tommy_lop's Full Review: Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories for Game Boy Adv...
I got Kingdom Hearts chains of memory when it came out, and I just beat it yesterday, to say that the new Kingdom Hearts isn’t has engaging has it's PS2 counterparts is true. But if your looking for an RPG for the GBA, or something to hold you till KH 2 comes out this might be worth a pick up.
Story.
Sora manage to defeat the person behind the darkness destroying world's Ansem. But he had to seal his best friend Riku and King Mickey behind the doors to Kingdom Hearts. But the last words that Mickey gave him that there will be always a door to the light has given him hopes. And after chasing after Pluto who is holding a note from the King they wind up to a strange castle. A hooded man greets them saying that they will find something that they have lost in Castle Oblivion. The castles creates rooms from peoples memories (in this cases stages from the original KH), and the further one climbs up the castle towers the more memories one looses. The farther Sora, Donald, and Goofy go the more they forget. But Sora starts to remember a girl that he once knew from a long time ago. Who is she and why didn’t he remember just start to remember her. And what's with the group with hoods really up to.
The stages are all of course from the original KH, but there are a few twists and turns in this one, so don't think everything will go the way it went in the original. And on that note for all you Nintendo fans just waiting to jump into the world of KH, stop and see if you can't borrow a friends PS2 and copy of the game. There are several instances where there is dialog that talks about things that happen in the last game that don't reoccur even when you reach the level that it happen on in this game. Example Goofy tires to recall going through a castle with a bunch of gears in it, and other lines might confuse people new to the KH series.
Graphics.
The characters from the KH of the PS2 have been shrunk down to the GBA perfectly. The characters are large and well animated, they also made sure they kept subtle movements like a certain walk or jump a character does to match it's PS2 counter part. The stages also have familiar Disney style surroundings. In other words the graphics in this game give the same amount of that Disney feel has the PS2 did. While it doesn’t quite put you in the Disney world has the PS2 game did it comes darn close.
There are also the FMV scenes that look like they come from the PS2, these are great but they are just a bit blurry and hard to see, especially on the GBA player.
Sound.
The sound is also great we get a lot of miniaturized versions of the songs from the original KH. Everything from Traverse Town theme, to under the sea, to Winnie the Pooh, and of course Simple and Clean are all done great on the GBA.
Gameplay.
Ok the gameplay is a bit different from the original KH it's done by a card battling system. In each room that heartless appear Sora can see them if he get's hit by them he goes into a battle and has to use cards rather then the regular attacks he could do in the original KH. There are keyblade cards for regular attack, spell cards, and summon cards that go into his deck. Each card has a number on it for the power of the move. If the enemy plays a card with a higher number Sora card is block and he's left stun for a moment. If Sora's card is stronger the enemy attack is blocked and Sora has an opportunity for to do some serious thrashing. When Soras out of cards he'll have to reload the deck by charging it up. The more he has to do it the longer it takes for him to get his cards back. Of course this is just the basics there are other things that Sora can do that make the combat more complicated. 0 cards are wild cards they can break any card that is played before them, but any card played after them will break them. These are great for blocking slights.
What are slights, well Sora will learn these has he goes along. Either by leveling up or by finding them in treasure chess. He can set aside 3 cards by using the L and R button, if they meet a certain range of numbers he can perform a special move. A combination equaling 6 will allow him to perform Ars Archanium. But he'll loose one of the cards he used to perform the slight for the rest of the battle, they won't come back even when he reloads the deck. If you use to many slights you'll run out of most of your cards and be severely weaken.
Summon and magic cards can be used has slights just by having more then one on your reserve list (3 blizzard cards will let you cast Blizzagga). This means having more then one magic card in your deck can make them even more powerful. Also to note that summon monsters are now useful because doing a 3 summon slight can have them break out powerful moves. There is also a new summon character has well, after you beat Cloud in Hercules stage you can summon him to do his Oni slash which pretty much decimates the entire field of weak monsters and does damage to bosses if it hits. Friend cards that drop down during certain stages (these are Donald, Goofy, and any allies they might have like Aladdin and Ariel), 2 of the same card in the reserve will let them trigger a minor super move. 3 will let them do a major one.
The bad guys use slights in order to perform there special moves to, so having a 0 cards can stop them from doing it. And since most bosses loose there cards when they perform a slight all you have to do to beat most of them is to just wait around until they wasted all there cards and just reload there decks and just wail on them from there. This doesn’t work all the time though and on later bosses don't loose there cards has fast which leads to frustrations galore. Which brings me to why this game isn’t has great has it's predecessor.
The card battling can get frustrating that the game cartridge was getting frequent flyer miles from be pitching it in anger. That was in till I figured out the 2nd defect in the whole card battling things, if you rack up enough deck points (points Sora get's while leveling up, the more DP you have means you can put more stronger cards in your deck) you can put nothing but 0 and 9's in your deck. Then it becomes just like the original KH of just button mashing which means you miss out on the cool stuff Squareenix was trying to do in there card battling system. On top of that the game is also bad about not telling you when the rules have changed because of a boss effect, even if it isn’t announced. There where a couple of bosses who took away my magic cards just my using them, it didn’t say at the bottom of there screen that they where using a special ability of any kind. Just using them meant they weren't put back in the deck when I reshuffled the cards. You know how frustrating it is when you think you have the upper hand on somebody then to have all your cure spells taken out of your deck. These flaws alone would have been caused only to give the game 3 stars if SquareEnix hadn’t thrown in KH reverse rebirth into the package has well.
After you beat chain of memories reverse rebirth begins and you control another character through castle oblivion. The instruction booklet tries to keep his appearance a secret but watching the TV commercials pretty much tells you who he is. I'll give you a clue his name begins with an R and it pretty much sounds like the name of a quirky blond girl off of FFX.
In his mode your only ally will be King Mickey and this "secret character" must travel through castle oblivion in order to escape from Ansem and the darkness in his heart. This mode is also different because like Sora's quest there are cards used, but there presorted for you. In other words when you walk into a world this new character will have a different deck then the last one. But at least that means you don't have to build your deck up to button mashing it's all ready build up for you.
final recommendation.
Great graphics, great sounds, but the game play isn’t quite up to the level that Square Enix was hoping it would be. The card system can be confusing and frustrating, especially when they don't tell you about any of the rule changes. But the fact that Square didn’t give you one good size quest but two gives me enough reason to give this game a 4 out of 5 rating.
Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories is the link between the first Kingdom Hearts and its much-anticipated sequel. After the events of the first Kingdom H...More at eBay
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