Ugh, hack-and-slash gameplay returns, but this time with cards! I'm not into either, but I do give Kingdom Hearts the benefit of a doubt for not being way too unfair with the former style of gameplay. Combine that with the card gameplay, is this really the first time that card-based gameplay is used for an action RPG? It makes for one of the weirdest entries in the franchise, and arguably for games as a whole.
So basically, every action that isn't running, dodging, or jumping is gonna use cards. Attacks use cards, items use cards, magic uses cards, summons use cards, thankfully you can refurbish your deck when running out or when necessary. But then you have to go high/low with the cards enemies use if you're not intent on dodging, card-breaking them while avoiding getting card-breaked yourself. Button-mashing moves only work well when your deck is chock-full of high numbers and you know exactly what you're up against. With the enemies getting higher cards, the lesser ones are made into combos, perhaps sleight moves, so that I can do maximum damage without receiving much in return. Against bosses, I used a different kind of deck, one with Strike Raids or Sonic Blades that would be impossible to break without higher sleights or 0 cards or so. The different room cards offer plenty of gameplay possibilities as well, sometimes with benefits to the player.
But it's still a linear game, mind you. You climb up the castle, open a world card up, go through several rooms doing events before going to the exit room, usually fighting a boss in-world or after the world before moving up. All the while it's a memory game for the characters, which just gets weirder the more they climb. But, like, it's a foregone conclusion that Namine is a good character after all, just forced to do things for those black-robed Organization members. This is supposed to be a direct sequel to Kingdom Hearts, despite not being called II, and this remake seems to give Sora a more mature voice.
At least we get to play as Riku here! Okay, so for this I chose Beginner mode for him because I ran short on time overall and I wanted to cover so many other things, so beating the Riku game managed to take about a week tops. It's different, but the card mechanics remained the same. It's just there's significantly less customization in general. Random battles were mostly won by combining a Mickey card with two attack cards, with the projectiles hitting everything all over the area, usually netting me another Mickey card. The worlds are just slightly different overall but there's no additional cutscenes for battling the same bosses Sora did in each world. The dueling mechanic and Dark Mode were intriguing, I ended up using Dark Mode a few times on accident but the power boost was necessary. And dueling, while I wasn't fond of initially, ended up being the winning play against the last few bosses. It was a bit more enjoyable, but woo, let's not combine card games with other genres like this.
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