KHRecoded Am I the only one who is annoyed by the Memory component of the Deck Commands?

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

Seriously, what's the point!?

 

I'm replaying Re:Coded before I play 2.5 to make up for the lack of addictive gameplay, and I just got painfully reminded of probably the single most sour downside of the game for me.

 

The Memory counter at the bottom right of the Command Matrix. It fills up as you add more commands, as each one contains system memory. As you get more command slots you get the opportunity to use more commands, which takes up more memory capacity. Up til the first six slots you unlock, this never really presents a problem. But once you get to your higher slots of seven, eight, and nine, as well as more powerful commands like Muscle Strike and Zantetzuken, the Memory all adds up and you are unable to leave the Matrix if you are over 100%.

 

Now let me say that I get what the point of this limitation is. It's a balancing mechanism. In Birth by Sleep, when you unlocked more slots and powerful commands you had a limitation as well, only it was that the stronger commands tend to take up more than one slot. This made sure that you didn't spam almost every powerful command at your disposal in one battle and the trade off was more than reasonable. However, since in Re:Coded every command, no matter how powerful, takes up only ONE slot each, the Memory system recreates that trade off. Or at least it tries to.

 

The problem with this is that by the time you unlock all slots, there's almost no point to using all of them. Each 3rd level and master type of spell or attack takes up way too much Memory % that you may as well have stuck with just having 6 command slots. You would think that it would feel no different than how BbS took up multiple slots, but in any attempt to have a properly balanced and powerful deck at higher levels, you have to ignore at least 2 or 3 slots in your Matrix.

 

Empty slots. Just sitting there. Taunting you. Teasing you...

 

Uh, Ahem!

 

Anyway, I suppose in concept it's similar to BbS and 3D's system, but then that begs the question. Why not do that again instead?

 

I'll tell you why. They wanted to reinvent the system while sticking with the cute little computer theme they have. While it's cute in areas like the Stat Matrix and the Gear Matrix where there are few or no drawbacks that really hamper on you, this gimmick when applied to something that was already a double-edged sword to begin with just feels like a smack in the face. What's more, they switched back to the BbS style in 3D, so there was almost no point to changing it anyway!

 

But it's not the worst thing ever I guess. It just feels like more than a headache than CP was, and that was something you could actually level up! You're Memory % for your commands and your Memory gauge is SET IN STONE for the entire game. No changes, no leveling it up, no reducing %, nothing.

 

However, I suppose one upside to this is that you can super level up 1st level magic commands that take up smaller amounts of Memory like Cure or Esuna and level them up so far that you don't really need the Curaga abilities taking up space, but it feels like such an act against nature for a KH fan NOT to use the highest level spell once they have it.

 

But anyway, I digress. Did anybody else really have a beef with this feature other than me? To clarify, I am talking about the Command Memory feature ONLY. I'm not here to hear about how other people don't like the story or the re-use of worlds or anything like that, there are probably separate threads for those anyway. Just tell me what you think about this one feature.

[hatok 6,413]

It's meant to balance the game, so you can't stack a deck full of judgement triads and destroy everything in the game

[Velvet Scarlatina 607]

Honestly, even though Birth by Sleep does limit your commands to balance it out, four slots of Mega Flares can pretty much destroy everything that isn't fire-based. I think Re:coded really helped to avoid that.

[Ruby Rose 8,591]

I always assumed the DS could only handle so much awesome

 

Guess I took the Memory thing too literally

[HeyMouseSayCheese 1,133]

It's a strategy thing. You can use lots of little attacks and spells, or a few big ones, and certain situations call for different set-ups (hence multiple decks). It's the same basic concept the command deck has had since CoM, really, and I liked how it limited my abilities just enough; I didn't feel overwhelmed with choices like I do in BBS or DDD. Intentional or not, it made me focus on working with fewer abilities, and that's pretty cool in my book.

[Kaweebo 3,617]

To be honest, I really don't like the Deck Command system, anyway. I much prefer KHI and II's gameplay. 

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

Well derp, looks like I AM the only one who is annoyed by this after all.