Going into my first ever play through of the Kingdom Hearts series I was warned about Chain of Memories and its remake, how even some of the biggest die hard fans of the series seem to flat-out hate it, well the gameplay at least. I thought to myself “well, I want to complete all of them for this review series, so I guess I’ll just grin and bear it” but, man… hate to say it, but I’m going to have to join the many and say I really disliked the gameplay here. I was just going to play the Re:CoM edition but struggled so I heard the GBA original was easier, and it was… to a point, but the core gameplay is just badly designed. I’m sure some who played it when they were young and “forced” themselves to get good at it because it was finally new Kingdom Hearts game will get angry at my review, but for me, now in 2024? This is not a fun experience…
Background:
Do I need to put “GBA” and “PS4” after each of these captions when the difference is so obvious? No. Will I anyway because that’s what I always do with mutli-platform reviews and I like consistency? Yes! (… GBA)
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was released exclusively for the Gameboy Advance on November 11th 2004 in Japan, December 7th 2004 in the US and May 6th 2005 for PAL regions. It’s a fully canon next entry in the series, so it’s odd to see it locked to the GBA of all places until its remake, a remake that wasn’t released until after Kingdom Hearts II which picks up from the cliffhanger of this game! Crazy.
Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories then was released on the PS2 as a “bonus disc” of sorts with the Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix re-release in Japan on March 29th 2007 before making it to North America as a stand-alone release on December 2nd 2008, oddly the original PS2 version was never released here in the UK/Europe. The game was later remastered and re-released in the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix collection on PS3 which came out on March 14th 2013 in Japan and everywhere else September that year (including PAL territories this time!). It was then later ported to the PS4, XBOX One, PC (but not Steam) and Switch (sort of…) in 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively (last minute edit: and Steam in June 2024!). It has been repackaged more times than I care to mention, but that’s the basic sum up!
Gameplay:
Of course it does… Fair play though, they really worked the gameplay mechanics into the story, it’s just a shame that the gameplay is a bit pants. (PS4)
Oh boy, this is going to take some explaining, sadly. You see Chain of Memories wanted to be both an action RPG and a Card RPG at the same time, and in doing so found it wasn’t possible… but did it anyway! No matter which game (the only real difference is 2D or 3D, the combat is mostly the same) you can move around and attack like in the other games but your attacks are judged by which cards you have in your card deck, and I mean EVERY attack, even regular swings of the keyblade are tied to cards, and if you run out of viable cards you have to wait and shuffle to get the deck back, all while trying to dodge attacks from enemies that don’t have that problem. To make matters worse the cards have a numerical value that means if your attack is of a lower number that the card your opponent is using to attack it won’t work and will vanish from your hand. It means you spend most of the time dodge rolling and fiddling about with your cards while you’re trying to attack. If the game was just like the regular game but what attacks you could do freely was set by a very limited set of cards that would work, if it was a classic turn-based card RPG where the attack and the number-cancelling aspect was something you could figure out during your turn it would work, but together this system doesn’t work at all, and most people who have completed either game have admitted to doing so because they found a cheap way of doing it by abusing unbalanced cards.
Awww, it looks like a really fun scrolling beat ’em up, but boy oh boy, it really isn’t! (GBA)
There are a few other systems in place too, like drawing three cards and then playing them together as a combo attack, being able to play cards featuring other characters that will have them appear and do an attack before vanishing again, and “Sleights”, which are powerful moves or stat boosts created by combining a specific set of three cards, but they have to be learned when you level up, as in in place of increasing your health or the amount of cards you can have in your deck, meaning you have a choice of what to do each level up, which is actually a neat system idea, surprisingly. Alongside all that you can pick up health during battle as well as cure yourself (if you have the card!) To top it all off though is moving from area to area involves even more card-based annoyance as you move between a floor of the main hub, “Castle Oblivion”, you have to play a card tied to a specific area and then in that area you have to move between rooms, what lies in each room depends on how you use the “room synthesis” system where you can use room cards that will decide what kind of enemies / items you encounter. The real kicker though is to progress through these areas you have to go through three or four very specific doors in rooms and if you don’t have the right card or cards with the right number you can’t go that way and have to grind for the right room cards with the right numbers on them to progress. Hell save point rooms are also tied to room cards you have to play!
*Sigh*… moving between levels really shouldn’t be this complicated… (PS4)
There are Moogle shops where you can by packs of cards and such, and that’s your lot really. When you complete the game… well, IF you complete the game there is a second mode where you control Riku and your deck is set to the specific one and you have to collect “dark points” to unlock Sleights. I did not experience this, so I’m only going by word of mouth here…
That’s it really. The original game’s 2D plain and less enemies made things easier for a while so I got further than I did in the HD 3D port, but I still couldn’t be bothered. I just gave up and watched all the HD cutscenes on YouTube, which I hate admitting but there you go. If the game was repetitive, or bad but in a broken way I would’ve continued (I’ve certainly completed games far worse than this) but this game was just frustrating and badly conceived so I just couldn’t stick with it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s competently made at its core, just what they competently made doesn’t work. Let’s hope this is the only roadblock I come across in this game series because I did end up enjoying the plot…
Graphics and Sound:
Cloud makes a rare 2D sprite appearance! (GBA)
The original GBA version has some really nice sprite work, both for the characters and the backgrounds, and some fun midi arrangements of most of the Kingdom Hearts 1 soundtrack. Obviously little to no voice acting, but it’s a GBA game, so that’s not a surprise. It does feature a new track when you fight members of Organisation XIII which was very catchy, and it’s non-midi version in Re:CoM was great too (which I obviously heard first, given how I played the games…) It was fun discovering that this theme is often talked about as being great, so I can harmlessly slip my popular opinion in with the majority there.
Re:Chain of Memories has the same up-scaled PS2 graphics as the Kingdom Hearts HD Final Mix, which given the cartoony and bright-coloured nature of the game it works really well. Most scenes are fully voiced as well, and the soundtrack is great. Again, I’m not saying either game are badly made, just the gameplay is badly conceived…
Story:
If you insist, I’m pretty sure I’ll be reminded of it the next time you appear though… (PS4)
A while after the events of Kingdom Hearts Sora, Donald and Goofy are lured into a massive castle known only as “Castle Oblivion” and immediately begin to forget things. A strange hooded figure informs them that as they move through the castle they’ll not only lose memories but also remember things long since lost. He also turns Sora’s memories into a pack of cards and generally mentions the words “cards” a lot, but we’ll ignore that gameplay mechanic-necessary stuff! As they progress through the castle we see that a young girl called Naminé is being held captive by other hooded figures (who are later simply called “The Organisation”, though I know from being around the gaming landscape for so long they’re actually “Organisation XIII”) some of whom appear before Sora and fight him, a few even losing their sort-of-lives. I say sort-of as they’re “Nobodies”, empty shells of people whose hearts were stolen and became Heartless, therefore they don’t have memories of their previous selves or any emotions (though they actually all show emotions and personality all the time, so… that last bit isn’t true really). Can’t remember if that’s revealed here or it was just my wiki-ing and curiosity from last year sticking in my head, but whatever! They’re good fun, mostly because the fact they’re all wearing generic black robes meant the character designer felt the need to go crazy with the hair styles and colour as well as their personalities to make up for it. Anyway, Sora begins to believe Naminé is a girl from his childhood that he holds dear, replacing Kairi in his mind, and when he finds out she’s being held captive he pushes forward to rescue her.
Meanwhile Riku and King Mickey also enter Castle Oblivion as the former is struggling with the darkness inside of him, and during an encounter with Organisation member Vexen Riku’s data is copied and a clone is created of him (that Sora encounters a few times) As Riku pushes on and takes out a few Organisation members himself he discovers that previous final boss Ansem is within him and trying to takeover his body through the power of Darkness (seriously, this game must have the world record for the “most times the word darkness is said in a piece of media”…) Riku eventually gets help from both Naminé and a mysterious man known only as DiZ, plus King Mickey as well. While these two plotlines are going on the Organisation members reveal that the head of Castle Oblivion faction, Marluxia, and most of the other members there are trying to overthrow their leader and takeover the Organisation themselves…
*Spoilers from here until the next bolded sentence*
Taking down one of the Organisation members, whose name will no doubt have an ‘X’ in it somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to look it up right now… (GBA)
Riku faces off and defeats his replica before summoning Ansem and defeating him, gaining control of his own heart and now setting a goal for himself to gain full control over the Darkness and the light inside of himself. Meanwhile Sora “reunites” with Naminé and defeats Marluxia but finds out about what Naminé had done to him. Sora being Sora though not only forgives her but when he, Donald and Goofy step into pods that will restore their lost memories at the expense of these latest ones he even hopes to still remember her so they can continue to be friends. That’s that! Oh, well, that and red-haired Organisation member Axel was a double agent and survived the attempted coup, but more on him in the games to come (presumably, due to the amount of memes and “Top insert number here” videos I’ve seen him in over the years…) I can see why people who didn’t have GBAs at the time would be
confused booting up Kingdom Hearts II and seeing Sora et al in a bunch of pods with some random girl looking after them…
*Spoilers End*
To be honest I weirdly really enjoyed the story here. I mean, a lot of it was revisiting Kingdom Hearts 1 locations and characters (apart from Tarzan, as apparently the license went to hell sometime after the first game) but for whatever reason about half way through watching the story I began to notice I actually cared about what was happening to Sora, even feeling sorry for him as he was losing the memories of the one he is closest with, which given in Kingdom Hearts 1 he was just “so naïve and nice it was annoying” this was quite the step up! I also really enjoyed the Organisation members and scenes, mostly because it was literally just over-designed haircuts and OTT personalities clashing with each other, which was a good laugh.
Thoughts Now:
Yay! Card Break from a regular enemy. Just seeing this screenshot has re-annoyed me… (PS4)
Kingdom Hearts: Chain (and Re:Chain) of Memories was a bit of a misfire, sadly, I can’t give it a 1 because it’s still competently made and presented, it’s just not been thought out enough. I understand if you were a big fan at the time you played through it and could do so again, as a Resident Evil fan since the very first game I know the feeling of easily being able to play objectively bad games because you love the franchise, but for me as an outsider I couldn’t get into Chain of Memories, the core mechanics are just poorly thought out. I did enjoy the story at least, at some point I found myself supporting and enjoying Sora as a character rather than just being annoyed by him, so that’s a relief given how many games are still on the list, but other than that and a few other fun story beats this was not a great experience. Thankfully most Kingdom Hearts fans point to this as the worst in the franchise (this or ReCoded anyway, but that’s a long ways off…) so I’m happy to continue on in the knowledge that I’ve gotten this “out of the way”.
Hogan Reviews 