Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories combined 2d brawler, RPG, playing card games and deckbuilding. The insistence on rehashing/revising KH1's settings isn't terribly interesting, but the combat easily stands above the rest, merging the intricate rules of card games with the speed of action games (even if it devolves into combo abuse later on). Despite this, the whole experience feels a little too samey overall, and its varied and customizable - if a little unpredictable battle system can't quite shake up the monotony.

Let's be honest, hardly anybody played this when it first came out and most didn't know it existed until after the opening of Kingdom Hearts 2 nobody knew what was going on and later found out there was a Gameboy game bridging the 2 main games together. To be honest the story is pretty basic, it takes place after the first game and you find some mysterious castle and the people in the castle basically steal Sora's memories and he is caught in between a conflict with the Organization XIII members who would be the main villains of the 2nd game. That's about it as far as story goes, theres also a side story for Riku who confronts the darkness inside him but his story really doesn't add much.

Its really just a silly card game where you draw cards and fight enemies by having a card number that is higher than the enemies. You can combo cards together to chain attacks and do special moves, as well as use them to summon or heal. It really is a game that is based around a gimmick combat system, and that's really what drags it down. I just want full control and to hit enemies when I press attack, not have some random probability based card game where I may or may not hit the enemy based on what cards they use. On top of this the game's maps are based around grids where you use cards to create new rooms and you can choose what type of room you create. Its really weird and the problem is there is little variety. Near the end the levels just drag out and I just want to finally reach the boss and get to the next part of the game. To be honest, this may be just a hair better than the PS2 remake but it still has many issues and is more tedious than fun. The story is kind of silly as well, but its Kingdom Hearts so I at least could forgive it somewhat. The only thing I can praise this game for is the final boss is somewhat of a badass but that doesn't really fix that the game is more of a chore and is basically Square attempting to make a quick buck by making a game that was entirely unnecessary but deciding it was needed to connect the 2 main games and putting it on a handheld console most people who played the original didn't own.