Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories PS2/ No Voice Acting

[SorRik 186]

Hey everyone, 

I want to ask you all something about KH Chain Of Memories in the PS2. I am aware that Chain Of Memories was a Game Boy released game when it first came out before it had a remake for the PS2.

My question is, 

Why was there no voice acting in Traverse Town room and the  Disney world rooms of the characters in Sora's story mode? 

Since they made it for the PS2, they could have called the original cast of the voice actors from KH1 and they were able to voice their dialogue right?  

What do you guys think to why did they decide to not add voice acting? 

[NeoLimitForm 31]

Likely for time/budget efficiency if I had to guess. It was around the time that they started pumping out KH games year after year, so I could see them not wanting to invest the extra time in voice acting and making the characters more animated to fit the voices. I felt like the static cutscenes were fitting for the game personally. I felt like it made it more reminiscent of the original It was a good way to get the story of CoM to a wider audience without any decline in quality. It would be interesting to see Re:CoM with full voice acting and other changes, but I don't think that'd ever happen sadly as most people aren't too big on CoM/Re:CoM

 

[DestinysUnion 23]

Like what NeoLimitForm said, I think it was a matter of time and budget. If I remember correctly, Re:COM was made as a bonus game packaged in with KHII Final Mix as extra incentive for players to buy KHII a second time. Developing Re:COM's system from the ground up probably already took a bit of time and resources, which is probably why they prioritized making only the main story cutscenes voiced.

[NeoLimitForm 31]

1 hour ago, DestinysUnion said:

If I remember correctly, Re:COM was made as a bonus game packaged in with KHII Final Mix as extra incentive for players to buy KHII a second time.

For something as minute as a few extra cards post-game I wonder if this bundle sold well. I'd feel cheated if I had the JP version knowing all the US fans were getting the cards just from beating Riku's story. I know there were some things locked out in Re:CoM for not beating KH2FM first, but was there anything in KH2FM that was locked out by not beating Re:CoM beforehand?

[DestinysUnion 23]

22 hours ago, NeoLimitForm said:

For something as minute as a few extra cards post-game I wonder if this bundle sold well. I'd feel cheated if I had the JP version knowing all the US fans were getting the cards just from beating Riku's story. I know there were some things locked out in Re:CoM for not beating KH2FM first, but was there anything in KH2FM that was locked out by not beating Re:CoM beforehand?

I think KHII Final Mix and Re:COM only came packaged together? So the JP version's actually the better deal, since you probably got two games for the price of one. lol If you played KHII without beating Re:COM first, then I think all the new Final Mix cutscenes were voiceless (like KH1 Final Mix's new cutscenes), whereas playing Re:COM first added the voice clips.

[SorRik 186]

On 4/29/2023 at 12:13 PM, NeoLimitForm said:

Likely for time/budget efficiency if I had to guess. It was around the time that they started pumping out KH games year after year, so I could see them not wanting to invest the extra time in voice acting and making the characters more animated to fit the voices. I felt like the static cutscenes were fitting for the game personally. I felt like it made it more reminiscent of the original It was a good way to get the story of CoM to a wider audience without any decline in quality. It would be interesting to see Re:CoM with full voice acting and other changes, but I don't think that'd ever happen sadly as most people aren't too big on CoM/Re:CoM

 

My Reply: Ah I see, so that's why they didn't pursue the dub for the cut scenes in RE:COM and JP RE:COM for budget reasons. It would makes sense that way because they did build the game from scratch from the GB to PS2. But I agree with you, it would have been more reminiscent if they did the voice acting the Re:Make of COM.  

On 4/29/2023 at 3:25 PM, DestinysUnion said:

Like what NeoLimitForm said, I think it was a matter of time and budget. If I remember correctly, Re:COM was made as a bonus game packaged in with KHII Final Mix as extra incentive for players to buy KHII a second time. Developing Re:COM's system from the ground up probably already took a bit of time and resources, which is probably why they prioritized making only the main story cutscenes voiced.

My Reply: Yes you are right DestinysUnion. Wow I see, I have the Final Mix of KH2/Re:COM and they are in a bundle 2 disc games in 1 game case. 

23 hours ago, NeoLimitForm said:

For something as minute as a few extra cards post-game I wonder if this bundle sold well. I'd feel cheated if I had the JP version knowing all the US fans were getting the cards just from beating Riku's story. I know there were some things locked out in Re:CoM for not beating KH2FM first, but was there anything in KH2FM that was locked out by not beating Re:CoM beforehand?

My Reply: Wow I never tried that. So there are cards from JP RE:COM that are not in the original English COM? 😮

1 hour ago, DestinysUnion said:

I think KHII Final Mix and Re:COM only came packaged together? So the JP version's actually the better deal, since you probably got two games for the price of one. lol If you played KHII without beating Re:COM first, then I think all the new Final Mix cutscenes were voiceless (like KH1 Final Mix's new cutscenes), whereas playing Re:COM first added the voice clips.

My Reply: Yeah I noticed that, that there are some new cutscenes in KH2 Final Mix in the PS2 were voiceless. 

The reason why I thought about this was because I watched the movie version of RE:Coded yesterday and it was really good in their voice acting. 

In the actual game of Re:Coded in the DS version, there were so many parts in the game that were dialogue. 

The movie version of Re:Coded was really done very well and the voice acting was reminiscent and enjoyable to hear the OG voice actors of the Disney characters and Cloud and Sora, Roxas, Namine. It was good hearing them. 

That's the reason why it made me wonder why in Chain Of Memories in the PS2 version, why was their no Voice acting in Sora's story mode in COM. 

Edited April 30, 2023 by SorRik

[NeoLimitForm 31]

13 hours ago, DestinysUnion said:

I think KHII Final Mix and Re:COM only came packaged together? So the JP version's actually the better deal, since you probably got two games for the price of one. lol If you played KHII without beating Re:COM first, then I think all the new Final Mix cutscenes were voiceless (like KH1 Final Mix's new cutscenes), whereas playing Re:COM first added the voice clips.

Oh if the game was sold at like the standard price with 2 games included they definitely got the better end of the deal. I just assumed that the price was raised to bundle the 2 games together. That changes my perspective on it entirely. I like the fact that you get rewarded going into KH2FM after beating Re:CoM and rewarded after KH2FM back into Re:CoM. On top of the rewards and the good prices, I feel like disks are also a lot nicer looking than the ones we have over here. So they were winning in almost every aspect. I feel like the only thing they got jipped on was the fact that they had to beat KH2FM to get the additional Org Cards whereas we just had to beat the game.

12 hours ago, SorRik said:

Wow I never tried that. So there are cards from JP RE:COM that are not in the original English COM? 😮

Since Re:CoM came out after KH2 they added in the additional Organization member cards. These cards were in both the English and JP Re:CoM, but these cards weren't present in the original CoM for either region. The biggest difference was that in JP you had to beat KH2FM first as @DestinysUnion stated and in the US we were able to find the cards after clearing the game. Additionally in the 1.5 ReMix we were able to get 358/2 days cards as well. I feel like it's really cool that they added in that little detail.

12 hours ago, SorRik said:

The reason why I thought about this was because I watched the movie version of RE:Coded yesterday and it was really good in their voice acting. 

In the actual game of Re:Coded in the DS version, there were so many parts in the game that were dialogue. 

The movie version of Re:Coded was really done very well and the voice acting was reminiscent and enjoyable to hear the OG voice actors of the Disney characters and Cloud and Sora, Roxas, Namine. It was good hearing them. 

That's the reason why it made me wonder why in Chain Of Memories in the PS2 version, why was their no Voice acting in Sora's story mode in COM. 

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the Re:Coded movie on the 2.5 years back because of how much I actually enjoyed it. I avoided it like the plague prior to that because everywhere I went someone was saying something bad about it. I even enjoyed playing the game itself after I watched the cutscenes. I feel like if Re:CoM was released as a standalone title we would've gotten full voice acting. But considering it was meant to be incentive to buy KH2 again I get why they ended up leaving it out and going the text based route.
 

[FadedSparkle 18]

For as much as fans perceive Chain of Memories as a game that tanked and wasn't popular it actually was quite the opposite if sales reports and reviews from when it was released on GBA are to be believed. The PS2 port was a direct response to its success on the GBA. Not giving it full voice acting more so marks product of the time period as back in those days it was a very special occasion for a video game to release as a Full Voice Edition, even then it was rare for the Full Voice Editions to release outside of the game's original territory. Also going from only a few pieces of voice acting on the GBA release to all of the plot relevant scenes being voiced for the PS2 port was already a massive step up when it comes to adding voice acting.

[NeoLimitForm 31]

On 5/1/2023 at 12:01 AM, FadedSparkle said:

For as much as fans perceive Chain of Memories as a game that tanked and wasn't popular it actually was quite the opposite if sales reports and reviews from when it was released on GBA are to be believed. The PS2 port was a direct response to its success on the GBA. Not giving it full voice acting more so marks product of the time period as back in those days it was a very special occasion for a video game to release as a Full Voice Edition, even then it was rare for the Full Voice Editions to release outside of the game's original territory. Also going from only a few pieces of voice acting on the GBA release to all of the plot relevant scenes being voiced for the PS2 port was already a massive step up when it comes to adding voice acting.

Did Re:CoM do as well in terms of sales reports? I could see CoM doing well but it makes me wonder how Re:CoM fared. That's true though you're right, I didn't think about it from that perspective. I still play games from the 2000s era rather frequently but I guess my mindset was moreso in the 2010s+ game industry standards when I was cooking up the response

[FadedSparkle 18]

On 5/4/2023 at 8:30 PM, NeoLimitForm said:

Did Re:CoM do as well in terms of sales reports? I could see CoM doing well but it makes me wonder how Re:CoM fared. That's true though you're right, I didn't think about it from that perspective. I still play games from the 2000s era rather frequently but I guess my mindset was moreso in the 2010s+ game industry standards when I was cooking up the response

A retrospective on Re:CoM from YouTube claims it was successful at over 2.6 million copies sold worldwide, but it isn't exactly easy to pin down if the game sold well by itself in its PS2 release (which saw it bundled with KH2 vanilla in some territories outside of Japan and with the KH1 and KH2 Final Mixes which back then were Japan exclusive, kind of speaking to a lack of confidence in Re:CoM's ability to sell alone by SquareEnix) or if the bulk of the sales are from the scramble to get caught up by people who got into the series in anticipation of Kingdom Hearts 3 through the HD upscale versions of it featured on the 1.5 and 2.8 collections.

14 year old Game-Spot forum on the subject mater: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/954016-kingdom-hearts-rechain-of-memories/47839863

 

If I'm correct the users in there were tracking the Japanese sales of Re:CoM through Oricon. And it seems to have done quite well for its first week.

Edited July 12, 2023 by FadedSparkle