Review: Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory
“When you walk away, you don’t hear me say, please, oh baby, don’t go. Simple and clean is the way that you’re making me feel tonight, it’s hard to let it go.” Longtime fans of the Kingdom Hearts series are more than familiar with these song lyrics, sung beautifully by Utada Hikaru during the first game’s opening and closing sequences. For many, Utada’s lyrics are nostalgic, and nostalgia serves as the main driving force behind this latest release in the series.
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory is a rhythm game developed by both Square Enix and Indieszero. Considered the fourteenth installment in the series, the game is dedicated to the music of the franchise and serves as a clever retelling of the series thus far. The “story” is told from the perspective of Kairi, one of the game’s main characters, as she dives into her own memories in order to discover where the protagonist, Sora, has gone after the events of Kingdom Hearts III, and its Re Mind DLC.
Players press buttons with proper timing in order to receive as high of a grade as possible on each song. Missing or incorrectly entering button inputs results in a “Miss” and too many of these lead to songs being failed. The familiar difficulty modes of “Beginner,” “Standard,” and “Proud” are back once again, so players can customize the challenge of the songs to fit their needs. As they complete songs, players will have the ability to unlock several three-party teams throughout the game’s story campaign, referred to as the “World Tour.” These teams can be leveled up in order to gain both more health and stronger attack power. Songs are split into three distinct groups. Field Battles are stages where players complete tracks while running through waves of heartless, nobodies, and unversed. These are the main type of stages in the game. Next are Memory Dives, which while similar to Field Battles, are completed over a music video of cutscenes from previous games. The final types of stages are Boss Battles in which players face notable past enemies.
Image: Square Enix and Indieszero via ign.com
The musical talent of Yoko Shimomura is on full display in this title. Her ability to interweave original tracks alongside well-known Disney tunes into one cohesive sound demonstrates her mastery of musical composition. Keeping that in mind however, not every track from the series’ history made it to the party. The music featured in the Kingdom Hearts level “Deep Jungle” is absent. This is due to the fact that the rights to Tarzan are owned by the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the original author. Additionally, the music from the Pirates of the Caribbean themed levels from Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III are absent for similar reasons. While these omissions are a bit jarring, they do not detract from the overall experience.
I was lucky enough to play the title on the PlayStation 5 console and it ran quickly with little to no load times. Load times are reportedly longer on the Switch version of the game, but overall gamers across the board seem to agree that the game runs smoothly.
Completing the final song of the game does offer players a few new cutscenes which set up the future of the series, so I would not recommend this game to newcomers. This is a game created for fans who have played through the entire series, it’s a love letter to the music that helped create so many incredible memories.
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory Rating: 8.5/10