(TITLE IMAGE)
A slight introduction. (LARGER)
It was a while back when I was scrolling through some of my first posts in which I found this review, after comparing it to my other reviews I realized how lackluster it was in comparison. So I have no decided to rewrite the review after a proper analysis of the game itself, so without further ado here is my review of Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories.

My experience. (LARGER)
After loading the game up on the Visual Boy Advance, which I used to go full-screen, I was greeted with a phenomenal soothing and calming piece of music, this created a relaxing atmosphere, but alas I couldn't judge the game on the title screen alone, naturally I continued to begin the game. Once I had begun I was welcomed with a quaint little cut-scene, obviously being on a Game Boy Advance the cut-scene itself suffered from some minor pixelation but still feasibly easy to overlook, compared to other Game Boy Advance games at the time it was reasonable well done. The cut-scene starts with Sora and Co. roaming a grassy field somewhat carefree, this is abruptly ended as a dark-robed figure appears, this adds to the atmosphere as a sense of mystery is given to the game. The cut-scene the continues to alternate between flashbacks, good and dark until the game eventually begins, acting as a kind of catch-up from Kingdom hearts.

After the cut-scene you find yourself within a building, everything is well lit and is generally lightly colored. At this point you are informed about King Mickey, Mickey Mouse, being missing. If you were unaware of the previous game's plot then you may end up slightly confused, however this is a minor draw-back and shouldn't stop anyone playing. The game is in fact a direct sequel of the first, 1.5 to be specific and it continues directly from the events of the first game.
(Below this section is undefined)

In this case, you find yourself within Castle Oblivion, a mysterious castle kept by Lord Marluxia, a member of Organization XIII, this location is literally were the game takes place. Eventually I was hit by the first of many dialog boxes, the dialog itself wasn't the issue in this case, it was more about the obnoxious droning sound which was used every-time a new line of text came from a character. Although I quickly got used to the sound. Once again we are accosted by the robed figure seen within the cut-scene, although he spoke less aggravated it was more of a sense of danger that made me feel slightly weird. Donald, being slightly irrational believes the robed figure to be a heartless, in which he attempts to cast magic to no avail, the robe figure explains how everyone has forgotten every spell they have ever known upon entering Castle Oblivion. Some babble later you find out that yet another friend is missing, in this case Riku. Honestly, if there was less dialog at the beginning then maybe I would have enjoyed it more but the dialog chose to blabber on nevertheless. I do however see the value of the dialog as it helps those whom had not previously played Kingdom Hearts to help them catch up on the plot. Not to mention the statement about the cards, which of-course came in quite useful.

Soon enough you head to Traverse Town, this acts as a hub of sorts and seems to be used in almost all Kingdom Hearts games. This marks the actually beginning of your journey. The only thing that really bothered me about the opening was the ridiculousness of Sora, Donald and Goofy being shocked every-time the Mysterious Robed person vanished and re-appeared. It's like a dog jumping on it's hind legs. It's cool the first time... a little less cool the second... but just boringly obnoxious the third, fourth and fifth time.

So actually starting off in Traverse Town you find that locations are formed from your memories... *cough* *cough* an elaborate scheme for the developers to avoid creating new locations *cough* *cough* you are soon given a tutorial about how the combat works. Starting off it's somewhat like an active battle but with limitations. If you run out of cards all you can do is move and dodge attacks. Of-course it makes sense to not over-power the player. Cards as I mentioned before are limited and require you use them properly this adds a small bit of strategy... which of-course I have no time for so I just sat and mashed the card attack button like nothing could stop me. Of-course I added a jump every so often to preform a three move combo which seems to do a bit more damage but I was never too bothered about card to damage ratio anyway. Once your out of cards you have to "reload" in which you must hold down A for a set period of time. Cards can be played as in the "deck" or can be found through Select in specific categories. R and L are used to scroll through cards which can prove useful during boss fights. More boring dialog happens in which it takes a moderately annoying amount of time to scroll through not reading because most information is "feelings" and general non-sense.

At first I wasn't soon keen on the use of cards but it soon grew on me. I also noted when leveling you get the ability of selecting select bonuses. At the beginning it's hard to choose since you don't really know what you need as of the moment however this soon goes away as your play-style grows and develops. I myself chose to learn a new sleight in which to use in battle. But it eventually just becomes redundant by the time you reach a second level since you just quickly become stronger than anything you will actually face at the beginning. Following some rooms later is yet another cut-scene dialog thing that just ends up dragging on yet again... it started to feel like a trend. Something like amnesia is happening to characters and blah de blah and it ends up being generally uninteresting. Dialog continues to drag on until Sora and Co. decide to actually go somewhere. But first you have to go through yet another combat tutorial... because obviously the style of battle is obviously just so hard for your little mind to comprehend. Captain obvious stats that the higher the number of the card means the attacks are stronger in which you could probably deduct anyway. The only useful thing I learned from this tutorial was how to "stock" cards in which you use both R and L at the same time to selected three cards at once for use. Of-course after that you return to the place you came from... which just so happened to have crates in them in which I found the uneasy pleasure of destroying. Apparently my mind is so corrupt I need to take my anger out on innocent crates filled with balls. A room later and guess what? More drearily annoying dialog to scroll through, but of-course the only upside would be you meet Aerith... which is more or likely just blatant fan-service. I just keep staring at Aerith through-out the conversation purely because she is wearing boots with a dress. Apparently there is no laws of fashion in the world of Kingdom hearts or maybe I'm just being fascistic for fashion and don't get me started on the rope / string she was wearing around her neck. At this point I realized that Kingdom Hearts 3DS Dream Drop Distance was just a blatant rip-off of Chain of Memories since apparently you can't continue a game in a series without removing your characters existence from the memories of your friends.
Yet another dialog occurs and shortly after a boss fight is thrown in your face without much warning... some subtlety there. After the first few rounds of cards flew by the grind began with me only having one card to fight and re-deck with each attack. Soon enough I learned the importance of upping your CP as honestly you heal enough HP just becomes a redundant stat. After the most boring boss fight in history that had you running around for about 5 minutes you proceed to continue into you guessed it yet another dialog, I just casually skipped past the majority of it that had nothing to do with story until I heard the sad music in which Sora is informed that everything is a figment of his memory and he should take caution not to let himself be deceived by his own memories. This is at the point where I started to notice more miniscule details. Starting off with the downward arrow being a key-blade and the characters faces / top-halves are within cards. So I'll give them small props for there small details. Eventually after a bit more traveling through rooms you return to the starting room to enjoy some more lovely dialog. You see dialog feels a bit like a puppy in this game, and by that I mean it just wants to be your friend but gets annoying after its made a mess of your carpet for about the 9th time. Of-course that was a bit cruel for a metaphor as the dialog itself isn't that badly written. It's just the quantity that annoyed me. Oh and guess what. Yet another boss battle occurs this time it's Axel. This boss was considerably more easy due to the fact the attack patterns were completely obvious and I had become accustomed to the fighting style. I enjoyed this battle much more than I had the previous one since I felt as if I required more strategy as the opponent could also create R+L combos. Of-course more dialog ensues just when you were about to forget about it but it just shoved more into your face.

After some dialog you are then allowed to go to five words, Agrabah ( Aladdin ), Olympus Coliseum ( Hercules ), Wonderland ( Alice in wonderland or is it Through the looking glass :X ), Monstro ( A whale from Pinocchio ) and finally Halloween Town... because live action movies are the shizzle. I decide to go for Agrabah which I decide is a bad choice as soon as I see Aladdin, whom apparently has more derpy eyes than Derpy hooves. So you decide to fight for Derpaddin to find out the Heartless are trying to be as stereotypically racist as possible. Turbans, open waistcoats, puffy-pants, curled shoes, bandanas and stupidly curved scimitars, definitely aiming to be racist I mean they even have a ridiculous amount of worn jewelery. After the fight genie appears makes the heartless go away.. oh big woop. Not like they were a challenge anyway. At this point the fights become a bit more challenging compared to the ones in Traverse Town. So I kept scrolling to find that Derpaddin liked to talk about the plot of his movie with slightly changed plot but somehow he managed to talk about it keeping the derp in tact. Of-course they couldn't stop with just the racist stereotypes so they had to add the classic damsel in distress, this time you have to save Jasmine from some heartless. And Derpaddin still looks derpy even whilst angry. But the icing on the cake goes to Genie.... I'll let the screenshot do the talking : *INSERT SCREENSHOT* Beautiful isn't it?  And eventually you go for a boss battle with Genie Jafar ( or however his name is spelled ). This fight was quite enjoyable I will admit. Althought slightly tedius. Derpaddin then releases Genie so all things are settled once more.

I eventually head to the next world. This time being the Olympus Coliseum. Insert annoyance about dialog here, Hades, race, Hercules, blah and more blah. Cloud is hired by Hades to beat Hercules and yes that would be more fan-service. Anyway I think it's about time to get down with the actual review.

So what exactly is it about the graphical representation of the game that I like? Well besides the awful fashion sense. Personally its just how it looks. Sora firstly is quite the unique design, Sora is based upon a young slightly pre-teen child. He wares mostly red with an overcoat, white gloves, he also wears yellow shows the size of his head and hair that is typical of the style you see in anime. Not like that is a directly bad thing, but slightly unoriginal in that aspect. The design itself brings out a childish feel to it and It was done quite well in Sora's favor. It seems to match his personality best. With the excellent choice of design I would say Sora is very well done in comparison to some other characters. However lets not avoid comparison. Being on the Game Boy Advance it means the majority of characters in games created for the system are sprite based and because of this I can compare Sora to say a Pokemon trainer. Sora's over-world sprite is much more diverse this is a great thing as it allows for more complex animations for attacks and jumping off of springs. Compare to the still avatars of the Pokemon franchise at the time it had a much better feel and Sora was well animated when he did his select actions. As I said before Sora seemed to be based of a pre-teen child this means I can technically compare him to the looks from Brendan and May from Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire as they are all in the general age grouping. Sora gets the look right by giving him a small size and a more kid-like face. This makes him a good design in comparison to other games for the system. His facial expressions used in dialog are quite varied but not by much, minor changes are made to convey emotions and feelings and it is done relatively well.

Next you have Donald Duck... a wizard in the world of Kingdom Hearts. This stutter-ful duck wears squire like clothing with golden trimmings. This looks quite good and is it really does make him stand out. I feel the gold trim is used because of Donald's feet being yellow so it does bring out some originality for the design. Now I don't have as much to compare Donald to as you see there lacks a duck comparison for the system. But I can talk about his facial expressions, Donald's facial expressions are very varied, he can convey emotions strongly such as his anger or sadness. This is by far the best part of his design. Everything he says is matched up with a corresponding emotion shown through his facial expressions. He uses a lot of tempered emotions however this is due to his nature of being short-tempered in which is perfectly explained without the need of words through his Facial expressions alone.

The third in the group of four is Goofy. His sprite is done in the spirit of goofy as it shows his clumsiness through the use of visual aid. He wares a green top, brown trousers, large steel-toe capped shoes, a black waist-coat, white gloves and a hat of some sort. ( Sorry I'm not exactly the most knowledgeable about every type of Hat in the world. ) Goofy's design is quite well done since you can see he is slightly hunched in the back, this is quite detailed as it shows you what you really wouldn't expect to see. The fine details are well done for goofy. His facial expressions aren't as varied as Donald's however he can still show his emotions and feelings through them. This comes through clearly and effectively throughout the game as Goofy shows many emotions.

Finally we have Jiminy Cricket the last of the four. Although small his scaling is done reasonable well in comparison to the other characters sizes. He is meant to be small and thus he looks small. This is a good start. To describe his design is somewhat difficult, however you can see a black-over coat and a dull blue top-hat this keeps the design true to the original Disney design. He shows a few expressions during conversation making his character feel more in-depth.

Next I want to talk about attacks. The majority of the attacks, spells and assists are present well within the game. Much attention was put into them such as how Sora flows in battle. Such as combos, especially those such as Blizzara and Blizzaga which you can see have increase in power just by the way it looks from what Blizzard looked like. Flowing smoothly in battle makes the game feel more natural and less ... well computerized? Attacks such as the spells looks really good when using there stronger versions, namely ara's and aga's. They are presented well to show that you are actually doing damage in battle. A beauty to behold. But don't think the majesty of the attacks end at sword swings and magic attacks. Assists can be used, cards such as Genie, Simba, Donald and so on. These each have there own unique attack and thus own animation to go with it. Most of these attacks look and feel unique each looking powerful and strong. This gives off the feeling that your friends are valuable power. Personally I love using Simba as I like how the he is shown roaring and he does a great amount of damage. I felt over-joyed by using the powerful attacks since I found there animations delightfully well done.

But of course what makes a game great if not it's enemies? Well... a lot actually but I will say the enemy design is by far very good across the board for Chain of Memories. Even the most basic of monsters shine bright, even if they are just dark blobs, making some enemies very unforgettable. Starting with the most basic of enemies, the shadow you get a sense on wear they were going, the design was meant to look relatively creepy whilst still looking reasonable for children. The yellow eyes stand out against the dark colors of the shadow making it one of the more prominent feature of the enemy. But of-coursewas used every-time a new line of text came from a character. Although I quickly got used to the sound. Once again we are accosted by the robed figure seen within the cut-scene, although he spoke less aggravated it was more of a sense of danger that made me feel slightly weird. Donald, being slightly irrational believes the robed figure to be a heartless, in which he attempts to cast magic to no avail, the robe figure explains how everyone has forgotten every spell they have ever known upon entering Castle Oblivion. Some babble later you find out that yet another friend is missing, in this case Riku. Honestly, if there was less dialog at the beginning then maybe I would have enjoyed it more but the dialog chose to blabber on nevertheless. I do however see the value of the dialog as it helps those whom had not previously played Kingdom Hearts to help them catch up on the plot. Not to mention the statement about the cards, which of-course came in quite useful.

Soon enough you head to Traverse Town, this acts as a hub of sorts and seems to be used in almost all Kingdom Hearts games. This marks the actually beginning of your journey. The only thing that really bothered me about the opening was the ridiculousness of Sora, Donald and Goofy being shocked every-time the Mysterious Robed person vanished and re-appeared. It's like a dog jumping on it's hind legs. It's cool the first time... a little less cool the second... but just boringly obnoxious the third, fourth and fifth time.

So actually starting off in Traverse Town you find that locations are formed from your memories... *cough* *cough* an elaborate scheme for the developers to avoid creating new locations *cough* *cough* you are soon given a tutorial about how the combat works. Starting off it's somewhat like an active battle but with limitations. If you run out of cards all you can do is move and dodge attacks. Of-course it makes sense to not over-power the player. Cards as I mentioned before are limited and require you use them properly this adds a small bit of strategy... which of-course I have no time for so I just sat and mashed the card attack button like nothing could stop me. Of-course I added a jump every so often to preform a three move combo which seems to do a bit more damage but I was never too bothered about card to damage ratio anyway. Once your out of cards you have to "reload" in which you must hold down A for a set period of time. Cards can be played as in the "deck" or can be found through Select in specific categories. R and L are used to scroll through cards which can prove useful during boss fights. More boring dialog happens in which it takes a moderately annoying amount of time to scroll through not reading because most information is "feelings" and general non-sense.

At first I wasn't soon keen on the use of cards but it soon grew on me. I also noted when leveling you get the ability of selecting select bonuses. At the beginning it's hard to choose since you don't really know what you need as of the moment however this soon goes away as your play-style grows and develops. I myself chose to learn a new sleight in which to use in battle. But it eventually just becomes redundant by the time you reach a second level since you just quickly become stronger than anything you will actually face at the beginning. Following some rooms later is yet another cut-scene dialog thing that just ends up dragging on yet again... it started to feel like a trend. Something like amnesia is happening to characters and blah de blah and it ends up being generally uninteresting. Dialog continues to drag on until Sora and Co. decide to actually go somewhere. But first you have to go through yet another combat tutorial... because obviously the style of battle is obviously just so hard for your little mind to comprehend. Captain obvious stats that the higher the number of the card means the attacks are stronger in which you could probably deduct anyway. The only useful thing I learned from this tutorial was how to "stock" cards in which you use both R and L at the same time to selected three cards at once for use. Of-course after that you return to the place you came from... which just so happened to have crates in them in which I found the uneasy pleasure of destroying. Apparently my mind is so corrupt I need to take my anger out on innocent crates filled with balls. A room later and guess what? More drearily annoying dialog to scroll through, but of-course the only upside would be you meet Aerith... which is more or likely just blatant fan-service. I just keep staring at Aerith through-out the conversation purely because she is wearing boots with a dress. Apparently there is no laws of fashion in the world of Kingdom hearts or maybe I'm just being fascistic for fashion and don't get me started on the rope / string she was wearing around her neck. At this point I realized that Kingdom Hearts 3DS Dream Drop Distance was just a blatant rip-off of Chain of Memories since apparently you can't continue a game in a series without removing your characters existence from the memories of your friends.
Yet another dialog occurs and shortly after a boss fight is thrown in your face without much warning... some subtlety there. After the first few rounds of cards flew by the grind began with me only having one card to fight and re-deck with each attack. Soon enough I learned the importance of upping your CP as honestly you heal enough HP just becomes a redundant stat. After the most boring boss fight in history that had you running around for about 5 minutes you proceed to continue into you guessed it yet another dialog, I just casually skipped past the majority of it that had nothing to do with story until I heard the sad music in which Sora is informed that everything is a figment of his memory and he should take caution not to let himself be deceived by his own memories. This is at the point where I started to notice more miniscule details. Starting off with the downward arrow being a key-blade and the characters faces / top-halves are within cards. So I'll give them small props for there small details. Eventually after a bit more traveling through rooms you return to the starting room to enjoy some more lovely dialog. You see dialog feels a bit like a puppy in this game, and by that I mean it just wants to be your friend but gets annoying after its made a mess of your carpet for about the 9th time. Of-course that was a bit cruel for a metaphor as the dialog itself isn't that badly written. It's just the quantity that annoyed me. Oh and guess what. Yet another boss battle occurs this time it's Axel. This boss was considerably more easy due to the fact the attack patterns were completely obvious and I had become accustomed to the fighting style. I enjoyed this battle much more than I had the previous one since I felt as if I required more strategy as the opponent could also create R+L combos. Of-course more dialog ensues just when you were about to forget about it but it just shoved more into your face.

After some dialog you are then allowed to go to five words, Agrabah ( Aladdin ), Olympus Coliseum ( Hercules ), Wonderland ( Alice in wonderland or is it Through the looking glass :X ), Monstro ( A whale from Pinocchio ) and finally Halloween Town... because live action movies are the shizzle. I decide to go for Agrabah which I decide is a bad choice as soon as I see Aladdin, whom apparently has more derpy eyes than Derpy hooves. So you decide to fight for Derpaddin to find out the Heartless are trying to be as stereotypically racist as possible. Turbans, open waistcoats, puffy-pants, curled shoes, bandanas and stupidly curved scimitars, definitely aiming to be racist I mean they even have a ridiculous amount of worn jewelery. After the fight genie appears makes the heartless go away.. oh big woop. Not like they were a challenge anyway. At this point the fights become a bit more challenging compared to the ones in Traverse Town. So I kept scrolling to find that Derpaddin liked to talk about the plot of his movie with slightly changed plot but somehow he managed to talk about it keeping the derp in tact. Of-course they couldn't stop with just the racist stereotypes so they had to add the classic damsel in distress, this time you have to save Jasmine from some heartless. And Derpaddin still looks derpy even whilst angry. But the icing on the cake goes to Genie.... I'll let the screenshot do the talking : *INSERT SCREENSHOT* Beautiful isn't it?  And eventually you go for a boss battle with Genie Jafar ( or however his name is spelled ). This fight was quite enjoyable I will admit. Althought slightly tedius. Derpaddin then releases Genie so all things are settled once more.

I eventually head to the next world. This time being the Olympus Coliseum. Insert annoyance about dialog here, Hades, race, Hercules, blah and more blah. Cloud is hired by Hades to beat Hercules and yes that would be more fan-service. Anyway I think it's about time to get down with the actual review.

So what exactly is it about the graphical representation of the game that I like? Well besides the awful fashion sense. Personally its just how it looks. Sora firstly is quite the unique design, Sora is based upon a young slightly pre-teen child. He wares mostly red with an overcoat, white gloves, he also wears yellow shows the size of his head and hair that is typical of the style you see in anime. Not like that is a directly bad thing, but slightly unoriginal in that aspect. The design itself brings out a childish feel to it and It was done quite well in Sora's favor. It seems to match his personality best. With the excellent choice of design I would say Sora is very well done in comparison to some other characters. However lets not avoid comparison. Being on the Game Boy Advance it means the majority of characters in games created for the system are sprite based and because of this I can compare Sora to say a Pokemon trainer. Sora's over-world sprite is much more diverse this is a great thing as it allows for more complex animations for attacks and jumping off of springs. Compare to the still avatars of the Pokemon franchise at the time it had a much better feel and Sora was well animated when he did his select actions. As I said before Sora seemed to be based of a pre-teen child this means I can technically compare him to the looks from Brendan and May from Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire as they are all in the general age grouping. Sora gets the look right by giving him a small size and a more kid-like face. This makes him a good design in comparison to other games for the system. His facial expressions used in dialog are quite varied but not by much, minor changes are made to convey emotions and feelings and it is done relatively well.

Next you have Donald Duck... a wizard in the world of Kingdom Hearts. This stutter-ful duck wears squire like clothing with golden trimmings. This looks quite good and is it really does make him stand out. I feel the gold trim is used because of Donald's feet being yellow so it does bring out some originality for the design. Now I don't have as much to compare Donald to as you see there lacks a duck comparison for the system. But I can talk about his facial expressions, Donald's facial expressions are very varied, he can convey emotions strongly such as his anger or sadness. This is by far the best part of his design. Everything he says is matched up with a corresponding emotion shown through his facial expressions. He uses a lot of tempered emotions however this is due to his nature of being short-tempered in which is perfectly explained without the need of words through his Facial expressions alone.

The third in the group of four is Goofy. His sprite is done in the spirit of goofy as it shows his clumsiness through the use of visual aid. He wares a green top, brown trousers, large steel-toe capped shoes, a black waist-coat, white gloves and a hat of some sort. ( Sorry I'm not exactly the most knowledgeable about every type of Hat in the world. ) Goofy's design is quite well done since you can see he is slightly hunched in the back, this is quite detailed as it shows you what you really wouldn't expect to see. The fine details are well done for goofy. His facial expressions aren't as varied as Donald's however he can still show his emotions and feelings through them. This comes through clearly and effectively throughout the game as Goofy shows many emotions.

Finally we have Jiminy Cricket the last of the four. Although small his scaling is done reasonable well in comparison to the other characters sizes. He is meant to be small and thus he looks small. This is a good start. To describe his design is somewhat difficult, however you can see a black-over coat and a dull blue top-hat this keeps the design true to the original Disney design. He shows a few expressions during conversation making his character feel more in-depth.

Next I want to talk about attacks. The majority of the attacks, spells and assists are present well within the game. Much attention was put into them such as how Sora flows in battle. Such as combos, especially those such as Blizzara and Blizzaga which you can see have increase in power just by the way it looks from what Blizzard looked like. Flowing smoothly in battle makes the game feel more natural and less ... well computerized? Attacks such as the spells looks really good when using there stronger versions, namely ara's and aga's. They are presented well to show that you are actually doing damage in battle. A beauty to behold. But don't think the majesty of the attacks end at sword swings and magic attacks. Assists can be used, cards such as Genie, Simba, Donald and so on. These each have there own unique attack and thus own animation to go with it. Most of these attacks look and feel unique each looking powerful and strong. This gives off the feeling that your friends are valuable power. Personally I love using Simba as I like how the he is shown roaring and he does a great amount of damage. I felt over-joyed by using the powerful attacks since I found there animations delightfully well done.

But of course what makes a game great if not it's enemies? Well... a lot actually but I will say the enemy design is by far very good across the board for Chain of Memories. Even the most basic of monsters shine bright, even if they are just dark blobs, making some enemies very unforgettable. Starting with the most basic of enemies, the shadow you get a sense on wear they were going, the design was meant to look relatively creepy whilst still looking reasonable for children. The yellow eyes stand out against the dark colors of the shadow making it one of the more prominent feature of the enemy. But of-course....