Kingdom Hearts is a series of action role-playing games developed and published by Square Enix. It is a collaboration between Square Enix and Disney and is under the direction of Tetsuya Nomura, a longtime Square Enix employee who is known for working on final fantasy vii. Kingdom Hearts is a crossover between Square Enix and Disney based in a fictional universe. The main character Sora, and his friends Donald Duck and Goofy journey around various Disney , Pixar and originally designed worlds.They battle the heartless and various creatures of darkness in order to save the world from the darkness. Throughout their Journey they make new friends along the way, characters from the disney world they visit and various final fantasy heroes. The series consists of thirteen games , and with the release of Kingdom hearts III in 2019 and The Remind DLC 2020, the game finaly concluded it's first saga known as the Xehanort Dark arc. After the events of the Remind DLC (2020), the game released Kingdom hearts Melody of memory which prepared th stage for the next game. In 2022 Kingdom hearts 4 was revealed alongside a new app game . The series are well received from the public although sometimes its beeing critisize for its bizzare story telling. The main issue of the series was the fact that all the games add to one story, however they re split to multiple platoforms such as Ps2,psp,ps4,Android,gba and the Ds. Square Enix though realised the mess they made and the remastered the games and released them as collections for ps4 and xbox. A wide variety of related merchandise has been released along with the games, including Cds with the soundtracks of the series,multiple figurines,plushies,clothing ,companion books(guides,artbooks), light novels, a collectible card game, manga series(by Akira Amano) and potentially an upcoming TV series.
The story of the game picks up right where the first game finished. Sora Donald and Goofy being located in the middle of an open field. Sora meets a hooded person who speaks with riddles implying that he ll need something along the way but in order to achieve it he ll have to lose something else. Before Sora has time to ask questions the hooded figure leaves leaving the hero puzzled. The heroes set
on their journey to find king Mickey and Riku and they come across a castle known as Castle Oblivion. The heroes thikning that they ll find answers or even better their friends, walk inside the castle whose door closes locking them inside. The Hooded figure appears yet again to comfort the heroes. Donal tries to cast his magic on him just to find out he couldnt. The figure explains how inside
the castle the heroes memories will seem to fade away and stuff like their magical abilities will soon be forgotten. The deeper they proceed inside the castle the more memories they ll lose but, some new ones will be discovered. The hooded figure then proceeds to create a deck of cards made by the heroes' memories and hands them to Sora.
Unlike the original Kingdom Hearts game which was action adventure RPG with real time combat, the game combined that with a collectable card game. As mentioned in the story section, once Sora enter Castle Oblivion he was given a deck based on his memories.Each card is locked with a particular action,mellee attack spell etc. The player moves around in a 3D space and in order to eneter battle phase the player has to walk towards
enemy heartless and interact with them or simply walk towards then and wait for the battle sequence to be triggered. When Sora or Riku enters a battle phase, the players re free to walk around in the 3D(2D) Space.
On the bottom left, the player's deck/ hand appears for the player to pick cards. Both the enemy and the player can manuver through their cards and select which one to play. Once the selection is made the two selected options will clash. The players whose card or cards make for the higher value will proceed to attack while the cards with the lowest result will break. The broken cards will not follow their actions as their
attack was prevented. In the case of a draw, both cards break and the game proceed without any further actions. If a player plays a card of higher value that requires charge and the other plays a lower card the lower card will simply be ignored. The card with the value of 0 is an exeption, as 0 is prosumably one of the most powered cards that can stop attacks despite their value. The player can combine cards to create a
line of combo attacks. Although this is a nice way for Sora to build up a high value combo it comes with the price. The price being that the first card used in the combo stuck will be removed from the players deck for the rest of the specific encounter. Running out of cards can be vital as the player won't be able to defend themselves. Enemies can also combined their attacks which can allow them to deal significant damage
to the player but also comes with the price of them losing cards.
Each time that the enemies are defeated they drop experience points that can help Sora level up. When Sora levels up, 1 of 3 options will increase.
Unlike the previous games Chain of memories' worlds are very different. First things first there are two version. The Gba version, displays the beloved disney and original worlds in a nice 8-bit style. The wolds are small boxes and they re interconnected by doors that the player will have to open. The music of the game is honestly really good as the 8-bit version of songs are really chill
and sound very good in the hand held.
The ReChain of Memories game which was the remastered borrowed alot of textures and animations from the original game Kingdom hearts 1. The game follows the same logic where the heroes move inside small interconnected boxes and open doors left and right in order to discover whats behind them. Some doors hide enemies , other doors have alot of loot inside boxes and others have save points.
Yet again all the worlds are very similar to the first game however they re smaller and have way less space for the players to discover. This is because the worlds are based from Sora's memories and thus they wont look as detailed as their original counter parts. Furthermore, the locations dont have many hidden secrets and re very straight forwards. A small minimap can be seen top right that
indicates where the player's can explore.
Overall Kingdom hearts Chain of memories was game that came up with possitive reviews but began the fact that important lore pieces can be found in different consoles. The game was very different than kingdom hearts 1, not only because it was originally on the Game boy advance but because it changed the combat from real time combat into a real time combat based on cards. The game till this day is the only game that used the cards as it's main combat mechanic. The story of kingdom hearts ReChain of Memories is very interesting with unique character moments that became iconic for the series and characters who made a comeback in later entries . The combat of the game was very unique, simple and vastly different from any other entry of the series. The graphics and music are absolutely on point in any version of the game, both the 8bit Gba style and the remaster ps2/3/4 versions. The maps are very well design in both 8 bit and in game graphics. The game is mainly voice acted in the remaster versions as the ps2 could handle them but also has a few on it's gba counter part. Cutscenes exist in both games where yet again the ps2 has significally more. It should also be noted how this is the first game where another character is playable other than Sora and that is Riku. Although the gameplay is still based on the card system, Riku's animations are vastly different than Sora's. The game's remaster version was critisized by a few people for making the game a bit hard to play in comparison to the Gba version as the 3D space made it harder than the old 2D version. Anyone whishing to play the game might as well buy any of the Bundles (Story so far/All in one) in order to enjoy the game in their console of preference, unless they wish to experience the original game in which they should look for the Gba version.