosion, begone!

So about my experience… To start off, I played on a PS4 controller via Steam. The button mapping on the PS4 controller was a bit confusing at first, and I might need to mess around with this more! I found this to be especially true when accessing attack and magic! Didn’t take long to get used to it though, so that was a relief! You can choose in steam to continue saving from launch, which can bypass the main menu, or launch regularly. The website recommends that you have the following graphic settings to run it smoothly. I was happy to see that for my gaming laptop, I was able to run it on optimal settings. I am having a lot of fun exploring the world, and I will continue to do so over the coming weeks!

So, back to the question at the beginning of the review. Is this JRPG “one of the best”? Actually, it’s got a lot of potentials to be, bugs asides. Worth your money? Hell yes! You can tell there’s a lot of love put into this title, by the developers. It’s a kind of game that makes me feel good playing it. I am beyond excited to see what will happen in the coming months with updates. Granted, there are a few bugs that need fine-tuning, but I think that Midgar studios are more than capable of smoothing it out. Is it worth the price at this point in time? I think so, personally! There’s a lot of content in this game, and as it stands you can get a good 50+ hours, and more in.

You can purchase Edge of Eternity on Windows and Mac PC’s (Steam, Epic ,GOG and Humble Bundle).

It will later be available at the Playstation Store, Xbox, and more.

What the Dub?! : The Review

 

No-one can dub you with dignity. That is yours alone to claim.

Love bad lip readings? Ever muted the TV, and dubbed your own lines into a TV show or movie? With a concept very similar to Jackbox, What the Dub?! wows the audience and gives us the chance to re-cast some lines from older tv shows we are not acquainted in. It’s also rather nostalgic to me too in a personal sense, since it reminds me of a machine me and my sister used in Disney world to dub some words from the popular Bambi movie.

The premise is simple. Meet up with a group of friends or stream online. Boot up the game, set up the rules in options, and get your mates to insert a room code and their own quirky username. Watch some random clips from old movies or TV shows, and think “how can I make this better?”. Then, with a set amount of time provided for by the game, write down whatever comes to your mind and share that with the world. Couple the fascinating new dialogue with a range of sound effects too. Read everyone’s prompts, and laugh your ass off as you vote for which you think is the best.

How much dub would a dubstep step, if a dubstep could step dub.

For “What the Dub”, you can play with up to 12 other people. You can play either locally or use streams/screen sharing to connect with remote players. Since I am using a Nintendo Switch, my review will pertain to the experience I’ve had playing the title on this device. Moreover, I do not own a capture card, so I am unable to stream the game online and play with friends or family that way. So instead, I will refer to the experience I’ve had playing locally with friends and my partner. The game is about 1.2GB in size, and upon launching it you get a rather familiar, almost Jackbox-esque feel to the game. The start-up screen presents us with a website. This website can be used by players to connect with a mobile device or computer. So you enter your name and the room code.

Up to 12 players can participate, with 6 of those who actively play, and 6 passively voting. At minimum, the game will allow you to play with 3 people, so for couples looking to do this together, you will need a third person or 2 extra set of arms. Once confirming everyone is in, and you click start, you’re then treated to a scene with a key line of dialogue removed. It is up to you to change this to whatever you want. Then comes the timer and the text entry on the phone or computer. Uh oh! Time has run out! Now the scene will play again. But this time comes new dialogue, with text-to-speech doing the job of acting out what you wrote. Everyone will make votes based on what they have seen, and those with the highest points, of course, wins!

Hello? Yes, this is dub.

The game heavily relies on comedic abilities and talent, as well as the ability to think on your feet. For my friends and my partner, this instantaneously became a party favorite as we are able to do this. It doesn’t matter if you are 5 or 90, this game is for everyone. I noticed that there was an option in settings that could extend the time for writing out the dialogue but left it untouched. We felt as a group it would ruin the momentum to spend a long time writing out prompts. Sometimes it’s the typos that elevate what is already a funny dialogue to a hilarious one.

So… About “What the Dub?!”. It genuinely feels like it could be one of the JackBox mini-games. In fact, if you showed this to me with no context whatsoever, I would have absolutely been convinced that it was related to JackBox in some form or another. The game was a ton of fun to play. There are some small caveats, such as being unable to replay the scene before writing the dialogue, and not as many sound effects as I would have liked. There’s a lot of replayability, but, only when family or friends are around. If you and your family/friends are into re-dubbing and love comedy, then this is the game for you all!

You can purchase What the Dub?! on PC (Steam).

You can also purchase it for the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox.

Moving out - Movers in Paradise: The Review

 

Today is the day!

Greetings readers! Have you been meaning to find a game to challenge friends with? How about a puzzle party game that has you competing against the clock? If so, Moving out: Movers in Paradise has got all that you could want. It is a generous new DLC for the original title Moving Out, a cooperative frantic co-op moving simulation game launched on April 28th, 2020! The theme is none other than… moving houses! It is developed by DevM Games, SMG Studio, and published by Team 17. With that out of the way… let’s look at what Moving out: Movers in Paradise is all about!

The premise of the Moving out: Movers in Paradise is simple enough. You take on the role of a house mover. You along with many others have the distinguished title of F.A.R.Ts (Furniture Arrangement & Relocation Technicians, not the other thing!!!). Everyone needs to work together to move tons of clunky and awkward furniture, all the while combating a very fascinating physics system. So the faster you complete your tasks, the better your score would be. There are many missions that have optional side quests, that once completed, can unlock special arcade levels to play by yourself or with friends.

Home is not a place, it’s a feeling.

Onto the gameplay! To start, Moving out: Movers in Paradise holds the inherent power to destroy basically any friendship for a moment. Interestingly, it is playable with 1 to 4 players in local co-op, however, sadly online play is not available at this point in time. The game is set in a sunnier locale, where you can try different things and avoid new hazards. So, what is your role? Move a bunch of furniture and appliances from interior buildings to a removal truck as seamlessly as possible. You and your friends will compete against the clock to fill that truck of yours with everything that has been requested. Depending on how your run went, you will be issued either a bronze, silver or gold rank.

Moving out: Movers in Paradise adds about 24 exhilarating levels. In addition, four new movers who can be played in the original levels have been added, and a horde of thematically wacky obstacles and enemies have been added too. Also, the core gameplay isn’t as simple as just moving furniture. You also have to contend with a variety of outlandish hazards, puzzles, and interesting environments while you do it.

Happiness doesn’t have just one address…

Moving out: Movers in Paradise is very vibrant and unique in its presentation. The theme seems to be tropical and laid back! This reflected in the environment around the F.A.R.Ts. Every stage that is displayed looks interesting, unique, and fun. So much so in fact, that you will be continuously trying to solve the puzzle and not be bored by it. Also, the soundtrack complements the tropical Caribbean vibe. You are able to enjoy the sounds of birds twittering about, as well as the calming ocean waves lapping up against the beach in the background. 

With all that said, what are my impressions…? Well, for starters, I had oodles of fun playing this title with my partner. I found myself cursing a lot as I attempted to figure out several puzzles, and couldn’t stop laughing. We think that the puzzles and the levels are very creative. A small caveat however is the fact that, with most party games, there are not as many hours of content that you can plow across. Especially if you are playing this by yourself, which is a royal shame but to be expected. However, with the price being what it is, I believe this to be an absolute steal and I think people should give it a try.

You can purchase Moving out: Movers in Paradise on PC (Steam).

You can also purchase it on the Playstation Store, Nintendo Store and Xbox.