That TCG Blogger

About eight years ago, the video game company Square-Enix combined forces with the overly popular corporation Disney to create a game that surpassed everyone’s expectations. A few years later, after the game had revolutionized the RPG video game market, Square released yet another game relating to the best seller called Chain of Memories. The game’s battle system was based on using cards to attack foes in the game. Tomy, a game company in Japan, saw this game and was inspired to create a Trading Card Game based on the video game’s success. Thus, the Kingdom Hearts TCG was born.

The game had a pretty good run in Japan, Tomy supplied a decent Open Play system and seven sets (with lots of promo cards); however after the seventh set the Kingdom Hearts TCG ended. It is not publicly known in America why the game failed, I can only assume that it had to do with content lacking and the seventh set being an utter failure (you can view the translated versions athttp://www.thekingdomheartstcg.com/). Fast forward about a year and a company called Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) flew by and imported the game to American audiences. The only problem with it was that FFG never advertised the game or made an open play system for TCG fans to want to pour their money into it. After the fourth set was released, the company announced that they had disbanded their entire Trading Card Game department due to TCGs not being profitable due to games like Magic: the Gathering (I’ll save that rant for another day), and here we are today.

Before I continue on with the review, I would like to remind you that I am not expressing any opinions on the company, the video game, or the player base when conducting this review. I am only focused on giving an honest review on the game mechanics introduced in the game.

The Kingdom Hearts TCG is a game in which two players take on the roles of key bearers in the universe of the video game. The player either wins by reaching their “world count” (total level of worlds in play) to thirteen by playing world cards or reducing the opponents hit points to zero. Players battle in one of two ways, by attacking heartless cards on their current world that were set by the opponent, or challenging the opposing player to battle to decrease hit points. In order to raise their player cards attack, each player can use friend cards (which add other effects), attack cards, magic cards, or equipment cards (introduced in set 4). One of the defining features this game had though was the difference in draw phase, the player whose turn it was drew up to six cards and when their deck was empty they would just reshuffle their discard pile. This simple feature added a lot of strategy to what would’ve been a very boring game.

In short, this game was destined to fall, even with a company that didn’t advertise it. Sure, a game about a popular Square-Enix RPG should have easily made a quick buck in both Tomy and FFG’s eyes, but they failed to realize that not everyone is so simple minded to fall for such scams as this. Just take a look at the main rules, if both players just play world cards to win there is absolutely no player interactivity and that’s the basic foundation of any game. If you look even deeper than that though, you start to noticed how unbalanced the game is, the best deck at the game’s death was a healing stall deck. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Sitting there as your opponent slowly creeps through to win as you can’t do anything against it.

If you’re a fan of Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or classic Disney movies you’ll enjoy this game; though you might be dissapointed at the lack of flavorful cards in the game. Pro TCG players should stay away from this game due to the lack of customization among decks, though if you find it on a bargain table at a con I suggest picking up a few packs if you’re looking for a game to play where you’re bored at your local card shop. The bargain table is the only place this game can be found anymore sadly now that the game was shut out by the company. There are a group of players dedicated to preserving this TCG, so if you are interested check out http://www.thekingdomheartstcg.com/.

Final Verdict: 6.5/10

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