I LOVE the original gba CoM.
The sprites are too adorable. Honestly, whenever I do a play of the whole series I always go for the original.
That game was...ugh just so many fond memories of it. That was when the series kind of hiked the stakes up in my mind. People were getting flat out murdered and I was like staring slack-jawed at my screen in utter disbelief. I couldn't believe how good they made things look on the GBA. (dem brief cg movies on such a limited system, yo).
The gameplay itself was a lot of fun. I LOVED being able to actually choose what I got at level up, it made the strategy interesting, and arranging and refining my deck was a neat process. While Re:CoM had some good points in allowing some battles that weren't available before (Zexion...) honestly I think having the battle arena be 3D actually detracted a tiny bit from my enjoyment. Mostly because in the original while you COULD dodge roll away from an attack...it kinda was finicky at best and really hard to do. You really had to set up your deck right to break your opponents card. There were even some attacks that were flat out impossible to dodge in the original (looking at YOU Axel with your massive wall of flame) that you HAD to break or you were getting blasted in the face. In Re:CoM, unfortunately, you can dodge those same attacks easily without using cards.
Card Duels were...alright. But way too easy to cheese.
And can we talk a little bit about Riku vs Repliku's final fight? I SWEAR that is the hardest fight in the series for me (in the original, again, because Re:CoM gimped it a little bit). Half the time I get confused about which one I am, healing is...not really a thing, you get stuck with some crap cards and he has every ability you do. Oh but it's a fun challenge.
I get very sad when people dis the battle system in CoM because I think it's really unique and fun. Sure, it isn't like the other KH games but...I think it works well for what it is.
My main gripes with the game are kinda how...flat the worlds are. And I get it, limited space. But it feels pretty lonely sometimes when grinding because it's just endless rooms and heartless with nothing much beyond that. No real world exploration, basically just trying to get through it to the cut scenes.
I LOVED having Jiminy be a character that was actually interacting with everyone (please bring that back...)
Being a huge SoraxKairi fan the game also did me a lot of great fan service so that was wonderful.
It was a solid, solid sequel that expanded on the characters and gave a bit more depth to all of them while at the same time leaving a lot of mystery about what was to come.
Anyone who went from KH1 to KH2 really missed out. While KH1 obviously made me a fan, CoM ensured to me at least that I was in deep with this series now and I was gonna follow it to the end.
Again, I only wish the actual "worlds" had more to do than run around and get into battles, smash things for moogle points and spam reset the system to get the best freebie cards from the moogle shop before finally getting a good deck and then running to all the cut scene doors and beating up a boss before leaving.
(I get it was due to the system limitations, but still...)