One advantage of having six and a half years of back posts here, mostly talking about my habit of playing through games about a decade after release, is that I can tell you that it’s been 5 years and 4 months since I finished Kingdom Hearts, and that I bought Kingdom Hearts II less than a week later because I’d had such a good time with the first game.

I didn’t play it right away, mind you, because I was waiting on the PS2 port of Chain of Memories, which I was told was Essential To Understanding Kingdom Hearts II.

I bought THAT in December of 2008, and I’ve been sitting on it for the better part of the last five years because, well, the battle system sounded weird.  It’s a weird mix of an action RPG and a card collecting game, and I wasn’t sure how I’d get along with that.

In the time since, there have been four OTHER Kingdom Hearts games released.  I’ve only bought one of them, so that’s almost showing restraint on my part.  Yay I guess?

Then they announced Kingdom Hearts III, and it started feeling like I should really get around to playing Re: Chain of Memories so that I could play KH2 and maybe stand a chance of catching up with the series by the time KH3 goes Greatest Hits.

I hated it.  I mean, the story wasn’t the problem – it was a little out there, but the story is about a kid who hops worlds and pals around with assorted Disney characters while whacking enemies with a giant key, so “a little out there” isn’t too unusual.  It was entirely the battle system, which is every bit as weird as I’d heard and which, honestly, I don’t have the patience for.  I did my years in the Magic: The Gathering trenches, and collecting cards and building decks just isn’t my thing any more.

So I’ve made an executive decision, after putting about three hours into Re: Chain of Memories and getting through the first couple of worlds: I’m going to skip the damn thing entirely and Kingdom Hearts II can just confuse me.  It’s time to play a game where pressing X means “hit the guy in front of me with my giant key” and not “play a giant key card with a value of 4 which will hit the guy in front of me as long as he hasn’t played a card with a value of 5 or higher”

I’m about 8 hours into KH2 now – and, yes, it starts off VERY confusingly – but I managed to get through the Incredibly Long Prologue and have cleared out the Mulan and Beauty and the Beast levels and I’m having a blast.

Feels good.  🙂