Good morning, everybody, and welcome back
to VG Myths, the online internet video game TV show that always forgets to shuffle the
deck. Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories is the
long-awaited fifth game in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, reconverting GBA Chain from 2D
beat-em-up back to 3D hack-n-slash. Clever use of the card-based battle system
is required to progress, but as you should be well aware, I am incapable of speaking
the word "required" without quotation marks. Can You Beat Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories
With A 1 Card Deck? There's only a single rule: with a fresh save
file and starting from the moment the deck-building mechanic becomes available, the player must
reach the end of Sora's story with a deck whose total size is at most 1. That's it! If the number of cards in your equipped deck
follows that singular rule, you can do absolutely anything you want. With the rule set, let's get this run started! Just to make absolutely sure nobody gets any
silly ideas, yes, we are doing the tutorial normally. That's why the one rule specifies that the
run starts after we gain access to deck-building, which is immediately after entering the first
Save room. Once you have access, go ahead and make any
1 Card Deck you want. Except that one. You're terrible at this. Turns out, there's a secret second rule implemented
directly by the game: a deck is only legal if it contains at least one Attack card. Our starting inventory limits that one card
to the Kingdom Key, the weakest of all Attack cards, but every world you progress to will
open up more Attack card choices. The only stat that really matters between
them all is the Strike stat, which determines the base damage of basic attacks. Whenever you get a stronger Keyblade card,
make a Moogle room and farm it for both a 0 variant and a relatively high value variant. Without going into too much detail, higher
valued cards counter lower-valued cards, briefly stunning the prior card's user. 0 is a special exception, automatically countering
any other value at the moment of play. For basic Heartless, equip a high value variant
and grind. Trust me, there's gonna be a lot of grind. With only a single card, our DPS is ludicrously
pathetic. We only get the one attack from our one card
before having to reload, done by manually charging the Reload Card. Incredibly thankfully, Donald and Goofy are
here to help speed up the process! Just because we're playing with a 1 Card Deck
doesn't mean we're limited to just 1 card. Friend cards representing your current party
members have a random chance of dropping every time an attack hits an enemy. Donald will cast two random spells, and Goofy
will perform Goofy Tornado. Goofy is almost always preferable, usually
clearing out a few Heartless all on his own. And if you're wondering what Pluto does, he
doesn't. Beating random Heartless battles will give
us both the Map cards necessary to progress, and, you're not gonna believe this, experience
points. If you aren't a bad person you might remember
from the GBAChain video that there are 3 level-up bonuses to choose from: a max health increase,
a max Card Point increase, and a new sleight attack. Card points allow us to put more cards in
our deck, sleights allow us to combine multiple cards from our deck for special attacks, and
health allows us to not die. Take three guesses which one I recommend. Those health increases will be incredibly
important for this run's main events: the boss fights. Since bosses all have pretty long health bars,
you'll be fighting each one for a ridiculously long time, and during that period you absolutely
cannot afford to get hit. Without the ability to equip healing cards,
the only ways to heal are with a Donald card or a Pluto card, and let me tell you, if you
thought Donald was unreliable, you do *not* want to see Pluto's heal rate. It's best just to assume that every time you
take damage, that health is gone permanently. You'll need to memorize every single boss'
moveset in its entirety. Against the first boss, Guard Armor, focus
on its legs. They have an attack that will chase after
you for a surprisingly long amount of time, being both dangerous and an annoying time
waste. Once it's down to just its body and head,
it will start a spinning stomp attack. Hug close to a wall while rolling; Guard Armor
isn't legally allowed to be too near the wall, giving you more room to breath. The rest should be easy. Immediately after in the Floor 1 exit is Axel. This essentially functions as a tutorial for
humanoid bosses, who have their own decks, shown in the bottom-right corner of the screen,
and, just like Sora, are capable of executing multi-card sleights. When facing any bosses who can use sleights,
you absolutely must bring in a 0 card. These attacks are usually too dangerous to
dodge, in some cases being outright undodgeable. Countering before the attack is executed is
your only option. For that reason, you must absolutely never
put yourself into a situation where your 0 card is out of reach. Before actually attacking, pre-emptively charge
up your Reload as far as you can get while still technically not being fully filled. Once done, that's your cue to attack, after
which you can reload instantly and have your card at-the-ready. Axel only has a single straight-forward standard
attack, so if you keep breaking his sleights, he'll be easy. The next few worlds are mostly a breeze, until
we abruptly slam our faces into one of the hardest boss fights in the entire franchise:
the Card. Friggin'. Soldiers. I'm serious! These guys are absolutely unrelenting death
machines that give Sephiroth a run for his money. In a normal playthrough you wouldn't notice
since you'd just mash the attack button until everybody's dead. But if you give them any downtime, which we
inevitably have to in order to reload, they'll go on the offensive. The Spade cards carry an axe, and this axe
attack is just straight up broken. They charge at Sora, swinging the axe over
and over and over and over again, requiring you to dodge roll over and over and over and
over again, and have you noticed that he's not stopping? And the moment the attack ends, they're just
gonna do it again! You have zero time to breath! I was genuinely questioning whether this run
was possible or if I'd have to throw in the towel because of this stupid joke filler miniboss. Your only hope of survival is to counter. Inbetween every dodge, you have a very very
small window in which you can charge your reload just slightly. Get into a perfect rhythm and be extremely
careful when officially finishing the reload. For whatever reason, when Sora successfully
performs a Reload, he becomes incapable of moving for a fraction of a second. This will screw you over if performed at any
time other than the earliest possible moment. Whenever a friend card drops, go ahead and
use it ASAP. They'll give you a huge amount of progress. Once the first wave of Spade cards are gone,
you'll face the second wave: two Heart cards. Thankfully they're an entirely different breed
of hell. Heart cards have a single jabbing spear attack
they'll spam over and over and over. The attack lasts too long for dodge rolling
to be viable except at the very edge of their range, and even then, be careful: the soldiers
tend to push eachother around, often accidentally extending the range of the spear attack. Most of the time you should hop over the attack,
which unfortunately leaves you with little time to reload. Play a lengthy game of keep-away while getting
small reloads inbetween, and very very eventually you'll take out both Hearts and enter the
third and final wave: 3 Heart soldiers and 2 Spade soldiers simul-friggin-taneously. As you can probably imagine, this is ludicrously
impossible: both types of cards are dangerous on their own, but when either type could potentially
attack you at any moment, the fight becomes an incredibly unfunny joke. That's why you should save any Donald or Goofy
cards that drop in Wave 2. Let 'em loose and aim specifically for the
Spades. With them gone there will only be one suit
to worry about, so get back to the same dodging strategy as before. If you can keep consistent enough, and get
lucky enough Friend drops, the Card Soldier battle is indeed somehow possible. Our next point of interest is hell. Monstro features the boss fight against Parasite
Cage, whose gimmick is a pool of acid which immediately damages Sora on contact. Just to make this as frustrating as possible,
the four circling platforms will sink into the acid if Sora stands on them too long. And to make things even more frustrating than
is supposed to be possible, Parasite Cage has both a giant poison ball ranged attack
and melee attacks with such a huge range you're likely to be hit by them immediately after
you deal damage yourself. Donald and Goofy aren't gonna be that helpful,
either, because of an incredibly stupidly frustrating detail of this game's design. While a Friend card is in play, for some unfathomable
reason, Sora is not allowed to jump. Meaning, if you use a Friend card here, you
will automatically take damage. To safely get damage in, all of your attacks
need to be Card Breaks, temporarily stunning Parasite Cage and giving time to escape. When a Gimmick card spawns, you can use it
to temporarily drain the pools, giving just enough time to safely summon a Friend. With some very cautious and precise play,
we finally defeat Parasite Cage, and can move on into hell! What, did you think that was it? Parasite Cage is only the hell midboss, the
actual boss is a dumb stupid minigame. To complete this minigame, we need to fill
the constantly depleting bar in the top-right of the screen by defeating tons of Heartless
under a 2-minute time limit. As you can probably imagine, the only valid
strategy is blind luck, specifically for Friend card drops. To maximize drop chances, aim your keyblade
strikes to hit multiple Shadows with each swing. Each individual hit is one more roll of the
Friend dice. Also make sure to grab those Friend cards
ASAP: only one Friend card can bounce at a time, so any hits dealt during such time are
wasted. When you're approaching the 30 second mark,
unleash your army of Goofs and Ducks and hope for the best. Even if this run got good drop luck, they
may not thin the crowd in exactly the way the game wanted them to, failing to fill the
bar. And as I found out absolutely crushingly after
several wasted hours, no, basketball rules do not apply. If you fill the bar slightly after the timer
hits zero, the Dumbo card reward will spawn but then the screen just fades out like it
never happened. This will be a terribly boring and frustrating
several hours-long time-sink, but I assure you, eventually, you will appease the apparent
RNG god Monstro and escape. Those hours won't be completely wasted, though:
this minigame does not treat failure as a Game Over. That means all the EXP you obtain in each
failed attempt is still legally yours, so by the time you beat it you'll have a massive
boost to your health bar. The final world of the first set, Halloween
Town, is a very welcome break with possibly the easiest boss in the entire game, Oogie
Boogie. His attacks are so infrequent and difficult
to get hit by, if you manage to lose, it's because your bathroom break took too long. After that very very very short break, get
back in that pool of lava right friggin' now, we're heading into yet another of the hardest
bosses in the entire franchise: Larxene. Larxene has three standard attacks. In one attack, she'll throw out two sets of
kunai one after another lightning fast, best dodged by jumping above both volleys. In a second attack, she'll chase you down
with a two-hit melee combo, best dodged with two dodge rolls. Making things tricky, the timing on these
dodge rolls is different: the first roll needs to be done late, while the second needs to
be done early. And in her third attack, she hits you with
lightning. If you're wondering how to dodge it, you clearly
weren't paying attention. She hits you with friggin' lightning. It is technically possible not to get hit
by the lightning with a few dodge rolls, but as far as I can tell it's entirely a matter
of luck: inbetween your invulnerability frames Larxene is fully capable of hitting you if
she wants, and usually, she enjoys when things get hit by lightning. And since this is one of Larxene's standard
attacks which she'll be using incredibly frequently, we have no hope of actually countering her
every use of it. This battle is under a soft time limit. No matter how good you are at dodging, if
you take too long Larxene WILL kill you. And to make matters about fifty times worse,
once Larxene's health is low she'll enter Phase 2, where her melee attacks are upgraded
to an ultra-deadly five hit combo. And the fifth hit is lightning! Don't even bother trying to fight her until
you head back and grind your health up to its literal maximum. At first you'll want to actually win Heartless
battles to stock up on Map cards, but once your map cards are near full, which they will
be before we're done, create a Friend card room. Attack a Heartless in the overworld to enter
battle, hope for a Goofy or Donald drop, use it, grab the EXP that drops, and bid these
suckers a temporary farewell, before immediately beginning the battle once again. A Friend card is guaranteed to drop every
time a battle begins, so exiting and re-entering ensures every attack will be a room-clearer. With your health bar far larger than any reasonable
developer could have expected, run back for the most hellish grind you will ever participate
in. Since her lightning is automatically draining
our health, you don't have any room for error: you must dodge her kunai and melee attacks
flawlessly. As for the lightning itself, just dodge roll
around mindlessly and hope for the best. I genuinely have no better advice. For any attempt to have a hope of being possible,
not only will Larxene have to decide to miss you with the lightning on a semi-frequent
basis, you'll need enough Donald and Goofy cards, of sufficiently high value, to spawn
in by the time you reach Phase 2. The moment you reach Phase 2, unleash every
Friend card you've got in a sequence of sleights, starting with Donald since Donald is potentially
capable of healing you. I will warn you, however, that Donald... is
Donald. With astronomically unfathomable RNG, you'll
survive to Phase 2, friend cards will drop, Donald will not stab you in the back, Larxene
will make the active decision not to counter Donald or Goofy, and all those cards combined
will actually deal enough damage to bring Larxene's health bar to 0. This singular battle delayed the video by
a week. And it's only the halfway point. In Atlantica we fight Ursula, who will be
a much more reasonable, but extremely long endurance battle. You can only hurt her when she's directly
next to the arena. She'll come on her own after you kill a few
tentacles, but that only provides enough time to safely deal a single hit. If you try to hit her while countering attacks,
her head will bounce slightly out of range. More lucrative is when a Gimmick card drops,
providing enough time to hit her twice. Thankfully, Ursula's own attacks are mostly
harmless since she takes so long to actually perform them. Attack the tentacles from a safe distance
and be proactive with your reloads, and after about half an hour Ursula will finally go
up in smoke. At the floor's exit, we'll fight Riku. His moveset is a little difficult to get the
hang of at first, but both his main attacks can be dodged by jumping every time he approaches,
and while it doesn't work all the time, you have more than enough health to make up for
it. It was at this point that I finally realized,
however, that going through worlds in the proper order is for dumb stupid idiots, moving
to Hollow Bastion instead. Specifically because Hollow Bastion's signature
Attack card is La Vie en Rose, featuring the highest physical attack power of all Attack
cards available before beating the game. We'll now be dealing the maximum possible
amount of damage to bosses with our keyblade strikes. It'll come in handy when fighting Hollow Bastion's
boss: Maleficent's dragon form. While her attacks have massive range, the
arena is equally massive and she's incapable of following you to the edge, meaning you're
safe there from everything other than fire and shockwaves. Hug the wall and make carefully timed approaches
and counter-attacks to officially earn the right to take La Vie en Rose with you to the
rest of the game. In this floor's exit, we'll meet a familiar
face: Riku 2. In addition to having a longer health bar,
Riku is now capable of performing a jumping sleight, and his standard overhead jump attack
now produces a split shockwave along the ground. It's honestly not really that much of an upgrade,
and you should still be able to outlife him just fine. The next two floors are Neverland and the
100 Acre Wood, one of which is easy and the other is a nightmare beyond comprehension,
but only for moral reasons. Worth noting, entering Neverland adds Glide
to Sora's base movement. While slow, it's particularly useful in extending
Sora's midair time to dodge grounded attacks. After both is the boss battle against Vexen,
about which I will say literally nothing because I forgot to record it, and Vexen 2 is the
next paragraph. In advance, we'll be doing a little prep. First, throw Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories
in the trash and begin the 1 Card Challenge in the 358/2 Days cutscene compilation. With exactly 0 cards in our deck, the Kingdom
Hearts 358/2 Days 1 Card Run is Mission Complete! In fact, it's an ULTIMATE Mission Complete,
because through clever abuse of some little-known skips, I managed to beat a bonus challenge,
completing this cutscene compilation without watching a single cutscene. With the franchise's canon play order thoroughly
demolished, head back into Halloween Town and finally open the Room to Rewards with
a Key to Rewards card which you've probably obtained by now. Recognizing our popcorn munching prowess,
this room will now contain the Bond of Flame attack card, featuring the highest possible
Attack stat with the caveat that it deals Fire elemental damage. Most bosses are resistant to Fire damage,
except Vexen thanks to it countering his Ice element. Use Twilight Town's new Moogle card packs
to obtain a 0 value version, then run to the floor's exit and jam into Vexen's face...
for less damage than La Vie en Rose. You will be just as flabbergasted as me, and
you deserve to. Everybody deserves to. See, turns out, when they were making this
remake of Chain of Memories, and copy-pasting magic resistance stats across all the bosses,
they presumably accidentally made the Iceman resistant to fire! Oh, but don't worry, they didn't forget everything,
they remembered to make ice heal him. With an hour of your life thoroughly wasted,
voice some profanities while equipping La Vie en Rose and finally actually fight Vexen. The same general rules apply while dealing
damage: always attack with a Card Break from as far as you can get away with. It's worth noting Card Breaks are explicitly
required here, thanks to Vexen's shield which can only be attacked past with Card Breaks
and Fire Elemental attacks. To dodge his ranged icicle attack, dodge roll
forward and slightly to the side, then stay within that general area as the icicle tries
its hardest and fails pathetically. Be ready to run if Vexen approaches you, if
he gets too close you won't be able to dodge a potential attack. The real danger will be Vexen's sleights,
which he uses frequently. One has such a long startup that I genuinely
have no idea what it does, while the other is a quick trail of chasing ice pillars which
can combo you for tons of damage. Careful on the counter: the ice pillars' hitboxes
linger after the attack, so even if you counter it, you can still take damage by passing over
their prior location. This is a bit of an endurance battle since
Vexen's enemy card will effectively give him two bonus healthbars, but with proactive reloads,
and, as always, a few extra health bars shaved off with Donald and Goofy, you'll eventually
succeed. Next up is a familiar familiar face: Riku
3. We can no longer easily outlife him; this
battle will take genuine effort. His charge attack is now upgraded with a projectile,
and he has a second sleight: Dark Firaga. Your number one priority should be preventing
yourself from ever getting hit by his charge attack, which has a random stun chance locking
you in a ridiculously over-the-top unfair combo. When dealing damage, as I hope you've gotten
used to, only attack Riku with a counter, and always from the furthest distance you
can get away with. Just like with Larxene before, I couldn't
possibly hope to dodge everything, and banked my entire strategy on a roll of the friendship
dice, getting Donald and Goofy to cheese me past Phase 2 right as my health went critical. "Gosh Gamerchamp," every single human being
in the universe conglomerates in the comment section, "Your dumb stupid clickbait title
had me thinking this would be a 1 Card Run, isn't using Donald and Goofy cheating?" No worries, Sora's been thinking the same
thing, so in the next cutscene he tells Donald and Goofy he's had enough of their ****ing
stupid friendship-*** bull**** and runs back to tell Riku that Namine is a ****ing ***** *** *****ing
****ing ******* mother of ****, and, quite frankly, silly. Welcome to Riku 4. All of Riku's attacks are in their strongest
forms, he has access to all of his sleights from the beginning of the battle, including
Dark Aura, his health bar is longer than it's ever been, Donald and Goofy are drowning themselves
in breakup ice cream, I still have no idea how to dodge his attacks, and the run is over. That's it, the end. Upon reaching Riku 4, I immediately realized
that there was absolutely no way I could possibly beat this boss fight with only a single card,
and that to even entertain the idea with any degree of sincerity would inevitably trigger
my incredibly unhealthy inability to turn the game off. So, as much as it pained me, I ultimately
made the decision to respect my own wellbeing. So anyway it's one week later I hate my life
here we friggin' go. Since we have no reliable way of healing ourselves,
every point of damage we take is permanent. Riku is in the same position, so logically,
when doing the math on paper, to win this battle we need a dodging strategy that, on
average, prevents Sora from taking a larger pecentage of damage over time than Riku does. Without Friend card DPS boosts, we're nowhere
close with our prior strats. First off, we need a method that deals damage
to Riku while allowing us to escape a potential follow-up attack with 100% reliability. After many hours of experimentation, I realized
Riku only ever attacks while he's facing Sora. That means attacking Riku's backside buys
time while he turns around. Riku ever conveniently stops on the spot for
a second after doing an overhead shockwave while he waits for the wave to dissipate. His card is still legally in play during this
period, too, giving even more escape time from the Card Break. By the way, always wait a short moment after
attacking before you reload. If you reload while the Attack card is discarding
itself, it won't technically be reloadable yet, thus completely wasting the reload. Now that we can deal damage without taking
damage, we'll also have to avoid damage without taking damage. After many, many, many, many hours of experimentation,
I've found a strategy that almost always works. For most of the battle, Riku will run towards
you and use either his charge or overhead attack when he's within a certain distance. To reliably dodge either attack, give Riku
a little bit of time to approach, then jump with perfect timing as he breaches his attack
threshhold. Even if you get the timing, you're still not
safe yet, you'll have to watch for which attack he uses and react accordingly. It's difficult to describe how to react, though,
it's honestly more muscle memory than vanilla memory. Basically I try to wiggle around him in a
circle just slightly, but not too much, but sometimes a lot. He also may not even take the opportunity
to attack immediately, stalling while he fumbles through his deck looking for a card he likes. You'll have to improvise a bit, but whatever
happens, try to lead Riku around in a circle. Don't forget you have the ability to glide
and stall your fall. You'll also need to dodge his sleights. Keep an eye on Riku's currently stocked cards
in the top-right corner of the screen. The specific sleight can be determined by
the first stocked card. If he stocks a card with a green background,
he's prepping the jumping attack, Helm Split. If he stocks a card with a blue background,
he's prepping Dark Firaga. And if he stocks a red card, he's prepping
Dark Aura. Note that Riku is capable of cancelling his
current stock, pay attention so you aren't caught unawares. Helm Split is easily dodged in its entirety
by jumping and gliding, but to get as much DPS as possible, you can instead dodge roll
and charge reload between each attack, finally jumping and gliding over the third one. Dark Firaga you'll need to be particularly
prepared for. If you jump too high immediately prior, you'll
get hit by the fireball before you can land and dodge. Finally, Dark Aura, thanks to its incredible
danger, is the simplest: always counter it, even if you're not close enough to hit Riku. If you see that Dark Aura is Riku's next sleight,
I highly recommend holding off on any attacks: if he uses Dark Aura a couple times in a row
and you don't have reload time fully prepped, you will have effectively forfeited the battle. Even with a dodge strategy as perfect as I
think I could reasonably perform, and with our own DPS being minmaxed as high as I could
get it, Riku's DPS still surpasses our own, making the battle still theoretically unwinnable. There is, however, one more strategy we can
work in to even the odds. If our DPS isn't good enough even at our best,
then we're just gonna have to put Riku at his worst. As any decent Chain of Memories player should
remember, Riku follows the same rules as the player. When he performs a sleight, the first stocked
card is made permanently unreloadable. That means the more sleights we dodge, the
smaller a deck Riku has to work with, and the more frequently he'll reload. While this is a minor boost to our own DPS,
the real golden lining is that as Riku's deck gets shaved down, he'll become more and more
hesitant to attack even if he has the opportunity, since, as mentioned before, he'll only attack
if he finds a card he likes, which keeps getting harder and harder. That means, while we start the battle with
a lower DPS than Riku's, over time the situation will reverse, and with a sufficiently hesitant
Riku I've even been capable of going long stretches of the battle without taking damage. In order for this strategy to work, there's
one more important note: Riku has five one-time use Elixir cards, which will restore all the
cards he previously sacrificed, effectively resetting his DPS to its highest. You must counter all five Elixirs to prevent
Riku from bouncing back. Not only does this require quick reaction
on your part, it also requires a little bit of luck, since he'll sometimes use these elixirs
one after another too fast for you to counter. And... that's it. That is everything I know about Riku. The rest is up to you. *exasperated laughter* Oh my gah! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my gah! Oh my gaaaahd! Oh hya- ah! Ah! Ahhhhhh, ah. Aha, ahhhhhahaha. Agggh, aha, mmmmmmm. "Save your game, save your game, save your
game"? No! I don't care! If my power goes out, screw it, I'm cheating! I'm announcing to the entire world that if
my power goes out right now, I'm just gonna go- I'm just gonna redo the fight with a million
cards, and just say you know what? Ye-whatever, who cares? I'm just gonna like g- I'm just gonna pretendsies
that I did it here because I DID do it, and g-g- it's fine, who cares? I did it, I friggin' did it! With Riku 4 defeated, frantically run back
to celebrate by saving the game, talk to Riku, and enjoy the realization that you will be
fighting the next boss immediately: Larxene 2. Before the battle even begins, pause the game,
walk to the grocery store, buy two tubs of ice cream, eat one while failing to hold back
tears, then walk to Disney headquarters, beat up the entire security team, interrogate them
for the keycode to the underground vault, perform an eldritch ritual on Walt Disney's
corpse, hand the resurrected monstrosity the second tub of ice cream and tell him to give
it to Donald and Goofy along with a heartfelt apology note forged in Sora's handwriting. Walk back home, unpause the game, and breath
a sigh of relief as Donald and Goofy forgive a perplexed Sora and enter battle with the
trio united. As I'm sure you suspect, even with Donald
and Goofy, Larxene 2 is practically impossible. She's now got a buffed up deck, a way bigger
health bar, and if you even manage to survive long enough, a similarly ultra deadly phase
2 where she'll start using an instant automatic death sleight. But you'll never get that far, because she's
still got her same old lightning attack, and we still have no way to dodge it. This battle is practically impossible with
our prior strats, so I took on a new strategy never before seen on VG Myths: I put out a
bounty. Anybody who could find a reliable method to
dodge Larxene's lightning would win 5 random steam keys from my baggy of extras, with a
near-guarantee that all 5 games would be unforgivably horrid trash. Believe it or not, this incredible prize did
nothing to help, nobody claimed the bounty. As far as humanity knows, Larxene's lightning
is just plain undodgeable save for incredibly unreliable strategy of politely asking her
to miss. Once again, we just have to accept that as
this battle goes on, you will automatically take damage over time. The only way to win is to keep that damage
drain lower than the damage you deal out. In order to do that, we can't afford absolutely
any damage from any source other than Larxene's lightning. First, dealing damage to Larxene with our
prior strats was safe-ish, but not 100% consistent, putting ourselves at risk of a counter-counter
attack even with ideal positioning. Unlike Riku, Larxene will rarely turn her
back toward you, so backstabbing is a no-go. I did some experimentation and discovered
I'd been playing this game wrong this entire time. I'd been playing my Attack card normally,
by pressing the confirm button. But alternatively, you can stock your Attack
card and use it in a single card sleight. This seems like it would be both completely
pointless and detrimental, making that singular card unreloadable, but both are false. Remember that secret rule that the player
must always have at least one Attack card in their deck? In order to ensure the player never runs out
of options, even if they're literally trying, if the player sleights their final Attack
card, it will NOT be made unreloadable. That means we can sleight our Attack card
with no penalty. As for why we'd even bother, see the comparison
on-screen. On the left, we play our Attack card the normal
way, and on the right, we play the same card via single-card sleight. Presumably to make sleights go by faster,
the card will be removed from play far sooner, and Sora will likewise be given back his freedom
of movement far sooner. As long as we attack Larxene with single-card
sleight Card Breaks, we're at absolutely zero risk of a counter. This discovery was ludicrously huge, making
beating Larxene vaguely kind of sort of feasible. Next up is minimizing damage when Larxene
is on the offensive. Since we can't actually dodge Larxene's lightning,
we'll be doing the next best thing, basing our entire strategy on preventing her from
using lightning in the first place. Since she's capable of comboing these lightning
attacks quickly, we'll need to bait Larxene into wasting time, during which we can charge
our reload. Stick relatively close, but not too close,
to Larxene, and pay close attention to her deck in the bottom-right corner of the screen. While it's not a guarantee, Larxene will frequently
play the currently selected card as her next attack, and the cards behind it are likely
soon after. If Sora is within a certain range when Larxene
plays a green background throwing knife Attack card, she'll harmlessly backflip before the
throw, giving you plenty of time to charge reload and dodge. If she uses a blue background Attack card,
she'll perform her melee attack combo. If you were properly positioned, you'll have
just barely enough time to react. Important note, you'll have a little bit of
time to charge up reload inbetween hits. When she finally plays a dreaded lightning
card, counter it while close enough to deal damage. If she uses too many in a row, dip into your
stockpile of Pluto cards. An equal value card is ideal, negating the
lightning without actually summoning Pluto. If you have to summon him, it's still usually
worth it, though, especially a high-value Pluto which is less likely to be countered. Obviously, if you've run out of counter options,
mash the dodge roll button in the hopes Larxene decides to miss. While preparing to counter lightning is the
crux of our strategy, don't be too stingy with your Attack cards: if you're fully charged
and Larxene's magic cards aren't visible in her deck, go ahead and get some extra damage
in; you'll usually have enough time for a full reload before the next lightning. Both her phase 1 sleights have huge wind-up
times, so you won't need to learn them. After many, many, many hours of practice,
I reached a point where I could reliably reach Phase 2 in almost every attempt. Phase 2 has two differences. First, like in the prior battle, her melee
attack is hugeley upgraded, now consisting of 4 melee hits and finishing with a small
lightning drop. The second two hits have similar dodge timing
to the first two, and the lightning is much more likely to miss than her actual proper
lightning attack, so while there's a much larger risk if you mess up, successful dodging
will give you even more reload time for free. Larxene's second Phase 2 upgrade is the Teleport
Rush sleight, which is so astronomically dangerous you need to be ready to counter it instantly,
or else you will automatically forfeit. She has too much health to blaze past Phase
2 in its entirety, but, as always, we're still banking on getting some major damage in with
Donald and Goofy. Try to sleight them when Larxene has exhausted
a good portion of her deck and is close to reloading. The less cards she has in her deck, the less
likely she'll throw out a 0. With absolutely astronomically ludicrously
perfect play, you WILL finally get just barely good enough at video games to turn the tables
and prove to Larxene that she, too, has a small chance of getting hit by lightning. If you made it this far, congrats, you've
officially beaten what is in the running for hardest boss fight I have ever partaken in
my entire life. This battle caused me actual genuine physical
harm, inflicting me with hand pain that prevented me from even holding a controller, which only
mostly went away after a full month of rest. The good news is you won't be facing anything
anywhere near as difficult in the remainder of this run, but the bad news is it's not
gonna be a victory lap. Enter the game's final, 13th floor: Castle
Oblivion. You can and should skip absolutely all random
Heartless battles with your stock of map cards. Just rush to the story rooms to continue this
final boss gauntlet. Axel 2 is laughably easy and basically unchanged
since the tutorial. But in the final room you'll fight the penultimate
boss, Holo-Marluxia. While this battle occurs in a larger arena
than usual, that does *not* mean you'll have more space to dodge. For one of Marluxia's three main attacks,
he fires two sets of arcing homing laser slices, which cause ludicrously over-the-top damage
and are difficult to dodge reliably. However, if you pay attention, you'll notice
there's a blind spot: these lasers arc in opposite directions before joining together. If Sora is positioned within this sweet spot,
each laser will harmlessly scrape past. For the duration of this battle, keep yourself
within that sweet spot. He'll do his best to awkwardly sidestep in
your general direction to throw off your movement, so be extremely careful, moving even slightly
to the side will put you in range. Otherwise, you have two attacks to watch out
for: the first, Circle Reject, has Marluxia summon three spinning vortexes which are practically
impossible to dodge normally, but also have a far stupider blind spot: as soon as Marluxia
casts Circle Reject, reject the circles by tucking yourself in a corner of this rectangular
room, saved by the power of geometry. This can put you in a risky spot after since
you're no longer in the laser sweet spot. If he throws them, dodge with two rolls in
opposite directions. His third standard attack is what I like to
call Circle Embrace: he'll dash towards you and attack with a painful melee combo. At first I couldn't dodge this because the
exact timing at which Marluxia would begin the combo felt random. Sometimes he'd attack immediately, while others
he'd delay a second. Eventually, though, I realized what was going
on: Marluxia will *only* begin the combo when Sora is facing directly toward him. Knowing this, embrace the circle and start
ballroom dancing. Marluxia is surprisingly talented at following
your lead, allowing for infinite rotation. This can be used in two ways: first, if you
vary your rotational speed, you can gradually move in whatever direction you choose. If you're not comfortable a your current location,
drag Marluxia closer to one of the edges, thus giving you more space to retreat. Second, it allows you to manually end the
dance followed by a perfectly timed backwards roll to bait and dodge Marluxia's attack. Now that we've got each of Marluxia's standard
attacks down, we only have to worry about his sleights. The one to look out for most starts with a
Magic card, causing Marluxia to teleport directly next to Sora and instantly attack. Always be aware if Marluxia has one of these
prepped, and counter it slightly instantlier. His other sleights have longer windup times
so you should be able to counter them without issue, including his Phase 2 super duper sleight
which I genuinely have no idea what it does, because I never needed to bother. With HoloMarluxia defeated, save the game
once again and enter the true final boss battle: Vanilla Marluxia, split into 2 phases which
are themselves split into 2 phases. As a breath of fresh air, Phase 1 is easy
to learn, with Marluxia always cycling between the same attacks in a specific order. Don't bother attacking the scythes, the only
benefit to doing so is preventing this singular scythe attack, which is so easy to dodge it
doesn't matter. Lock on to Marluxia himself and deal damage
between his attacks. When he summons flower turrets, he'll start
with 3, and one will disappear each time you break one of his cards. The full set is difficult to dodge, so get
your card ready to counter the first, reload, and counter the second, jumping up near Marluxia
in the hopes of dealing damage along the way. With only a single turret left, you should
now be able to dodge easily, letting you catch up on reloads. When Marluxia takes control of the camera,
if he summons a pink orb, Sora will take automatic damage upon the attack's conclusion. If he summons a dark orb, Sora will suffer
a fate worse than damage: every single card in your deck will be shrouded in darkness. Oh no. Upon reaching Phase 1 Phase 2, Marluxia's
scythes will automatically suffer from an apparent critical design flaw, replacing them
with two new attacks. First, a charge attack which you can invulnerability
frame through with a properly timed dodge roll. Second, a less dodgeable ground pound. Just focus on reloading and counter at the
last possible moment. If done properly, you'll always be able to
counter. With both phases of Phase 1 down, our health
is refilled and we enter Phase 2 Phase 1: True Final Marluxia. At first glance he appears to be easy, since
you can whittle down his health super quick, until you encounter his 666 sleight: Death
Sentence. If you allow Death Sentence to activate, you'll
be forced into a duel, requiring 6 counters under a 6 second time limit. You are allowed to reload, but that won't
be enough with a singular card, meaning you are doomed. And there's no checkpoint here: if you die
in Phase 2, you have to repeat Phase 1 to get another chance. When Marluxia uses Death Sentence, he'll always
cast it in sets of 3. You should be able to counter the first two,
but the third you'll have to dodge. To do this, stick right in front of Marluxia's
face and run around in circles waving your hands in the air. This works sometimes, but if it doesn't, you're
just gonna have to hope you accidentally picked up a few Plutos, Donalds, and Goofies. Expend only as many of these as you need to
survive, you might need them for another Death Sentence later. He also has a 777 sleight which is easy to
dodge, but upon hit scatters your entire deck around the field. Oh no. As for standard attacks, most dangerous, but
most lucrative, are the returning flower turrets. As before, counter the first two attacks ASAP,
then take advantage of the third for some free reload time. And to really minmax, wait until immediately
after each subsequent laser card is removed from play to attack. This deals damage without technically performing
a card break, thus keeping the third turret in play longer to bank more reload. Marluxia also has an attack that will blow
Sora to the opposite end of the arena and deal a small amount of damage if Sora is too
close. The end of the arena is a short walk away,
so the damage is the only thing to worry about. Unfortunately, dodging Death Sentence requires
Sora to be right in Marluxia's face, so I was too afraid to back up and tended to just
tank these hits. Once you reach Phase 2 Phase 2, Marluxia will
try to annihilate Sora with an onslaught of new sleights. I genuinely have no idea what these do other
than basically causing automatic damage, so I gave it my all to counter as many as I could
get away with, and that strategy was good enough. With Char finally given a death sentence of
his own, the Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories 1 Card Run is an Ultimate Mission Complete! If you're interested in trying the run yourself,
it is highly recommended, but please, love yourself and take regular breaks. In fact, love yourself and give yourself regular
breaks even if you're playing video games in a totally reasonable way. Trust me, your hands will thank you. And finally, special shout out to Pacey8444,
whose video fighting HoloMarluxia under a similar ruleset inspired the full game run. And double finally, if you're interested,
I've made a compilation of every boss fight throughout the run, found on my No Commentary
channel linked in the description. And triple finally, if you're curious, yes
the bounty is still available, even though it doesn't help me in any tangible way. In fact, I'm upping the ante, I'm throwing
in a 6th Steam key which I guarantee will not work. And quadruple finally, special thanks to all
Patreon backers including: Let me know how much this video sucks and
how to improve in the comments below. Ten thousand thunderbolts for watching, and
get out of my house.
