Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory review

Introduction
Another Kingdom Hearts game has appeared, most likely the Kingdom Hearts franchise will keep going until I am at least 80 years old. Kingdom Hearts Memory of Melody is a great game for newcomers and old-timers that have been playing all the Kingdom Hearts. I have played all the Kingdom Hearts games so far but this was a different genre than the other Kingdom Hearts games. Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory is a rhythmic game that will test you with insane reflex and of course, I hope that you can feel the beat. I have a lot of trouble with rhythmic games but I think I got by with this game, that is till I tried some of the proud missions.

This game is not for people that cannot control their rage or for casual gamers, there is a campaign mode and it will retell all the stories from past Kingdom Hearts games. There are many different songs but there are also some missing songs, mostly from Kingdom Hearts 3. If you are a casual gamer, the chances will be that you won’t be able to complete the main story with all missions completed. I won’t write a story section in this review since it is mostly a rehash from all the events so far, there is also a setup for Kingdom Hearts 4 (or another spin-off before that) but I won’t spoil the ending.

What did I think before playing Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory?
The chances of us pre-ordering a Kingdom Hearts game is high, we have followed the story so far. It might get a bit fuzzy sometimes but the story so far seems clear.
It was not long before seeing the trailer that we had played another rhythmic game called, The Nightmare Before Christmas Oogie’s Revenge.
We are always hoping for a continuation of the story in Kingdom Hearts so we immediately pre-ordered this game. This time around you can even buy it on the Nintendo Switch.
We bought it for the PS4 though since the Nintendo Switch can have some delay when pushing the controller buttons, this is a problem we don’t want in a rhythmic game!
The graphics look really neat and we had learned that there would be many guest characters would be available, we thought we could mix some teams around but we only learned when playing this was not the case.
The soundtracks are great but there are many of them missing but we only learned that after playing the game. We learned that while playing that many things we thought from seeing the footage before playing were wrong.
Either we misunderstood or if it was wrongly marketed, I don’t know but this has not happened to us before, so this was a new one for us.

I rate Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory with an 8.0 before playing.
Not everything was clear before buying the game but it is still a great game that we do not regret pre-ordering. Further in the review, we will look if the game was worth our money as well.

Gameplay
There are different musical stages that you will face in Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory but most of them will consist of field battle stages. In these stages you will see your team running, they will be running on automatic like running games from mobile games. There will be three lanes as your team will consist of three members, despite what we thought initially there won’t be party member swapping or using characters from different worlds. There are four main teams but you have to get pretty far in the main story before unlocking them all. There are also a lot of missing songs and guest characters, even important guest characters that have appeared in previous Kingdom Hearts games. Two guest characters immediately jump to mind that are missing, Jack Skellington and Auron. This would have also been a perfect game to tie up some loose ends or give us Cloud as a guest character.

There are also boss battles in Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory but there are only a few available, there are a lot of missing boss battles and bonus boss battles that they should have added. A Sephiroth boss battle that goes along with the one-winged angel song? Marluxia from Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and many more. These stages will look different as your characters will be walking around and fighting the boss. These can be very hard but that is mostly due to the fact that you cannot practice these stages well since there are only a few in the game. You will also find memory dive stages where your characters will float through a movie, these are very annoying since the movies will distract you. There will be spinning and flashes of light, good luck keeping your focus. You are able to synthesize items but this is only needed for a couple of songs or collecting cards, this function is mostly underused in the game.

When playing a song you will need to push the correct button when a heartless is near on the beat, you have a circle that helps you time in defeating the heartless on the correct note. On beginner and standard, this is do-able for most casual gamers but in the campaign, you will also need to clear missions on proud. There are many casual gamers that are unable to complete the whole campaign due to being forced to play the hardest difficulty. On proud, you will need ultra-fast reflexes and rhythmic beat bashing on your controller to even survive a song. I am really bad at these kinds of games but I got by but there even songs that I could not beat or barely. You are going to need a lot of practice! If you ever need help in a song you can try to use one of the five available items in the game, one of them summons King Mickey as a playable character!

Depending on when you push the button you will get a message above the heartless saying excellent, good, or miss. If you have the perfect timing your excellent will be in a rainbow color, when you have multiple excellent or good hits you will build a chain that will increase your score. To get an A rank you will need seven million points or more in one song, for an A+++ you will need nine million points. To get an A+++ you will need a long chain with many perfect excellent timings, if you have an all excellent score you will get a special message that says, all excellent. If you want to complete all the feats that are in the game you will need to complete all songs with a full excellent full chain, sorry not going to happen with me, my rhythmic timing is off. Even though this is a very hard game, you will have a lot of fun in many of the iconic Kingdom Hearts songs! After every song you will gain rhyme points, these will keep giving you new collector cards or items while increasing!

I rate the gameplay of Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory with a 7.0.
There is a level up system but is very barebones and does not do much, they could have scrapped the whole level mechanic and you would not even notice. There are loads of missing guest characters and missing songs. There are even complete worlds that are missing! Twilight town and Pirates of the Caribbean from Kingdom Hearts 3 jump to mind. Twilight town is available for other games though. The collection of cards is fun but for some odd reason, you need to collect each card twice, one gold and one platinum. There are many missing boss battles and missed opportunities, this would have also been a great game to tie up some loose ends before starting a new saga. I had a lot of fun with the gameplay but it feels rushed and is very barebones at certain points of the game, I also dislike being forced to play on the most difficult mode. My normal method is to build up in games that I know that I am not good at.

Sound and Graphics
The graphics in this game are pretty mediocre at best, a lot of the levels look the same even though they are from different games but they did add multiple variants of enemies. 90% of the game is rehashed from older games, there is barely any new content in this game that I could classify as new. You will need to complete the whole game before getting the set-up for the next Kingdom Hearts. There is no cutscene at the beginning or midway through to keep you engaged to play through the game. The game is also missing some guest characters, I qualify these under graphics and animations, I was very unhappy with all these missing things.

I rate the sound and graphics of Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory with a 7.0
The soundtracks are great in this game as well as the sound effects but there are just too many missing songs and worlds to give the sound rating a perfect score. There could have been a lot of improvements before the game shipped but nonetheless the content that is in the game is good.

What did I think after playing Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory
We played this game on the PS4 while taking turns, The campaign mode is very fun but there are some serious issues that might need to be fixed.
The first problem that jumps to mind is that the difficulty is all over the place, especially the missions. You can have a very easy level with easy to complete missions, then the next mission is suddenly a very hard level on proud.
After finally completing the proud challenge you feel like you can tackle one more but when you arrive on the next level there is suddenly a mission on beginner mode. This also makes it hard for casual gamers to beat, I don’t see many casual gamers completing one winged angel on proud with 50% health points left over. Another difficult mission is where you need to get an A++ on a very difficult song called Vector to the Heavens.

The guest characters are also very random, there are missing guest characters but they also do not appear sometimes. Despite the flaws and hard difficulty, we managed to complete all 354 missions.
There is also a battle mode and a co-op mode, you can select tracks in a special menu after unlocking the songs but you cannot complete missions in this mode.
We tried to platinum the game but we gave up because it became pretty frustrating after getting 30 full chains on proud.
All in all, we have had a great time while playing this game but I think they could have made this game much better!

I rate Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory after playing with a 7.0.
The game has just too many flaws and missing songs, the difficulty curve is very weird but nonetheless, this is a very fun game that every Kingdom Hearts fan will enjoy. This game is also needed to know the set-up for the next Kingdom Hearts!

My Personal Rating
I really enjoyed this game but I was very disappointed by the lack of missing guest characters and missing worlds.  I think they could have easily added more worlds and songs, more characters would also be nice. I missed Kairi as a playable character. There are many different modes and I hope there will be more songs added in the future but I would be sad if they would sell it as DLC. There are also very few songs playable in the co-op mode.

My personal rating of Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory is 6.6.
I felt more frustrated while playing this game instead of fun.

Pros and Cons

Pros
– Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory is a great entry point for new Kingdom Hearts fans.
– There are 150 iconic songs in Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory.
– Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory has many different modes for you to play.
– If you are a hardcore gamer and love rhythmic games this is the challenge that you are looking for.
– There are four teams to choose from in this game.

Cons
– There are missing songs and worlds in Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory.
– The game does not tie up loose ends before setting up a new saga.
– Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory has missing guest characters.
– The difficulty curve is all over the place.
– Completing Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory with a platinum status was impossible to do for us.

Despite Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory having its fair share of pros and cons, we had a really fun time playing this game. I would recommend this game to anyone that is looking to start with the Kingdom Hearts series or wants to play a rhythmic game.
The final rating of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Melody is…drumroll…

7.3

Let me know what you think about the game in the comments.
I hope you liked reading the review, I hope to see you in the next review!