Kingdom Hearts 1.6 - The Chain of Memories
- "The chance to have the adventure of a lifetime is all in the cards."
- —Tagline
Kingdom Hearts 1.5 - The Chain of Memories, also titled as Reversed Awakenings, is the second released installment in the Kingdom Hearts Unlimited Saga.
The story revolves around Taran, Donald Duck, Goofy, Fflewddur Fflam, and Gurgi making their way through an ancient and most mysterious castle, traveling through new worlds and reuniting with old friends in order to save a beautiful princess from the clutches of a cult of demon-worshiping metahumans, but as they soon discover with each floor explored, not everything is what it seems at first glance...
Chronologically, it is the sixth story in the timeline after The Keyblade Wars, Rise of the Old Republic, Birth of A New Era, A Fragmentary Passage, and The Journey, and takes place during A Year of Misery.
Plot[]
In the aftermath of the closing of the Door to Tartarus and the release of TOWIAA to restore all worlds back to their original state, Taran, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Fflewddur Fflam, and Gurgi find themselves separated from all of the friends they made in an empty, abandoned world, nowhere to go except down a long path that seemingly goes nowhere. Just as they are about to give up since they have no idea on where to go next, they find a mysterious letter on the ground with the insignia of the great wizard Yen Sid. After opening the letter, the heroes find out that their next adventure and their friends lie just further along the path and that they should best prepare for an inevitable reunion, which delights them so much that they outright forget to read the rest of the letter on the rush to be reunited soon, only to head straight for a crossroads and right back to uncertainty on where to go from here. That night, while deciding which path for the party to take come the morning, Taran encounters a strange, wise old hermit draped in a hooded, raggedy robe. The hermit sympathizes with Taran's plight as if he already knows and offers some words of encouragement; just ahead of the path is indeed the location of something Taran needs the most, but in order to do so, he must be willing to give up something just as dear to him in exchange. After that, the old hermit disappears in a flash of red light, and the answer to his mysterious riddle becomes apparent. The path becomes one and it leads the heroes to Castle Oblivion. The old hermit appears as they enter the castle and gives them a card. They use the card to proceed through the castle.
The first world they go to is Chicago 1910, where they embark about the plot of "Lady & the Tramp", though this occasionally interrupted with brief glimpses of individuals that Taran has met in the past. This is explained by a mystical stag, the Great Prince of the Forest, as Taran still holding the memories of his friends in his heart even if he will be unable to remember them in his mind. However, the stag also warns Taran to beware his memories, as in the journey to come, he will be tempted by illusions trying to deceive him and lead him astray from the path he was meant to take, and that he must steel his resolve to protect what's truly important no matter the cost. After taking in the old stag's warning, Taran leaves Chicago with his friends and returns to the castle.
The strange cloaked figure from before appears once more after they arrive on the next floor, but a second figure also appears and introduces himself as Ben Ali Gator, challenging Taran to battle. Taran fends him off and is given more World Cards, and as the heroes go through each floor, they embark in new worlds, new adventures, meeting new friends, while inadvertently summoning old friends based on connections the worlds have to one another. All of these worlds have somehow been distorted in one way or another due to being connected to the memory-shifting power of Castle Oblivion, not helping matters is the return of the Hellfire Organization, led by the White Witch Jadis and the Ghost of Maleficent, who intend to use the memory distortions to regather their strength and once more rule the universe, forcing Taran to reunite with Hercules, Aladdin, and the Mahou Shojou Princesses of Heart to save the worlds from the threat, not realizing that by performing these heroics, they have unknowingly begun to lose their original memories in favor of new, false memories of an event that never happened. By piecing together their distorted memories, they eventually discover that the culprit, a young girl named Guinevere, has been reorganizing their memories at the orders of the evil android vampire NOS-4-A2, who led them to the castle in the first place under the guise of the old hermit, in order to put herself in Eilonwy's place within Taran's memories and thus make him more compliant to the control of the vampire and his army of rebellious cyborgs, who wish to use Taran's keyblade to overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy themselves. As he makes his way to the peak of the castle, Taran slays the Dominion members XL and Dr. Frankenollie, as well as defeating a copy of Ellidyr created by Frankenollie and programmed by Guinevere to be loyal to her.
Meanwhile, the real Ellidyr chooses to reject the peaceful sleep of the Realm of Emptiness and is pulled through a Corridor of Light to the basement of the castle. He makes his way through the castle with the assistance of Mickey Mouse and several of Maleficent's former minions, while fending off the temptations of the Horned King, who has left a piece of himself within Ellidyr's heart in the form of a Symbiote and wants Ellidyr to return to being his host so that he can once more reign supreme over the cosmos, as well as repelling attacks from Frankenollie, Doctor Gero, Savage Opress, Darth Armor, the Saurians, and their Android warriors, who want to use Ellidyr as a weapon to counter NOS-4-A2's use of Taran. Along the way, Ellidyr discovers that the reason he was led to Castle Oblivion to battle the dark forces was because a strange old wizard, Saruman the White, had taken an interest in him and allowed the revival of the villains to occur in order to test Ellidyr's resistance to the Negaforce.
At the end of the journey, Taran puts an end to NOS-4-A2 and his partner Deviot, freeing Guinevere and the Ellidyr Replica. Due to the damage done to the heroes' memories and hearts, Guinevere offers to restore their memories, although it means they will forget everything in the castle and will take a long time. The heroes agree to this, being separated from one another as Hercules, Aladdin, and the Princesses are returned to their homeworlds restored, but with no memory of their time spent with Taran's inner group, while the main group in question (Taran, Fflewddur Fflam, Donald Duck, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, and Gurgi) go to sleep in Memory Pods provided by Guinevere until the day when an act of true love by his other breaks the spell.
The Ellidyr Replica instead chooses to reject its given memories entirely, and leaves to find his own purpose. But before he can get far from the castle grounds to live life as his own person, he is ambushed by Ben Ali Gator, who has manipulated the last activated Replica, a hideous mutant named Cell, into absorbing his "brothers" and Darth Armor in order to take their power and become the perfect being, strong enough to do anything he wants and be as different from his genetic forebears in any way. However, after absorbing the others, Cell is disappointed when the procedure doesn't make him feel any different. Ellidyr, following advice from Saruman to seek Guinevere, runs into Cell at the Sunset Horizons basement, and in a rage the monstrous reptilian Bio-Android challenges Ellidyr to a fight to the death. Ellidyr wins, and tries to comfort his suffering foe as the Bio-Android seemingly dies. Afterward, Ellidyr finds Guinevere and is shown Taran's situation. Guinevere offers to manipulate Ellidyr's own memories in order to lock the Horned King's symbiote away, but Ellidyr declines and instead chooses to confront the monstrous lich directly. When he emerges from the basement, Saruman presents him with his own modified Sith robes to protect him from the corruptive effects of dark energy, and a key to summon forth the Venom Symbiote from his heart-soul in order to defeat it and its master, the Horned King.
After defeating the lich and the ghosts of his generals once and for all, Ellidyr and Mickey go to the crossroads outside the castle, where Saruman appears once again to ask if Ellidyr will be following the road to the light of day or the road to the shadows of night. Instead, Ellidyr chooses the middle road, "to dawn", where he hopes he can find a balance between both cosmic elements and start his long road to redeem himself for his sins.