Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories isn’t very fun. I’ve only played the HD remaster of its PS2 remake, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, though I assume the main issues I had with it apply to the original GBA version as well. The overworld navigation is dull, with little more than low-stakes platforming in a series of repetitive square rooms. You also need to micromanage your world cards, usually resulting in bland decision-making along the lines of “well, should I give the enemies in the next room -2 card value, or should I save it for later…?” The combat is decently enjoyable but held back by the grinding required to build a sufficient deck. Each new world you visit introduces a new line of keyblade cards which outclasses the previous, so keeping your deck up to par effectively means starting from scratch. These problems made the game a slog to play through and got in the way of the surprisingly engaging story. Upon clearing it, however, I unlocked the bonus campaign. And that changed everything.

The Reverse/Rebirth mode, rather than serving as a “New Game Plus” feature, turns the core gameplay on its head. The twist is simple: each new world you visit gives you a pre-built deck to which cards cannot be added or removed. Some may find the lack of customisation uninteresting, but it fixed almost everything that prevented me from enjoying my first playthrough. I never needed to grind for new attack cards to fill out my deck, quickening the game’s pace tremendously. Because there was no reason to fight enemies at all (besides gaining levels, which I got plenty of from fighting bosses anyway), I fell into a pattern of using Roulette map cards to stockpile tons of blue map cards, which create rooms with no enemies. There were entire worlds that I basically skipped by turning every room blue. Sure it was still repetitive having to walk through all those empty rooms, but I was practically walking through walls straight to the end of the level, and I couldn’t have been more grateful.

Reverse/Rebirth gave me just what I needed: cathartically cruising through Chain of Memories at breakneck speed while slamming all of Sora’s worthless tedium into the trash where it belongs. My vindictive exhilaration was so addicting that after clearing that second campaign, I immediately played through it on the hardest difficulty AND leveled myself to 99 just for heck of it (and the trophy I suppose). And I don’t expect I’ll ever pay a similar respect to Sora’s dumpster half of the game.

P.N.03 isn’t very fun either. Most rooms get reused with few differences at least once. Even when rooms aren’t being recycled, half of them take place in the entirely white-walled interiors of the facility while the other half take place in the drably colored exteriors. The combat emphasises the dodging and jumping mechanics over the shooting, making for an experience which is unique, satisfying, and… unfortunately held back by the need to grind for new suits and upgrades. I’m not complaining about purchasing upgrades in an action game, but if you find yourself a few thousand points short of a crucial new suit or upgrade before the next mission, you’ll have to resort to Trial Mode. Between missions you’ll have access to an optional mission which showcases the symptoms of the game’s rushed development more prominently than anything else. Every room in each Trial mission is recycled from the main missions in a randomly generated layout, and it’s about as exciting as it sounds. And the US/EU versions of P.N.03 inexplicably cranked up the tedium by doubling the shop prices and giving each mission FIVE trials instead of just one, for a grand total of FIFTY. Though as you’ve probably guessed, New Game Plus shakes things up a bit. Starting a new game after loading clear data grants you the Blackbird and, upon clearing the unlockable Hard Mode, the Papillon suit.

While Reverse/Rebirth was a deliberate reinterpretation of the gameplay loop (which served as an unintentional apology to me for the game’s mediocrity), the bonus suits were probably thrown in at the last minute. The Blackbird comes generously pre-equipped with max upgrades for each stat and features the 3 best Energy Drives in the game. One of these, the Tengu Pro, is so bombastically busted that there’s only one boss which can’t be killed by spamming it until your Energy meter depletes. Because the suit’s already decked out, the only thing left to spend points on are extra lives, which you’ll probably max out before reaching the final mission. Most of the same could be said for the Papillon. The only difference with the Papillon is its ability to equip any Energy Drive (you REALLY only need Tengu) and that you die in one hit. The fragility makes shockingly little difference though. I had over 90 continues when I beat the final boss of Hard Mode with the Papillon. I had accumulated enough points to buy as many continues as I needed, even without bothering to do any Trial missions. Compared to the frustration of my first playthrough, it was a complete joke, albeit a joke at the expense of the time-crunched, overworked dev team.

Maybe I’m just sadistic, but there is such a sweet, twisted satisfaction I get when a tedious mess of a game rewards my perseverance with what might as well be called God Mode. It definitely turned “interesting potential with clumsy execution” into “well this restaurant sucks, but hey at least I got some catharsis for dessert, I’ll bump my Yelp review up to 3 stars.”

this game is just pure style to me

i kinda pity this game for clearly not having a bigger budget and being short and limited, but i personally loved it's style and everything about it and it's a pretty sweet and unique experience and game on its own

vanessa serves so much cunt

For years, P.N.03 sat as the only remaining piece of Shinji Mikami's directorial output I'd yet to play. Usually regarded as his weakest, I went in with an open mind but with expectations in check. I found myself far more frustrated than expected, not because P.N.03 is Mikami's weakest game, but because it shouldn't be.

Far from the creative stagnation of The Evil Within, a weird mish-mash of Mikami's most beloved game and then-ubiquitous design trends, P.N.03's core gameplay is strong and unique. Before Mikami would set the standard for the third-person shooter with his next release, there wasn't much of a consensus on how one ought to play. P.N.03 comes up with answers which are a world away from where we ended up, focusing less on aiming and more about positioning and dodging. There's a rhythm to combat that marks P.N.03 as a third-person shooter more in the lineage of melee-oriented action games such as Devil May Cry than any other shooter; although attacks directed at the player character are projectiles, they give clear tells for the player to read and to react with the an evasive maneuver.

This 'rhythm' was clearly picked up on by Mikami and his team, evident in their effort to make music and dance a theme expressed through the protagonist. Her opening cutscene reveals that she wears headphones, fighting to the music. In gameplay her head can be seen nodding to the beat, and when performing attacks she pulls off poses and dances.

So incredibly promising, all of it. It should have been fantastic. But the whole thing was rushed through in a matter of months, giving no time to develop what's here into something that feels remotely finished. What few environments are here fail to bring enough variety to the game's 11 missions, let alone enough to sustain the "trial missions" which form a practically-required grind to upgrade your equipment into something acceptable for the late-game difficulty spike.

It's so undercooked, and what we're left with is a prototype of many things: the protagonist with her sexually charged dance-fighting is a clear influence on Bayonetta, expressing the rhythm of action in diegetic music formed the basis of Tango Gamework's Hi-Fi Rush, and some aesthetic and gameplay elements were revisited in Mikami's own Vanquish. All these were more developed and better realised than P.N.03, but they don't replace it. P.N.03 is its own thing, and with more time in the oven I'm confident it would be remembered extremely fondly. Its status as Mikami's worst is deserved, but because of circumstance rather than a lack of vision, and that's the most frustrating thing about it.