3.5/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory.

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, the rhythm game we've been asking for, for like, ages (ever since Theatrhythm). Is it all that we asked for? Well, in many ways, yes. This game is made by the same team, and features a pretty engaging and challenging gameplay system that only uses a few buttons. It's the essence of simple to learn and hard to master. Firstly, let me state there is a metric fuckton of content in this game. Hundreds of songs, each with 3 difficulty levels, plus multiple modes, and even a daily aspect to it (where you play certain songs that change every day). If you want it to, this game can keep you busy for a very long time, and that's not even touching the online multiplayer. There are a few issues I have though. First, this isn't a big deal, but I wish there were models in this game or skins for models at least. Having only KH1 Sora kinda makes going through all of the KH2, KHDDD, and KH3 stuff kinda weird. Not the end of the world or anything, but just a little nitpick that bothered me personally. The other thing is KH3 kinda got shafted in general in this game. Most worlds in this game have two songs each, an overworld and a battle theme, but KH3 worlds only get one song per world. Now this is probably partially due to how the KH3 worlds use a different gameplay style relying on pre-rendered videos so this can run on the Switch (well, also the fact that this game runs on Unity and not UE4), but it still feels a little disappointing, especially as neither the overworld or battle theme gets used for the Frozen world. My major problem with this game is that important, canon story is tied to it. Now normally, I'm all for this kind of thing. Nomura's weird and wacky way of delivering story I love, but I think I just didn't like the way this one was structured. As a guy who doesn't play rhythm games much, having to rush through and grind through this game in order to get to the important story bits that don't even show up until the very end (as most of the cutscenes in the game are just a recapping of the series) isn't very fun. If this was just a non-canon game or one with no story, I'd be able to leisurely play through this game and enjoy my time with it. It'd even be better if the story was longer and spread out more throughout the game but, again, as it's all at the end (and not very long) it doesn't feel worth it. It feels like a repeat of Re:Coded all over again. Overall, this is a competently made rhythm game that's only tied down by having canon important story scenes in it which, when that is one of the main reasons you come to this series, sucks as a huge fan.