The Kingdom Hearts franchise has been pumping out quality main games and a couple of really great spin-offs or “between” games for a long time now. Melody of Memory brings in a new genre into the franchise, a music game! But with mediocre gameplay and a Disney park sing-a-along ride vibe, it’s hard to find any major reason to play through this. If you are you are a diehard fan and thoroughly enjoy the music without the engaging combat or deeper storyline progression, then this might be a really great game for you.
Let’s talk about the core mechanics of the game, press the correct buttons when the symbols hit the right spot, a pretty generic rhythm game. Melody of Memory in one word as a rhythm game is: passable. The core gameplay never really felt good to play, it felt clunky most of the time and not well telegraphed to the player. But it honestly feels more like a long series of “quick-time events” instead of a strong rhythm game.
The different difficulties make it more challenging, but not any more fun or deep. With the track being usually three lanes and the character to control attacking enemies that come out at you, I expected to have to press three different buttons, a left, right, and middle. But nope, I could press any of those three or combination, why? Why not make it inherently more challenging and coherent? It baffles me that I could press any three of the attack buttons to attack anywhere. This takes away continuity and makes it both easier and less intuitive at the same time.
One of the biggest mistakes that any rhythm game could make is not being able to know exactly when and where to hit the notes. But far too often that I feel like I didn’t know exactly what to hit and at what time because there were just far too many things happening at one time. And it’s not like this only happened on proud mode, the easier difficulties had this problem just the same. Any good rhythm game should prioritize the player’s ability to hit notes that get to more difficult songs and difficulties instead of just throwing more notes/enemies from random places. The boss battles and a few other tracks use a different system of one or two lines that are far more clear to read.
I wish that the whole game was like that. It would be much cooler to see Sora go through epic battles than watch him jog at enemies while they walked up to him and either possibly smack him or get smacked. Overall, the rhythm part of the game (which is basically all of it) itself wasn’t all that fun, the controls weren’t intuitive and they didn’t make use of the three lanes. Most of the time I was only playing through the less than interesting songs to get to the songs I actually wanted to play.
Let’s talk about the music selection, the other core element of any rhythm game. Obviously, all the songs come from the Kingdom Hearts games, and it can be quite fulfilling to play through unique songs that are associated with each world. It’s a great trip down through past games, but one that most of us franchise fans have already done two or three times in the last two or three console generations.
It is nice to be able to listen to all these songs and go through some of our favorite areas but at a monotonous rate of having to play through every song chronologically. This was one major gripe that I had, I really wanted to hop in and play songs like Sanctuary or the main Hollow Bastion theme, but I was forced to play through every Little Mermaid and Tarzan song to get there. Don’t get me wrong, the music quality is pretty good throughout all the songs, and I love Halloween Town’s, Neverland’s, and Toy Story’s songs. But with no real way to get those other songs except playing the main campaign is mind-boggling. It is especially baffling when this is meant to be a stroll through memory lane and not a journey through new endeavors.
Seeing all the major story beats be played out in simplified bite-size cut scenes is a great way to catch up on the story, but as I mentioned earlier, most of us had already caught up and relived all these moments a year or two ago when we were preparing for Kingdom Hearts 3. This just seemed like an unnecessary time to go through all these memories. If it was released right before or as a mini-game with KH3, it would’ve made a lot more sense but I don’t need to relive all the cutscenes of the major titles right after playing them last year.
Lastly, this game continues to turn the slow grinding wheel of the plot of Kingdom Hearts, but only a tiny bit, this cutscene could have easily been a part of a DLC or another secret ending for KH3. There won’t be any spoilers here, but what was revealed has me a little fearful that we won’t be seeing a major entry (KH4) or even a real spin-off (Birth By Sleep, Dream Drop Distance) for a number of years. I can understand development takes a long time. But when development teams and money is spent making games like this or other small side projects, I’m always left wondering why those resources aren’t being focused on the main franchise sequels.
This is a nicely wrapped package of big shoes, zippers, and Disney in a rhythm game. But in reality, it’s basically just a complicated music player that ends songs if you don’t press the buttons just right. Lovers of the Kingdom Hearts franchise could get a huge kick out of revisiting all of the music. Between the campaign, multiplayer modes online and offline (which are sub-par at best), challenges, and different teams to play as, there is plenty to do for those who want to relive the past games like this. The World That Never Was, Tron, Traverse Town, Castle Oblivion, and Destiny Island tracks allow players to literally stroll with Sora through some of the franchise’s best moments. However, rhythm game enthusiasts or newcomers to the franchise could, and honestly should, skip this game because there isn’t much to it other than a big ol’ nostalgia trip for fans.
