The memories engraved in our hearts never go away.

User Rating: 8 | Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories GBA
Kingdom Hearts : Chain of Memories is a sequel to great KH, originally released on PS2, a rpg which combined the range of characters from Final Fantasy universe of Square with well known and loved Disney's characters. The idea indeed looked impossible but it worked, and it worked great. After KH and KH 2 there is a place for KH: CoM which takes place in between of the two mentioned above. It happens that port for GBA was released, so I decided to take a look at it.

The storyline begins where it ended in first game of the series. Sora is on his way, chasing Pluto in his way to find and ( possibly ) rescue King Micky and his beloved friend. I will try to avoid spoiling as much as I can so let's just say that he ends up in a place called Castle Oblivion where to find what is most important for him he has to lose something, let's say, priceless. So our hero begins his journey trough all floor of castle, visiting places from his memories and meeting people he already met but somehow no one seems to recognize him. It might look tedious but i assure that you will get into very fast. Some people complain that the places you are going to visit are mainly the same as those in previous games of the series but they looks really pretty on gba screen and it didn't bother me at all.

The graphics and sound are absolutely amazing. All of backgrounds and characters are detailed and animation is smooth and fluent. Colors used are bright and keep your eyes entertained. Also animated movies are worth mentioning. It is probably the strongest part of the game without any major flaws. Music and sounds are decent and simple and clean at the end of the game makes a huge emotional impact.

The gameplay is the thing that divided fans into lovers and haters. Which is typical You will have to travel across bunch of universes and fight with heartless every now and then. What is new and controversial is "cards system". They define whole gameplay. You need them to fight , to progress, to increase Your chances. You need them to everything actually. In CoM battle system is a mix of card came and well-known hack'n'slash. To attack or use any skill You have to use one of cards from the deck of Yours. The amount of cards in your deck are defined by the number of CP points ( which can be increased after leveling when You can decide if You want more health points, cp, or to learn a new slide - skill which can be activated by using few cards in combo ) When you have your favourite set of cards you can start to fight. There are single card attacks and those which require more than one to be used. Keep in mind that after releasing a combo ( few cards combined ) the first one of them won't be available till next combat. Cards also have numbers on them which describe their hierarchy. For example, if you want to use a card with number 4 and your enemy has card with number 5, he will block your card from resolving. It is a bit confusing indeed, but after you get used to it I think it is pure fantastic. You can develop your own strategies, design the deck which will reflect your game style and so on. Collecting cards ( which can be bought in boosters of 5 cards for MP collected during the game ) also gave a noticeable boost to game replay value as you can beat the same enemies in totally different ways. Adding it to up to 25h of playtime ( including second scenario which becomes available after beating Sora's story ) and you have a lot of enjoyable time to spent with it.

Are there any drawbacks then ? Yes, there are few but they don't ruin the whole experience. After some time traveling across the worlds becomes traveling from one cut scene to another because it gets quite schematic. What is more to open the gates you need to use cards with determined value and collecting them can be a bit tedious after time. Another one is that the difficulty of the game is quite unbalanced. I picked "just right" but in fact trough most of the game there are not any hard enemies till Your 4th fight with some dude ( to avoid spoilers I won't give a name ) and after it it becomes quite hard.

To sum it up, I believe that despite few flaws, KH: CoM is one of the greatest rpg games released on gba, mainly because of its innovative battle system which turns out to be great after giving some time to get into it. This is absolutely must have for every fan of the KH, Disney or FF universe but it's also a solid position for regular gamer.

Pros:
-Graphics
-Innovative BS
-FF Crew
-Building a deck of your dreams

Cons:
- a bit tedious and schematic
- a bit unbalanced bosses

Storyline : 8/10
Gameplay : 8/10
Graphics : 9/10
Music : 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Replay Value : 7/10

Game Score : 8/10

I hope you enjoyed it and please take it easy on me as it's my first review. I promise I will get better ;)