Review by Alucard517

"Square-Enix at its best with the Game Boy"

One of the big hypes of last year was the sequel to the first Kingdom Hearts and so we have Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. Surprisingly they released it on Gameboy Advanced. The game certainly lives up to the hype they sent out for all of us KH fans. Sora and his friends Donald and Goofy go on another epic adventure to a castle called Castle Oblivion. What adventures are waiting for our great heroes??


The adventurers continue their search for King Mickey and best friend Riku. It begins with a cut scene at the end of the first KH. They are on there way to Kingdom Hearts when they run into a crossroad, where they run into a man in a black hooded cape. He tells the group that ahead of them is something that they want but to get it they need to lose something dear. After that all of the roads become one that lead to the castle. Upon entering the castle they go to the next floor they see. And with each floor is a new world. While entering the first world Goofy and Donald suddenly disappear. Sora comes to find that with his struggle through each world his friends have been turned into cards. He has to summon them into battle when he needs them. The catch to the castle is that each floor you head up you start to loose more and more of your memories. Maybe the hooded guy was trying to say something.

Game Play

The most noticeable thing about this game is the battles. Instead of running around freely and fleeing from battle you go to a separate battle screen when you run into your enemies. In the battles you use cards instead of just attacking, but its really unique cause you have attack cards along with magic, summons and cards to benefit your pleases. You have a deck of your choice, you can have it be all attack but that wouldn't be a good idea. It all really depends on your likings. A good combination would to have a couple summons, plenty of attack cards and some really potent healing items/magic cards into your deck to surpass the enemies you face.

You can also combine your cards with a total of 3 cards to unleash a more powerful attack. For instance if you have 2 cures instead of doing cure you will do a more potent heal called Cura, and with 3 Cure cards you will do the ultimate healing Curaga. When you level up you get to learn new attacks called “Sleights” witch will help you with later on battles.

Leveling up on this game is also different than the previous KH. When you level up you get three options of what you want to raise. You can choose to raise your HP so you can have more health. Also you can raise your CP witch will allow you to carry more cards in your deck, but you only can hold 99 cards in your deck and some cards require an extreme amount of cp to be in your deck. And lastly as I mentioned earlier you can learn a new Sleight so you can waste enemies later on. For example you can learn a move with the right combined cards that attacks and stuns all the enemies around you.

Lets not forget another important feature of the cards, the enemies also use cards and when they use a card when you are using yours if theirs is powerful enough they can break your card till the end of battle. The worst thing is in a boss battle and getting your cards broken, because you can't use them again till the end of battle. In your top left and the enemies top right there is a little icon that comes up when you add your cards together to perform a sleight attack. When you add your attack cards they have certain levels that can range from 0-9. So say you mix three cards together, a six a five and a four. That will total you up to 15 for a total attack number. Well if the enemy uses anything higher than that while you are attacking they will break your combination you had and you can't use that sleight again. BUT WAIT with an item card such as a potion you get a majority or all of your attack cards back. The only trick is landing it off to where the enemy doesn't break your card or ruin it so you can't use it again. Cause even if you get to use your charge ability to regain most of your cards, you will not get the potion back. So use your cards wisely.

Now for a last feature of the battles, you have 20 some cards in your deck. What happens when you use them all your out of cards and nothing to attack with. Nothing to fear because Sora's charging is here. There will be in your deck a card that is all black and has the number one on it. When you go to use this card it charges up and your character sits there while charging. You will regain a bit of your cards back if you can successfully charge it without dying. Its not that hard at all you just make sure you're not around a lot of enemies. There is also a trick to this charging ability too. If you charge once, the next time you go to charge it has a number 2 which means when the little red goes up to charge the first time, you have to charge it all the way up by going one more time. And after you use it to charge 2 times it goes to a max of 3 charges which sucks. Each time you use the charging ability it goes up slower when you charge it.


This is gameboys graphics at its best. As I mentioned at the beginning of the game they have the cut scene witch has ps2 graphics somehow. I am not sure how they managed that but the graphics looked really great. The games graphics are really good; they have like a Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced graphics to them. It kind of seems that the game was meant to be on the Gameboy. The Heartless look really good in 2-D and some look better than they did in the first game. The game will slow down every now and then because of s much going on. But else wise these graphics were meant for Kingdom Hearts.


The soundtrack is basically the same as before but with a good amount of added tracks. This game has some of the best music I have heard, along with the first game. Even though it sounds a little muffled with the Gameboy being as small as it is, you get the idea that they are keeping the same great music for the worlds. But the music really expresses the moods of the characters since there is no speaking in this game other than Sora going HWA UGH HAH every time you jump or attack. There is actually a song in the game they play that has lyrics so they are really going out of the gameboys ability for this game.

Overall Rating 9

This game lives up the hype that Square-Enix left for us. If they were to make another Kingdom Hearts game on here I would definitely be pleased. I would almost only recommend this game to fan boys like me but it is really something good to try out if you have a Gameboy. So if you want to try a new and interesting get this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10 | Originally Posted: 01/27/05


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