Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Even apart from its cinemas (which make use ofKingdom Hearts’ field graphics), Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories manages to look a fair bit like Kingdom Hearts. Sure, it uses sprites, but they’re the biggest, most colorful, and most articulate sprites I’ve ever seen. For that matter, Kingdom Hearts has always had an animated quality, so sprites fit very well. Simply put, the game looks good.

In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, cards control everything–the worlds you can visit, the content of those worlds, and your success in combat. The game flows like this–you first choose which world you’ll visit from among your world cards. Once there, you progress by opening doors with your stock of world cards. Within the unlocked rooms you will generally have to engage in combat. In battle you and the enemy move about, positioning yourselves so you can successfully cast cards. Cards are numbered from 0 to 9, where higher numbers can deflect the attacks of lower numbers. As well, up to three cards can be cast simultaneously, becoming harder to deflect and occasionally producing special attacks called sleights. There are downsides, of course. High number cards cost more to place in a deck, reducing the number of attacks you have before reloading. The first card used in a sleight cannot be reloaded until the next battle, so using sleights too often can leave you defenseless. Complex as all that sounds though, the mobility in battle and regularity of deflecting attacks combine to make Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories‘ play remarkably similar to Kingdom Hearts.

The story picks up where Kingdom Hearts left off, traveling down the roads through endless green fields. Beckoned by the promise of finding something dear, Sora follows the road into Castle Oblivion, a place where Sora’s own memories determine what he sees. But is any of it real, or is something toying with Sora’s very memories?

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is surprisingly short on extras, considering the volume of them in its predecessor. The game can be finished in as little as 12 hours, short even by handheld standards. However, the game does boast a second storyline with a different playable character, which adds another 5 or 6 hours. For that matter, because it puts far less emphasis on the individual worlds, the second story held my attention much more easily.