As you may or may not now, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is the second game in the Kingdom Hearts series. I say "may or may not know" because Chain of Memories is sort of the black sheep of the series. I, for one, know I went straight from Kingdom Hearts to Kingdom Hearts II, so I was a little confused about the opening of the second game, and the mysterious blonde girl. This post is several years late in the making, so it's a more widely known game now (and the story is easy to find simply by going to Youtube and watching a walkthrough)
Not that you need to play Chain of Memories (hereon referred to as CoM) before Kingdom Hearts II by any means. It's still easy enough to understand the main plot of KH II, though you may be confused about the underlying subplots. However, you miss out on such a great plot and cast of characters by not playing CoM.
So, if you've never played nor heard of CoM, you may be wondering why the game is unpopular. The answer is relatively simple. It's the battle system, which differs widely from the rest of the series. Instead of using hack and slash techniques, the player uses cards to fight. Cards? What? You're crazy! No, really, you use cards, and the reason is as follows:
In the very beginning of the game, Sora wanders into a strange castle known as Castle Oblivion and immediately finds that he has forgotten all of his abilities. He must use cards containing his abilities to fight. It's different, definitely. How it works is that Sora has a deck of cards he uses to fight, each containing different techniques. Some are simple Keyblade slashing cards, some are magic spells, some are party members.
The party system, unsurprisingly enough, differs as well. Instead of having someone fighting by your side, they turn into a card, which will use different abilities. (Donald can heal, or cast spells, for example). The cool thing about this is once you clear a world, you have a card containing a member from that world. For example, you get Cloud after completing the Coliseum. Now you can use Cloud whenever you want! It's great. A drawback is that Donald, Goofy, and regular party members like Jack from Halloween Town or Aladdin from Agrabah, are not always in your deck. They'll appear throughout battles.
I am hardly an unbiased party. My favorite character, Naminé, appears for the first time in this game. As I mentioned, you miss out on many characters. Naminé and Axel, you will see throughout the series, but other Organization XIII members only appear in this game. You won't see them anywhere else, and there are some winners, such as Larxene and Marluxia. This is the first game that introduces Nobodies, and, if you've played any of the more recent games like 358/2 Days or Kingdom Hearts II, you've no doubt heard of them. In the GBA version, the word "Nobody" is never spoken; the Organization members certainly allude to it, though. I am not yet sure about Re: CoM, as I have not gotten far enough yet.
All in all, this is a game I would recommend. I am planning on doing a review for Re: Chain of Memories once I've finished Sora's story. I may do a separate post for the GBA version whenever I beat it.
On a final note, don't be intimidated by the game or what you've heard. In my opinion, it is more difficult than most of the other games in the series, mostly because you require legitimate strategy, but it is a good game that deserves a chance. If you want to give it a try, I recommend playing the Playstation 2 version, Re: CoM, because there are many benefits to the 3D version, such as it being easier to run around bosses in battle.
