Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories Review

Unchained Memory

Once again, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories sees you taking direct control of Sora, the likeable and gutsy central character from the first game. Beginning literally at the very second where the first game ended, it takes the slightly odd approach of leading you through many of the areas which you visited in the original game, each reconstructed from Sora's memories as he searches the mysterious Castle Oblivion in the hope of finding a lost friend.

As a result, many aspects of the game feel quite familiar. The areas you travel through are broadly the same, in art style terms, as those in the PS2 game - at least until you start hitting original dungeons later in the game. Everything is rendered in 2D isometric style, with sprite characters overlaid, but it all still looks great, with really nice backgrounds (aside from the occasional awful section, like the inside of the whale) and well-animated characters and attacks. There's even some video thrown in, including a lengthy and quite impressive FMV intro sequence, which is quite unusual to see in a GBA game.

The characters will also feel familiar, as with the exception of some rather mysterious new arrivals (who also seem to feature heavily in Kingdom Hearts II, judging from the trailers), you'll mostly be encountering people you met before in the first game. Donald and Goofy are your constant companions (although oddly, not in battle - more about that in a moment), while exactly the same rogue's gallery of Final Fantasy and Disney characters as were found in KH also appear in Chain of Memories. This is a little disappointing, in ways, but it would have been quite hard for the developers to do otherwise given the way the plot of the game is developed.

Phone - check; wallet - check; Keyblade?

The biggest change to the game is the introduction of cards, which are important for two reasons. Firstly, you use "world cards" to effectively construct the world that you move through. That may sound complex, but it's not really - all these cards do is determine whether the largely pre-set rooms you move through are full of weak enemies, strong enemies, shops or even save points. You pick up these cards from battle, and every time you reach a door, you select a card to decide the nature of the room that lies on the other side. However, the game is still essentially linear, and each zone features a number of special doors which can only be opened with specific cards - which boils down to you having to pass through each of these doors in the correct order, as behind each one lies a key section of plot.

An entirely different set of cards form the basis of the combat system, which takes the slightly unusual approach of being real-time but still based on cards. At first, the combat is disappointingly simple - your deck of cards consists entirely of simple physical attacks, and you'll spend most of the first zone in the game just running around hammering the attack button. There's some basic strategy here, as each card is numbered from zero to nine, and when your enemy plays a card at the same time, the higher numbered card "wins", but in reality combat is normally too fast to pay much attention to this. Thankfully, things start to get a lot more interesting fairly soon, as the game introduces a number of special attack and magic cards, and most importantly, the concept of combining cards for more powerful attacks rather than just firing them off one by one.

The card combining system is at the heart of what makes Chain of Memories' combat so much more entertaining than it was in the original Kingdom Hearts. You shuffle through your deck with the left and right triggers, and can use a single card (an attack, a heal, whatever) by pressing A. However, pull both triggers and you add the card to a pile at the top of the screen instead, where you can store up to three cards, and then use them all at once by pulling both triggers again. Normally, this just executes the three moves in order, but as you progress through the game, you'll find that certain combinations of cards create special attacks, or powered up versions of the original spell - such as using three Fire cards to create a powerful Firaga attack, or three physical attack cards with face numbers adding up to a certain total to perform a sliding tackle.

Of course, it's normally difficult to create these combos while you're running around in a battle trying not to get smacked down by the shadowy Heartless, so a major element of the game involves arranging your deck of cards so that the right cards are next to each other and you can just tap buttons to fire off your best attacks. That element is a lot more fun than it sounds, with a real puzzle game feel to it, but it's something potential players should bear in mind - this is certainly a more cerebral game than the button mashing fest that was the original Kingdom Hearts.