Game of the Day: Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories

Hello and welcome to day 5 of my "Game of the Day" feature. It is rather remarkable to find myself in a situation where there are so many triple "A" titles in need of some recognition. It is a good situation, of that there is little doubt, but a very brutal situation on my wallet.

Today I find myself writing about another fantastic portable game to be coming out soon, Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories.

My love towards the original Kingdom Hearts came to me as something of a surprise. Sure, it was a game developed by amazing producer Square Enix (Square at the time I believe), but I mean how amazing could a game be that integrated characters from the Final Fantasy (Yay!) universe with the Disney universe (WTF???).

Thankfully, it ended up being a brilliant piece of work. While people may have complained (and rightfully so) about an annoying camera and the button mashing battle system, the unique storyline and lovable characters (not to mention the brilliant voice acting and beautiful graphics) really came together to form one amazing experience.

Here we are a couple of years later and we have not one, but two sequels on the horizon; surprisingly, the first of which is going to be released on the GBA.

The original KH looked brilliant on the PS2 and respectfully the GBA version looks beautiful compared to almost anything else on Nintendo's little handheld. Sporting lush animation, colorful characters and even cutscenes (!), KH for the GBA looks set to raise the bar on how games can look on the GBA.

Chain of Memories' storyline is set to take place directly after the first game's plot and looks to feature all of your old favorites. Characters from Final Fantasy, Disney and of course unique characters like Sora all make a return appearance.

As far as gameplay goes, it looks as though Chain of Memories is going to try something new. Now, most people have an inherent fear of card based RPGs but in Chain of Memories the card feature actually looks as though it could be very cool. Every attack seems to be synced onto cards so it should be interesting to see how a pure action RPG can switch over to card based and still keep the action intense.

All in all Chain of Memories looks to be ready to set new standards by which portable RPGs are gauged by. I for one am immensly curious to see what became of Sora after his first adventure and so Chain of Memories may very well be the latest, greatest thing for my GBA!

Screens (Courtesy of 1up)

Lee Babin | 11.22.2004 [return]

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