Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories - game vs novel

20 Apr, 2026

I recently finished reading the novel for Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. I had it on my bookshelf since forever with all the other KH novels, but I only read the first one before this year. KH1 was a nice read, but nothing groudbreakingly different from the original game¹.

I expected CoM to be basically the same. And it was, at the beginning, until it wasn't anymore. But before delving into it, I'll talk a little about the writer, Tomoko Kanemaki. Mobygames lists her as responsible for the lyrics for the song Gigalomania in Live a Live HD2D remake and the plot of sensational masterpiece Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin². But her most important role for today's topic is that she was scenario writer for Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. When she wrote this novel (around 2005 and 2006) she probably still wasn't in charge of that, as Days only came out in 2009, but I feel like picking her as the scenario writer for a game after writing the novels seems to me like a testament of how well she grasps these characters.

The novel is split in two parts, just like the game. Sora's side and Riku's side, also dubbed Reverse/Rebirth.

Sora's side is mostly unchanged, with a few exceptions. In the game Sora has experiences in all the worlds he was in in KH1 except Deep Jungle (mostly for licence reasons for the Tarzan property). In the novel Olympus, Atlantica and Halloween Town are also skipped. But those worlds were skipped in the KH1 novel as well, so the reason for this choice is continuity. As a result, some of the floors (they're still 13) are depicted as a mishmash of other worlds (in my mind similar to the End of the World in KH1, but that's only my interpretation). Another difference (and this applies to Riku's side as well) is that there's a lot of inner dialogue that is not there in the game and it's a lot of fun to see Sora slowly panicking while he forgets everything. It made Agrabah fun to read. Amazing.

Reverse/Rebirth starts similar, with basically the same scenes we see in the game³. Chapter 2 is when it starts to take a different approach. In the game Riku has basically nothing to do inside Disney worlds except fighting heartless and it would have been kinda boring to have the same structure in the novel. Here, in Monstro, he meets Pinocchio and talks to him. First of all Pinocchio asks "Do you have a father?" and Riku replies "I don't have anyone". Orphan Riku confirmed??? We also have a nice flashback of the Night of Fate⁴ on Riku's PoV.

In Chapter 3 Riku is in Neverland, talks to Hook and fights his own shadow, just like Sora did in KH1. The scene with the shadow then transitions to the scene of the birth of Replica Riku. This is crucial as Chapter 4 to 6 are almost all Replica PoV. All the memories implanted to him get shown, all his encounters with Sora, Naminé and the Organization are revisited with his eyes and knowledge. He showing up in Twilight Town while Sora is facing Vexen is extremely fun as there's a moment where he sees a mysterious young blond boy on a skate board. I wonder who is he.

At the end of Chapter 6 we're back to real Riku for his battle against Lexaeus, basically skipping all the Disney Worlds Riku wasn't in. Just before he dies, in the game Lexaeus says something on the line of "Forgive me Zexion, I shouldn't have started this fight". In the novel he says "This is my strenght... I, number five in the organization... Who was once his favourite pupil". What the actual fuck. Is he talking about Xehanort? What is this hidden lore???

Then the last part of the story is basically the same as the game, some of it also told in Repliku PoV. It's fun. Until, in the last scene of the book, other than having a still image of BHK, the name Roxas is actually namedropped! That's huge⁵!

And that was it. It was a lot of fun to read and I can't wait to revisit all the other games in book form while I slowly replay them on stream. Next novel is KH2, next game to stream is Days. I'm hyped.

#books #videogames