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Hello hello everyone, and welcome to another A Month of Keys review!

In this review, I'll be reviewing both the original Gameboy Advance title, as well as the Playstation 2 remake/PS3 & 4 remaster known as RE: Chain of Memories.  As you'd expect, there's some pretty significant changes between the two including the addition of voice acting and the normal 3D Kingdom Hearts style in the PS2 version as opposed to the top down text-only style of the GBA version.  Which is better?  Well, that's what we're going to talk about in this review.



Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is a tricky game for people.  On the one hand, it's Kingdom Hearts and has a story going for it.  It looks the part and sounds the part, and even has a secondary episode when you beat the normal story.  On the other hand, the gameplay is quite a bit different experience with the addition of "Cards" that dictate every move you can make.  While it has a story, many people see it as a skippable side-story that has little to do with the series and is mainly just fluff and filler...despite the story tying in deeply with the next numbered title, Kingdom Hearts II.  Much like Dream Drop Distance being a bridge between II and III, Chain of Memories was the first Kingdom Hearts title to bridge between the first and second game (358/2 Days being the other on the flip-side of things).

It's a title that probably suffered a little less praise from people because of the altered gaming mechanics and the considered "throw-away" story, but is it worth the little praise it gets?

Well, yes and no.

Story
As shown in the end of Kingdom Hearts, the trio of Donald, Goofy, and Sora are walking down a dirt road along the middle of nowhere, hoping to find where to go next, only finding a destination when they see Pluto carrying a letter with the king's seal, and proceed to give chase.  Stopping for the night to rest, Sora is awakened by a mysterious figure in a black cloak who tells him that ahead is something he needs (and ominously says that to find it, he must lose something dear), which he proceeds to follow and come across a mysterious castle.  When inside the castle, he is given a card by the mysterious figure and told to work out the mysteries of Castle Oblivion to find someone dear to him, though he may lose someone in the process.  So Sora and crew decide to take up the mysterious figure on his challenge and make their way through the castle.  But what will happen to Sora when he reaches the end?

So, this game tries to keep it vague on what it is that Sora "loses" as he makes his way to the castle until an early point on when the characters figure it out...but the game itself makes it blatantly obvious right within the title to start with: his memories.  Considering the game is titled "Chain of Memories," the bit in the Castle is Donald forgetting his magic, and all of the cards Sora is given are "crafted" from his memories, you know what the game is going for: the further Sora gets, and more he forgets.

However, despite how incredibly obvious it is what is happening to Sora as he goes further into the castle, I will give the game props as to exactly how this is accomplished.  I'll also give props for how the game handles the villains, making them seem as if they're helping Sora at first, even though the player can tell from a glance that they're bad at the start, and that they have some alterior motives for what they're doing.

Through Sora's journey, he'll go through familiar worlds from the first game, revisiting all of his previous places (except Deep Jungle, which I mentioned was never revisited except through a 3-5 second video clip in Kingdom Hearts II).  The stories for each world are a bit different than in the first game, making them a bit more fresh despite them being new worlds.  Barring the first world, they're also fresh in the sense that Sora and crew are under the impression that it's their first time going through that world since they have no memory of it, which is a mix of both kind of cliche (the whole memory-wipe thing in a "sequel" always annoys me), but also kind of interesting since the whole game is about memories, rather than it being some side thing that doesn't amount to much.

The secondary episode is also pretty great too, giving some great insight as to what happened with another character that we spent a lot of time with in the first game.  We got to learn a huge amount as to what happened with them after the first game, and how they've been dealing with the aftermath of what happened to them during the events from the first game.  It's kind of neat because whereas Sora's is kind of about him pushing through the castle to find something that was promised to him, the secondary story is more about getting through the castle and finding answers about the character, and more about coming to terms with who they are.  It was actually kind of a nice counterpiece to Sora's adventure, and made me want to explore that character a bit more (and was happy when we got to in a later title).

Overall, despite it being a "side" game, I thought the story was pretty nicely handled.  It wasn't an extravagant and gigantic sequel like Kingdom Hearts II was and kept the story pretty simple and small...but you know what? Small simple stories devoted to exploring a character and their motivations are great too.  Not to mention, as I stated it also introduced some characters (as well as a place) from the next game after it, which was also pretty cool to see it sort of "bridging" the first and second game.

Gameplay
Alright, so at a small glance the gameplay when it comes to fighting is somewhat similar.  You run up and attack enemies with your keyblade, you can block, use magic, use items, and summon different people/beings to help you out.

Now, here's where things get really complicated:
Each battle is treated like a normal random battle: rather than attacking enemies in real time like the last game, you're taken to another screen to fight.  This happens both in the regular GBA as well as the remade PS2 title.

Battle actions are completely dictated by cards.  You have your keyblade cards, item cards, magic cards, Friend cards, and summon cards.  Every card is numbered 0-9.  0 Will block and cancel any attack, but is also easily countered since it has no value. A higher value card will always cancel out a lower value card (IE 9 will always cancel out 8 ), but an enemy can immediately attack with a higher value card (or a 0 card) to cancel you out.

You can also do combos and sleights.  Combos are exactly what that sounds like: grabbing 3 cards of varying values and combining them to make a higher value (IE three 9 cards making a total value of 27).  You can do this with any of the cards, such as attacking twice with a keyblade and using a potion to reload your attack cards.  Sleights are skills or higher magical/summon spells that you can learn by making specific combos.  Higher magic/summons/Friend summons, for instance, can be used by making a combo of two to three of the same card (such as using Fira with a combination of two Fire cards).  You can also make combinations with a summon followed by two specific magic/attack cards for a different summon attack, such as combining a Mushu card with two Fire cards to cast Mega Flare.  Finally, you can combine three different keyblades hitting a specific value area to unleash one of the keyblade skills, such as combining 3 identical keyblade cards with a value of 10-15 total to use Sliding Dash.  Keyblade sleights, however, cannot be learned until you hit a certain level...whereas most magic and summon/Friend sleights are immediate if you have the right cards (with a few exceptions).

Now, that alone makes battles difficult because you have to strategize pretty well.  But there's another wrinkle that can alter battles in the form of map cards.

Throughout your journey in the different worlds, Kingdom Hearts: CoM acts as a sort of...well, it's actually a little hard to explain.  You start off in a room of enemies with every new world that you enter.  You can choose to defeat them or not, it's entirely up to you.  Every battle you fight, however, nets you HP and EXP to pick up.  On top of that, defeating the last enemy in every battle also nets you a map card.  In the starting room, you'll notice a closed door or two (or three in some cases).  To open the door, you must choose between your collection of map cards and use it, which will open the door.

However, it's not as easy as it sounds.  Much like your battle cards have various types, your map cards fall into the same category.  You have red, green, and blue map cards.  Whenever you make it through a story room or fight a boss/mini boss, you get a Yellow map card that lets you progress forward when you hit the room that requires it.  There's also a unique yellow map card that opens the door to a room with various rewards...although this card can be difficult to net.

Doors will require different things to open them.  Some may have a blue frame as well as a number to indicate that the card has to be Bounty Map card, some will have really high numbers so you have to use multiple cards, and the important ones will have the actual card showing to let you know that it requires a specific yellow card.

The map cards themselves will affect what is in the room depending on what card you use.  Moment's Respite, for example, will turn the next room into a Save Room...whereas Bottomless Darkness will throw in countless heartless in a dark setting.

Each card has their perks and their downfalls.  Using too many quiet map cards, for example, won't net you any EXP since you're avoiding battles, which will make boss battles that much tougher (and they do get tough in this game).  Ones like Premium Rewards, however, will give you battles but will also turn a random card into a Premium card each time you win...which is both good and bad.  On the good side, they cost less Card Points to use, whereas on the bad side, they can't be reloaded in battle if they're the first card used in a combo much like the regular cards...however unlike the regular cards which can be brought back with the use of an ether/elixir, premium cards that are used this way remain unusable for the rest of the battle.

Still with me?

So throughout the game, your card set will be greatly impacted by your total Card Points.  Some cards (such as better Keyblades than your current one as well as higher values) will cost more CP than others.  The more you level up, the higher your CP gets so that you can equip bigger and better cards.  If you're like me and are terrible with coming up with a good set, you can have the game do it for you.  It's always suggested to have at least 3 Cures and a card-reloading card on there such as an Ether/Mega Ether, Potion/High Potion/Mega Potion, or most important an Elixir/Megalixir.  Keep in mind: Potions and Ethers can only reset reloadable Attack and Magic cards respectively, whereas High Potions and Mega Ethers can reset even the unreloadable ones.  Elixirs will reset all of your cards that you may have used up in battle, whereas Megalixirs will restore everything and reset your reload counter.

As you use actions in battle, you'll lose access to more and more cards until you'll have none.  This is where your reload counter comes in, and you'll "Call" your cards back to you.  Every card that is reloadable will be refilled and reusable...but every time you do this, your reload counter goes up by one, making you vulnerable for longer while you reset your cards.  This is why having at least one or more Elixirs can be necessary, since it'll reload everything including the normally unreloadable cards in a mere second.

So, on that note I'll say that there is actually a monumental difference in how everything translates between the GBA and PS2 version.  In the GBA version, your battlefield is small since it's more of a side view style, even though you can run around anywhere you please and do your thing.  But in this respect, battles are a bit easier since you actually have a bit less ground to cover and thus your enemies are a bit closer in reach.

In the PS2 game, think of how big the boss areas were.  Now, in RE: Chain of Memories, they're roughly the same size.  Oogie Boogie's battle, for instance, is still the big roulette wheel from the original Kingdom Hearts, but the setup is the same as the CoM game where he has gates closed off, and the strategy for getting them down is the same.

So in a way, the PS2 battles can be a bit more difficult especially with bosses since their way of fighting is the same, but there's a bigger space to work with.

However, each battle also has a unique green card known as the Gimmick Card that, when triggered, alters the battlefield in your favor for a short time (for instance, with the Monstro boss it turns the rotating platforms into  a large single platform, while in RE:CoM it makes the stomach acid disappear so either way you don't take damage for a short duration).

Outside of battle, you can use Moogle room map cards to shop with the right Moogle points.  With moogle points, you can buy random card packs (Attack/Magic/Item/Assorted) of different strengths (Leaf = basic, band = okay, belt = better, moogle = best).  The cards you get will be completely random to the type of pack that you buy, but the quality will be dictated by the type mentioned above in parentheses.  Leaf might net you basic keyblade cards, or low value items/magic ...whereas Moogle might net you Oblivion Keyblade, higher value summon/item cards, and the like.

On top of that, there are always objects in every room that you can hit, which will net you HP or Moogle Points.

Finally, there's the secondary post-game episode known as Reverse/Rebirth, which I was mentioning earlier in the story section.  In this episode, you're going through the worlds again, with some caveats:

*The first caveat is that your keyblade is what you're stuck with.  There's no upgrades and you can't choose your deck, though you can still level up important things.  With Sora, you could choose to level up his HP or his CP depending on what you wanted to establish more.  In Reverse/Rebirth, you can level up either your HP, Dark Points (DP), or Attack...meaning though you can't choose your cards, you'll still be able to deal higher damage.

*There is no Moogle Shop in Reverse/Rebirth.  You get no moogle points to buy better cards, because again...you're stuck with what you get.  With each new world you visit, your deck automatically changes on its own to make you really have to strategize without the luxury of being able to switch out your deck.

*While there is overall story, there's less in-world story.  Aside from the first world and last couple, you won't be progressing through multiple doors for

*There is an unlocked power known as Dark Power, where you'll call upon darkness to help you out for a period of time (dictated by the amount of DP you have).  This is triggered when your DP meter hits its peak by taking damage or having your attacks blocked, and grants you access to some great Dark Sleights.

*You don't get access to any of the Friend cards that Sora has, instead only getting access to one specific one throughout (which is actually a really great card).

As well as other factors.  Overall, it's meant to be a slightly more difficult runthrough since you don't have the ability to pick your own cards and have to strategize more with how you level yourself.

In general, the gameplay is simple at a glance, but a bit complex once you get into the card side.  On the one hand, it's kinda neat to have that added difficulty in, especially since even in normal mode it can be pretty tricky (I can only imagine how bad Proud Mode is, yikes).  On the flipside, it's also sort of a weird unneeded difficulty addition to pad the game out and make it seem more interesting since the story surrounding it is so small, though I did love the inclusion of the secondary post-game story of Reverse/Rebirth.  All in all, it's a mixed bag.

Graphics
This is another hit/miss area which one game gets right in one aspect, the other gets right in another.

First off, I was surprised to see them pull off getting not just one, not just two, but at least 4 normal PS2-style cutscenes within the game.  And I don't even mean just rehashes of the previous game...they're all original cutscenes that would (and did when they remade them) translate well into the PS2 style.  I was actually pretty impressed with the amount they were able to toss in when it came to the GBA version, since I know that had to have pushed the limits of what the GBA itself could take.

At the same time, I also had no problem with the in-game graphics.  They were vibrant and fun, and still screamed Kingdom Hearts to me despite it being a "downgrade" of quality on a handheld compared to the first title.  But that didn't bother me, and I was really enjoying going through the game the first time on the GBA.

This is also in part because of the fact that since the talking was set to character-portrait text boxes, they had more freedoms when it came to expressions.  Characters could look visibly happy, sad, angry, shocked, or basically anything else because they had the freedom to do so with un-vocalized character portraits whose mouths "moved" as the text appeared.  I was actually really loving seeing all of the different expressions to follow the text, especially since it varied so much in Kingdom Hearts I depending on if they were doing the dead-eyed fish-speak faces or the actual moving-mouth-with-words-accurately faces.







And on that note, that was one thing that bothered me with the Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories title on the later consoles.  First off, they did a beautiful job upping the quality of everything to fit the PS2 title...though they also already had most of the assets from the first game, so I know it didn't take a huge amount of effort outside of creating Castle Oblivion (I'd say Twilight Town as well, but they had already finished Kingdom Hearts II by this time).  I think the only part that took more effort was revamping the look of each world to fit CoM's style of it being different "rooms," with the story scenes being direct areas from the original game.







However, as gorgeous as everything looked...absolutely no characters outside of Castle Oblivion were allowed to have any expressions.  For some baffling reason, they made the choice to include voice acting in Castle Oblivion only.   This means that in all of the other worlds, it's limited to text only...but the moment you step out of one of the worlds and back into Castle Oblivion, it's back to voice.

But what made that more annoying was that everyone talking in the worlds outside of Castle oblivion had that one blank dead-eyed fish-blub expression when they talked...like they were basically an afterthought because "Oh yeah, they were in the game too."  What adds to that baffling nature is that the bosses you fight in some of the worlds still use their voice bits in battle (which, yeah, you know they just recycled them from the original game).



So style wise, the PS2 version was definitely better because everything looked as great as the first game, and Castle Oblivion was gorgeous.  On the flipside, the GBA version actually felt a bit more lively because the characters were allowed to all have expressions and be surprised/angry/happy at things, rather than just a small select few getting that privilege.  But let's move on to...

Music
Okay, for what it's worth I thought the GBA version's soundtrack was fine.  Was it fantastic like KH1? Well, no...but you can't really bust out the orchestra and make some epic studio quality music with the GBA since, again, it's a limited device.  But for what they had, I thought it was great.  I loved the new tracks, and I loved the new version of the Destiny Islands theme.  Some of the boss music was great, and overall I had a good time.

That being said, the retouched soundtrack for RE: CoM completely blew it out of the water.  Everything sounded monumentally better since it was allowed to have the quality to it that it deserved.  Castle Oblivion and the reworked Destiny Islands theme sounded monumentally better, and I loved all of the revamped versions of the familiar world songs in this version.  Kingdom Hearts II still had some of my more favorite version of a few of the songs, but RE: CoM did excellent regardless.

Chain of Memories OST (GBA version)

RE: Chain of Memories OST (PS2-4 version) 42:38 for the 13th Floor/Castle Oblivion piece)

Sounds/Voices
I actually had no issues with the sound in either version, and I believe RE: CoM even used some of the sounds from KH2, which I actually liked.

Voices for the GBA were non-existent if I recall.

Voices in the PS2 version were minimal, but great...for the most part.  I loved a lot of the new voices for organization members that we didn't get to hear before, such as Vexen and Larxene.  Marluxia was also a great voice, and it was nice seeing a lot of the new cutscenes where the characters had a chance to actually be vocal.

That being said, there's reasons why it was a mistake waiting until after Kingdom Hearts II was released to make this in the regular PS2 KH style, rather than it being something that was done at the start.  One of the main reasons is Haley Joel Osment.

In Kingdom Hearts, it was obvious that HJM was still a kid, sounding like just a slightly deeper version of his kid AI/Sixth Sense voice.  However, in Kingdom Hearts II, HJM was going through puberty, and his voice was significantly different since he sounded like an adult/teenager.  It was a bit unexpected, but Kingdom Hearts II at least gave the excuse that he was asleep for a year, so it would make sense that Sora's voice could change within that time since he was also at that age where he would have been going through the same change.  Not to mention, they changed Sora's look just enough to where he even looked like he'd gotten older, so the voice matched the look as well.

RE: Chain of Memories didn't have those luxuries.  Both the original and RE versions take place almost immediately after the first game.  In the end of the original game when they run into Pluto, they're all talking to each other and then Sora talks to Pluto, supporting that it happens directly after since his voice is the same.

So opening up RE: Chain of Memories with a suddenly teenage-sounding Sora in his boy-Sora character style threw me off heavily.  He looked like he was 11-12 and sounded like he was 15-16, like his voice had gone through puberty while his body was like "nah, I'm cool."

I also (still) had a difficult time with Ansem's new voice actor.  He was a tough one to take in Kingdom Hearts II (since I felt like Billy Zane did a monumental job), and his bits in RE: CoM still sounded off to me, though that may just be me.

Everyone else sounded great though, no complaints there for the most part.  I just wish that they'd let all of the other characters in the other worlds be able to talk as well outside of just text.

Replayability
This is a hit or a miss.  On the one hand, there's a lot going for this game.  There's a lot of cards to collect and journal entries to fill, a lot of different enemies to fight, and an entire secondary mode once you beat the first story.

On the flipside, you may only find yourself playing through the story just to play Reverse/Rebirth and then stopping there.  The game is otherwise frustrating at parts to where you might be put off from wanting to play through both modes again after you've beat them the first time.  But that's just me, as I know there are other people that enjoy the challenge and will find ways to continue to challenge themselves...and there's definitely many ways to do so in this game.

Overall
Is it great? No.  Is it terrible? No.  If anything, it's simply okay.  The story for both episodes is pretty small and easily skippable if you don't mind wondering who the new baddies in KH2 are or who the young blonde girl is.  Likewise, later in the game it even makes allusions to things in KH2, but again it's nothing significant that you can't look up on Youtube.

Overall, the story is fine, the soundtrack is fine (the ps2-4 soundtrack being phenomenal), and the gameplay is fine...but can be frustrating/challenging at points to where it could be offputting for people.  I do kind of recommend it because of the way it bridges to KH2, and because of how it does explore Sora's character a bit more, and definitely dives into some great character exploration for the secondary character in Reverse/Rebirth.  It's a smaller game thrown into a very fluffed up bigger setting, but I do think it's worth at least one playthrough despite it being a "side/filler" game.