Step up to the beat in the latest spinoff from the Kingdom Hearts series; Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. Following the events of Kingdom Hearts III: REmind, the game has Kairi going into her own heart in an attempt to find Sora who supposedly sacrificed his life for hers at the end of the events in Kingdom Hearts III. Kairi now in a deep sleep must retrace her memories as she searches for Sora’s own heart.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory is a 2020 rhythm action game, it is developed by Square Enix Creative & Indieszero, it is published by Square Enix. It is currently available on Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

Editor’s Note: Near complete to complete spoilers for Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory may be present within this review. Slight spoilers for Kingdom Hearts III and Kingdom Hearts III: REmind may also be present within this review.

Kingdom Hearts changes the tune of battle in Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory.

In what honestly only felt like natural progression, Kingdom Hearts finally has a rhythm game. The music featured in Kingdom Hearts has (pun intended) always been one of it’s most memorable elements. It sort of feels like this should have been done ages ago, but the same could be said with a Kingdom Hearts fighting game. Which coincidentally was the original plan for Dissidia Final Fantasy, yes it was initially meant to be a Kingdom Hearts spinoff, but Tetsuya Nomura felt uncomfortable seeing Disney characters legit fighting each other. Eventually, Nomura would be more comfortable exploring Kingdom Hearts into different genres and even gave a Dissidia inspired mode to Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. And as many probably expected, it should come to no surprise that Kingdom Hearts as a rhythm is an almost effortless adaptation.

Play out the much beloved Kingdom Hearts OST in ‘Melody of Memory’.

THE GOOD: Taking place after REmind, Sora sacrifices his heart & thus his life for Kairi’s own revival having been killed by Xehanort prior to their victory over him. Kairi goes into a slumber Ansem the Wise who’s being aided by a few of the Nobodies that recovered their hearts at the end of Kingdom Hearts III. As she sleeps Kairi enters her own heart in order to investigate clues into finding Sora through memories of herself and Sora. There she encounters an illusion of Xehanort who nearly takes over her before she’s protected by the remnants of Sora’s heart proving he may still be alive somewhere. Kairi (being controlled by Sora) defeats Xehanort and as a reward the latter helps Kairi by reminding her of her childhood. Kairi awakens and tells Ansem about her findings and Xehanort’s “other side” clue. This is apparently a fictional world existing outside of their own reality according to Ansem. Kairi & Riku learn about a girl from Other Side who can currently be found in Final World, after Fairy Godmother takes them to the girl. Riku tells her of his dream of Shibuya who determines that it’s a city from her home world Quadratum. Riku opens a portal to Quadratum to continue the search for Sora as Kairi returns to their reality to finish her keyblade training now guided by Master Aqua. Yen Sin tasks Donald & Goofy to tell their friends of the current situation & Mickey to Scala ad Caelum to investigate the revived ancient Keyblade Masters & their possible connection to Quadratum.

For the first time in series history Kairi takes over as lead protagonist (sort of).

Kairi being the focus of the story is a nice change of past, feels like we’ve delved plenty into the individual stories of Sora, Riku, King Mickey, and the BBS crew. While she’s not exactly 100% playable (which is a bit of a ball buster) she’s clearly the main star of about 80% of the game’s plot. It’s mostly about her attempting to revive Sora, but we do get more backstory into her past which is always neat. I think Kairi is one of the weakest characters in terms of development despite her popularity and the fact that people have wanted to see her wield a keyblade for several years. A full on 2.8 like experience with Kairi training under Aqua would be a neat parallel to the actual 2.8 that featured a playable Aqua traversing the World of Darkness prior to the ending of Kingdom Hearts 1. The combat is like any other rhythm. The goal is to time the on-screen button commands within the limit to press said button command. In ‘Memory of Melody’ this is representing in the shape of basic & advanced Kingdom Hearts attack animations towards Heartless and Nobody enemies. The more difficult the command prompt, the more unique the attack. The main object is to reach a high enough score with level ranking increasing to move on to the next world. The leveling is actually required for the next world to be unlocked which at times can feel like a bit of a grind, but it also adds on to the practice necessary for these games. Sora and co. have a health bar and if you miss the timing on a button command this can lead to hp dipping with an empty health bar obviously meaning game over.

Rhythm combat is an unsurprising fit for Kingdom Hearts in Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory.

There are boss fights in certain stages which sort of changes things up a bit and they each include their own boss track. Disney characters also have their own worlds with their respective characters being playable, but these are expectedly not the focus of the game as it’s based within Kairi’s memories. Multiple characters throughout the core cast can be unlocked, though the Disney characters are mostly locked to their respective worlds. These worlds have unique sound and button commands for added difficulty and variety. King Mickey acts as a support character for healing and it also has summons. Clearing objectives per stage unlock new songs from the 140+ song catalog. There’s some co-op featured like getting the highest score, facing off against AI in three out of fives, and best 2 out of 3 that has unique features such as moves to stop your opponent from scoring. The Switch version (which is being reviewed) features a Battle Royale mode supporting up to eight players.

Believe or not ‘Memory of Melody’ features a leveling system.

THE BAD: This game is (depending on how you see it) surprisingly hard. Like crazy difficult small mistakes and poorly timed presses come frequently. This can lead to a hair pulling marathon of low level scores and low level scores means slow leveling & perhaps more importantly slower progress because you have to be a certain level for certain doors leading into new worlds. At the same time though you have to commend Square for keeping the rhythm game aesthetic authentic. These games have a history of being extremely difficult often taking a ton of practice to get the hang of (my time spent with Guitar Hero & Rocksmith still haunts me). The story is kind of sort only taking a few hours to complete depending on how much trouble you have, but it is a spinoff rhythm so don’t come in expecting a huge game because of that reason. Granted you’ll get more hours if you complete everything but if you’re only chasing the story it’s roughly about 8-10 hours. Apparently completing the game can take upwards of 60 hours depending one individual experience so there’s that to look forward. Unfortunately, outside of the initial theme and end credits no new songs specifically for the game were developed.

Play as multiple characters in the new musical based battlefield.OVERALL THOUGHTS: Kingdom Hearts: Memory of Melody in some ways is a typical Kingdom Hearts spinoff, but in a lot of ways Square Enix really went a fair bit of distance to provide a unique KH playthrough something that’s also typical of the spinoffs (which is a good thing). It’s disappointing that this is probably the only game, to my knowledge that doesn’t feature music exclusive at the time of release to it. However, it’s possible that an original score of sorts was in the works but COViID-19 got in the way before the finalization of these songs coming into production was possible. As it stands though, for what feels like a much lower budgeted title compared to past spinoffs ‘Melody of Memory’ stands on it’s own as a good side game with follow-up storytelling that connects to the future of the series. And it takes Kingdom Hearts’ into it’s rightful place in the realm of rhythm games. I’m especially impressed with the game’s performance as a series first on the Nintendo Switch. Hopefully this entices Square to at least port Kingdom Hearts 1.5, 2.5, and 2.8 over to the hybrid console in the very near future.