Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories is underappreciated. Even among the Kingdom Hearts community — which tends to pore over everything Nomura sneezes out — you never hear Chain Of Memories talked about with the same reverence as, say, Birth By Sleep, Dream Drop Distance, and, of course, Kingdom Hearts 2 (although, to be fair, few games are revered with the same universal love and acclaim as Kingdom Hearts 2).
But what of the game that came before it? Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories first released on the Game Boy Advance in 2004, two years after the original Kingdom Hearts debuted on the PlayStation 2. A direct sequel to the first game, Chain Of Memories was intended by series director Tetsuya Nomura to bridge the gap between the first Kingdom Hearts game and the then-upcoming Kingdom Hearts 2, which was already in discussion and would be soon to enter development.
The decision to develop Chain Of Memories for the Game Boy Advance came after Nomura was told that children wanted to play Kingdom Hearts on the GBA. Thus began production on Chain Of Memories, with development helmed by Square Enix in collaboration with Jupiter, a small developer of handheld software who had previously worked on various pinball and Picross games.
I know what you’re thinking, and I agree: the release of Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories was downright weird. The game had all the titling conventions of a spin-off, and was generally understood to be one. You can see why fans quickly came to the conclusion that Chain Of Memories was not an essential entry in the Kingdom Hearts series.
Which is a problem, because Chain Of Memories is an essential Kingdom Hearts game. In fact, it might just be one of the most essential entries in the Kingdom Hearts story so far. In fact, I’d even go so far as to hammer that Chain Of Memories is just as important to the series as Kingdom Hearts 2; maybe even more important to the series than the very first Kingdom Hearts game.
Chain Of Memories takes the admittedly very basic Square-meets-Disney trappings of the first game and pushes these away in order to begin telling a story that is neither particularly Disney nor particularly Square — but wholly original. The Kingdom Hearts saga as we know it today — complex and sprawling and often messy; populated with thirteen Organization members, doppelgängers, the battle between light and darkness, and an ongoing struggle for power — can be traced all the way back to Chain Of Memories, where this saga first began to form.
To emphasize the story it wants to tell, Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories keeps its gameplay simple. The mechanics are relatively easy to get the hang of, and once you’ve grasped the basics, you’re set for the rest of the game. While some may deem the gameplay repetitive, I think the better term is “serviceable.” The gameplay, through being simplistic and non-distracting, helps keep the focus on the game’s story, allowing the strong narrative to shine.
Once Sora’s story has concluded, you unlock Riku’s side of the story, and Riku himself as a playable character. And while Riku’s mechanics skew just a tad more button-mashy than Sora’s, they do offer a slew of sleights and particularly powerful attacks that Sora’s mechanics lack, thus keeping battles short and to the point. Again, the emphasis is clearly on story here, and Riku’s side of the story offers some truly impressive moments of growth and development for his character.
Back when I played the first Kingdom Hearts, my biggest criticism was that the game didn’t spend enough time fleshing out Riku’s goals or motivations, rendering him a little murky, as antagonists go. It wasn’t until Chain Of Memories that I got to understand him better — so much so that I ended up enjoying his side of the game even more than Sora’s, despite the slight dip in gameplay quality.
Character development in Chain Of Memories doesn’t begin and end with Riku, though. It also works tirelessly to establish the characters of Namine, DiZ, and Organization XIII, who make their debut here in Chain. These new cast members bring with them such concepts as data replicas, false memories, and ‘Nobodies’ – concepts which are today considered cornerstones of the Kingdom Hearts series.
Chain Of Memories also introduces us to Axel and his own, strange role within Organization XIII. Establishing early on that Axel is both ally and traitor to the Organization who tends to follow a personal agenda above all else, Chain Of Memories explains in advance the otherwise questionable actions that Axel takes in Kingdom Hearts 2 and later games.
For all that Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories was intended to form a bridge into Kingdom Hearts 2, in practice the two games are completely co-dependent; you can’t have one without the other. This is even acknowledged by the jigsaw puzzle minigame in the Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts 2, where two of the puzzles — one based on Chain Of Memories, the other on Kingdom Hearts 2 — end up connecting to form the one, complete picture.
I’m not saying that Chain Of Memories deserves the level of adulation that Kingdom Hearts 2 has received. But it does deserve more than it’s been getting over the decades since its release. Especially when you consider its close relationship with what is generally considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time, to think this game has been overlooked time and again is nothing short of alarming.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories is an important game; for expanding meaningfully upon the first Kingdom Hearts game, for introducing some of the series’ most important characters, and for setting the tone that the series continues to follow today, Chain Of Memories deserves — even demands — far more respect than it currently gets.
