Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories is game that can be difficult to continue to play through, especially when you start playing the heavy RNG game to get the cards you need for the deck you need to beat the bosses you’re coming against, and even more so for the Heartless cards! After my time through playing this game, I learned a couple of things that may help your play through!
Use two play throughs!
When it comes to all the Kingdom Hearts games, I always recommend going through the platinum runs in two play throughs. Does it take a little extra time? Yes. However, unless you prefer having heavy mandatory grinding, it has a higher peace of mind.
I go through the Easy mode run first, this is the play through where I will do EVERYTHING. I will get all of the cards, all of the side things, build my deck perfectly.
Once my journal is complete and the final boss is done, I move to Critical mode. From here, I’ll go through slow but sure, leveling as I go and taking the cards that I learned help the most to continue and give myself an extra boost.
Don’t be afraid to grind Heartless cards early!
This was one thing I wish I did sooner. The higher your level, the more sleights you get, the bigger your deck can be, and the more HP you have. Grinding the Heartless cards can take a while and it’s easy to get into the motion of “I’ll just do this later!” I’ve found better luck when I sat down and went through getting all the Heartless cards in a world before I continued on.
Biggest need to knows with this – the hardest three rooms are the ones that are best for Heartless card drops! These three are Almighty Darkness, Looming Darkness, and Teeming Darkness. I mainly used Looming Darkness and Teeming Darkness, I rarely used Almighty Darkness.
Teeming Darkness is the easier of the three rooms in my opinion. It’s a big room with many Heartless spawns and all the battles are on the harder side of the battles in the world your in.
Looming Darkness you have to be quick, because everything that’s already spawned in the oversold is going to be very aware and very angry by your existence. The quirk of Looming Darkness is everything that is able to see you will begin to chase you, so getting to them before they get to you is a big harder.
Almighty Darkness is the most annoying in my opinion, mostly due to the fact that every Heartless gets a +2 buff to every attack they do. This can lead to higher card breaks and higher amounts of attacks missed. If you have an extremely high digit deck, this may not impact much, but many times if you’re in a new world your deck will start basically on par if not a tiny bit elevated from the monsters around it.
Sleights can be powerful, but be careful!
You can easily get an advantage when dealing with a tough enemy or a big group of enemies with a well timed sleight, but in a long fight this can make things very difficult. As I’ve mentioned in another walkthrough, sleights will make the first card you use inaccessible for the rest of the fight, so if you’re overusing sleights and don’t have any recovery items to supplement, you can find yourself in a really bad spot quickly!
When it comes to the continuous use of sleights, there is one big trick I have: Friend Sleights! Your friend cards appear throughout the battle and are not natively in your deck. If you can get a stack of friend cards, you can unleash super powerful attacks without needing to sacrifice the cards you’ve carefully picked. You can also use a friend card to start out and then follow up with an attack that is harder to get around.
On the topic of sleights, there’s a very specific one that I think is worth touching on a tiny bit more..
Mega-Flare is amazing for level grinding!
Once you get all of your Heartless cards and you’re at the end of the game, most likely you’ll still have a very many levels to get. This is normal and in this game can be even more tedious if you don’t have a goal with your grinds beyond your levels.
Mega-Flare is a fire based attack that can one-shot almost everything. It’s made by combining Mushu + Fire + Fire. It has a long wind up to the spell, so it’s susceptible breaking with a 0 card, but once it goes it is a devastating move.
That being said, there are cases where Mega-Flare isn’t the most useful. First one is against fire enemies, like Red Nocturnes. Anything that will absorb fire, Mega-Flare won’t hurt at all, it will actually heal them. Another case where it’s not as helpful is a fight with a lot of waves. Is it possible to hit multiple waves with the move? Yes Does it require really good timing? Also yes. That timing can be tricky and really finicky. The final time I wouldn’t use Mega-Flare is if you are still hunting Heartless cards. You lose so much control by using Mega-Flare because you can’t control what goes down first, so you can’t control what your final Heartless is which can skew the card you’re going for.
Start the game with a completed 385/2 Days file!
It’s no surprise that a Kingdom Hearts game has hidden things after you beat the game, however with the Re:Chain of Memories version that comes in with the 1.5 Re:Mix, you get extra boons from completing the other game too! It’s a tiny bit tricky to get it to pop though. If you’re struggling, here’s some things to check:
- Did you watch all the cutscenes?
- Did you go into all the journal entries?
- Did you look at all the hidden entries?
- Did you look at all the character entries?
If you have all of that done, you should have the option to download the wallpaper for your device. If you have that, the overarching game says “Hey, you’re done! You can get the extra stuff now!”