Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts is one of the more popular video game series out there. After the first installment in the series became popular, Square Enix decided to make a sequel, but before the long awaited Kingdom Hearts II, they came out with an in-between game. The game had been put on the Gameboy Advance instead of the Playstation 2 because the president of Square Enix heard from his son that he and his friends would love to play a Kingdom Hearts game on the portable system. So there is the motivation, but was it a good idea? How does this game play? Is it good? This is Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for the Gameboy Advance.

Graphics

Back in the Gameboy Advance era you couldn't expect very good graphics from a portable system. If you ever owned a Gameboy Advance you very well know that the only games that made graphics that looked good on the system were Nintendo themselves and Game Freak. Kingdom Hearts, though, is one of the few third-party games that looked good on the system. The graphics are a bit tough to explain. The characters are 3D-ish to some degree, the cutscenes are very well done but very underused, and the worlds are kind of bland. I know this sounds a bit negative but trust me the game looks good.

Gameplay

Now here is where I think Square Enix dropped the ball on this one. The traditional gameplay for a Kingdom Hearts game is a fast-paced, hack and slash, RPG but this game strips that away and puts in a new gameplay mechanic. The mechanic in this game is you use cards to attack. I know it sounds weird but it works to some degree.
You play the game with Sora having a deck of cards, each varying in different types. There are Keyblade cards, magic cards, Item cards, and summon cards. The cards all have numbers on them, and it is because this is used for battle. The numbers go from 0-9, 0 being the lowest and 9 the highest. Now how this works is that the higher number always wins. If your opponent attacks with a number 3 card then you negate it and cause a card break with any card higher than 3. Card Breaks happen when you play a card at the same time as your opponent, the one with the higher card wins and the loser gets stunned for a bit giving the upper hand to the winner of the Card Break. 0 is a bit of a wild card, if it's played first it can be beaten by any card but if it's played last it can beat any card, even the sleighs. The Keyblade cards let you attack, each time you attack you use up one of your cards, the same thing with the magic and summon cards. Now you only have a certain amount you can have in a deck but if you run out of cards during the battle then all you do is keep the A button held down and wait for a gauge to fill up and your deck returns. There is a catch, there are these things in the game called Sleighs, and what these let you do is stock up on three cards during battle and the three cards will be used up at the same time. The numbers of all the cards you use add up, so let's say that you use a 7, an 8, and a 9 card, that all adds up to 24 so it will be hard to break that, only 0 cards can do that. The thing about sleighs is that it's a double-edged sword, the first card used in the sleigh will not be able to return until after the battle, so if you use sleighs too much you might end up with no cards to battle with. In battle you have two deck sections, one for your regular cards and one for enemy cards. The enemy cards are basically boosts in battle, like healing, or a power boost.

That was the battle portion of the game, for the rest of the game you go from one room to another in Castle Oblivion. These rooms are small and a bit of a drag to go through. You can press the A button to hit a heartless and that will activate a battle. You defeat enemies to gain Map Cards. In each room there is a door, to open the door you have to use the card that matches its criteria.There are three types of categories the cards have to fit into, they are the number, the color, and the type. A door may ask for a green card with a value of 3 and over, which means that you have to use a green card that has the numbers 3-9 and 0. The type of card you use affects the room you're going to enter, you might you use a card that makes all the heartless be asleep in the next room for example, and you need to figure out which kind of card is right for the moment. Now what I don't like about this is that there are no save points, if you want to save you have you use a card called "Moment's Reprieve" and they are hard to come by, you could also go out of the world and save in the castle's hallway (which is a waste of time), or you could wait until you beat a world.

This game's got some issues with it's gameplay. The cards sound like a good concept for strategy but that limits the player on the customization that the first game offered. There is no synthesizing because all items are cards, the battles get repetitive, and some boss fights are smaller versions from the ones on the PS2. It gets boring having to find the right card sometimes and the leveling up is annoying because when Sora levels up you can only choose four things to update: his HP, his Attack, teach him a new sleigh, or boost his CP (Card Points: they determine how many cards you can have in your deck). The RPG elements are really watered down and the there aren't too many combos to pull off, so the gameplay is a huge disappointment.

Story

Although the gameplay is very stale something saves this game from being the worst in the series and that's it's story. The game picks up immediately after Kingdom Hearts and Sora, Donald, and Goofy are looking for Riku and King Mickey, who disappeared in the door to the light in the previous game. One night they encounter a robed man who leads Sora to Castle Oblivion. The trick of the castle was that the farther up Sora moves up the floors of the castle he will lose more and more of his memory but at the same time remember some new things. Sora refuses at first but they all get a feeling that Riku and King Mickey might be in the castle so they move on.

The whole story in this game revolves around memories. I like how the game connected the essence of the heart with the chain of memories we all carry. I especially like how they explain memories, it is a very creative way interpret memories. The worlds in this game are a bit of a let down because they're all just memories of Sora, so some will play out very similar to the original only twisting it up a bit. But I found the story to be more intriguing in between floors/worlds. During these sequences is when you encounter the mysterious people in the robes.

I love the characters in this game. It introduces Organization XIII to the series, which is really cool, and it introduces Diz and Namine. Namine was a great character in the game along with Axel (my favorite KH character ever) who are both the best in the game. So all in all, what can I say? The story is very well done and it's the only thing keeping this game from being total crap.

Presentation

I must say the presentation in this game is crap. The worlds are all very generic, and every hallway looks exactly the same. Every room seems like it repeats itself and it doesn't help that the music is held back too much. The music is barely used in the game and that is very disappointing, so in the end the presentation of the game is very lacking and very lazily done, I'm sure they could have done better, even on the Gameboy Advance.

Overall

Now for the verdict. I'm going to keep this short and simple. The controls work good but the gameplay is lacking. The combat is broken, it gets repetitive, the worlds are bland, and there is no good use in the music. Although there are good things. The story is as good as ever, the graphics look good for a GBA game, and the cutscenes look great. After you beat the game there is a surprise, I'm not going to say it for those who haven't played it but it's a pretty nice reward. Overall, as much as it pains me, I'm going to give Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories a 6.5/10. The game is not horrible but it's not good either, I would avoid it if you're a casual gamer, but if you're a fan like me it's still a must play to at least experience it. It's nice installment of the series but now that I beat it I have no reason to go back and play it.

Keep an eye out for more Kingdom Hearts reviews in the future.