Rhythm games are one of the highest points in this medium's slow crawl towards maturity. The best rhythm games encapsulate everything that makes interactive entertainment special, offering up a unique synthesis of sound, visuals, and inputs that cannot be replicated outside of gaming. Players are able to achieve a certain kind of synesthesia through entering a rhythmic trance brought about by bright colors and timed button presses. When done right, such as in Dance Dance Revolution, DJMAX, or Project Diva, developers can create more memorable worlds in minutes than most triple-A extravaganzas can in hours.

But how, then, does this genre work when applied to something like Kingdom Hearts? Square Enix's two-decade yarn centered on friendship and parallel worlds is diametrically opposed to things like brevity or coherence. To be a fan of this baffling yet sublime franchise is to understand that you're in for a wild ride of lengthy cutscenes, vital lore tied to spin-offs, and characters that are all basically clones of each other... or something. Look, I've been into this franchise since childhood, and I'm still fuzzy on some of the finer details.

And that's precisely where Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory comes into play. If you're a longtime lover of this series and its sprawling lore, Square Enix has made the perfect way to revisit the story without having to replay every game or rewatch every cutscene. It's quite the ingenious approach: strip the story down to its rawest essentials, then recontextualize all of it from the perspective of Kairi, who narrates the game's centerpiece World Tour mode.

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That mode is where players will spend most of their time initially, as it's the primary method of progressing the story and unlocking music. You navigate a comically large map in your Gummi Ship, and go through each game in order of release, playing two or three songs from levels in each game. As you advance, you build up a stash of different crafting materials dependent on both your progress and your performance, which can be used to unlock new songs and other collectibles. While it's all pretty straightforward stuff, it's done well and presented in a clean, orderly fashion that should be familiar to series fans.

Of course, some concessions are made. There are missing worlds here and there, most notably Tarzan, and the game's story really is the rawest of raw details in some areas. 358/2's wonderful narrative continues to get watered down to its most uninteresting parts - a trend leftover from the HD collection's awful recap - and Kingdom Hearts III gets a surprising narrative shaft.

That being said, I'd hazard to guess most people aren't coming to a rhythm game for a blow-by-blow recap of the franchise's story. Melody of Memories functions primarily as a way to shine a spotlight on Yoko Shimomura's vast body of work done over the past two decades, and from that angle, it's a complete knockout. With over 140 tracks, and most of those being Shimomura's compositions (some licensed Disney tracks, like "Circle of Life," "Let It Go," and "A Whole New World," also make appearances), this game is a magnificent love letter to the composer and all that she's accomplished.

I say this because, for the first time, players are forced to appreciate the music in a more diegetic way. Normally, these pieces serve as a backdrop for the games - punctuating cutscenes, creating atmosphere, and stirring up the will to fight. Here, however, the gameplay forces you to look at each intricate composition in a new light, drawing attention to each chord, each beat, each note. This is a labor of love, meant to celebrate the franchise's musical accomplishments, as well as invite players to actually feel the music reflected in the game's mechanics.

Those mechanics, by the way, are some of the most polished this side of a Konami or PM Studio rhythm release. There are three primary methods of interacting with notes here - Field Stages, Memory Dives, and Boss Battles, all of which come with different twists on note highways. The brunt of what you'll be doing are Field Stages, where three characters run down a note highway and smash through enemies, crates, and barrels to reach the end of a song. While the presentation can seem a bit busy at first, you're basically doing the same thing you would in a DJMAX or a Superbeat Xonic - hitting and holding buttons in time to the music. Once you get over the mental hurdle of watching characters run, jump, and slash through levels, you'll acclimate pretty quickly.

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These Field Battles are the highlights of the game, for me, as they do a fantastic job of blending the tactile satisfaction of a rhythm game with the punchy combat of Kingdom Hearts. Every combat sound effect is present here, and it's wild to hear them play in sequence to the music - especially on softer songs built around gentle strings or soft pianos. It might seem jarring, but honestly, pulling off combos (called "Chains" here) in time to a more stripped-down track only serves to highlight just how ornate and bespoke each piece of music is.

I'm less jazzed, though, about Memory Dives and Boss Battles. The former is fairly straightforward, and not entirely dissimilar to something like Groove Coaster, but it lacks the satisfying punch of Field Battles. Meanwhile, Boss Battles are a bit of an aesthetic mess, with an ugly curve to the note highway that makes timing notes more tricky than it should be, and frustrating QTE bits that don't place enough trust in the game's core mechanics. These are not bad modes, per se, but I question their necessity, as they really feel tacked on to give players more variance. As a rhythm game veteran, I'd much rather sacrifice that variance for consistency, especially considering how great the core experience is.

There's plenty of that core experience to go around, too. Melody of Memory is stuffed to the gills with content - much more than I'm used to from a modern rhythm game. On top of the massive tracklist and the lengthy campaign, there's a robust Free Play mode to dig around in, a huge collection of collectible art pieces and lore bits, and compelling co-op and competitive options. There are also three different core difficulties, accompanied by three challenge-type level variants. If you're a core rhythm gaming fan who's felt burnt, in recent years, by games that rely too much on DLC, or aren't into loose interpretations of the genre like Thumper or Crypt of the Necrodancer, this is absolutely a title for all the oldheads in the crowd.

But if you're not a rhythm gaming person, and are just in this for the Kingdom Hearts stuff, should you pick this up? Absolutely. Not only is Melody of Memory one of the very best introductions to rhythm gaming out there, but it's a joyful celebration of how far this franchise has come so far. It's a clever and inventive way to engage with the franchise's music - turning to the non-diegetic into the diegetic, and wrapping the signature combat around that. While learning the basics of a core rhythm gaming title, you'll get to experience this franchise's music again in ways I never thought you'd be able to. So, even if this is a genre you wouldn't normally play, I would still recommend picking this one up.

(Also, y'know. There's new lore. You like lore, right? Of course, you do.)

So, while some track ommissions and questionable mode choices are small blemishes, Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memories is a mostly astonishing title. Certainly, it's one that's only really meant for Kingdom Hearts fans and/or rhythm gaming enthusiasts, but really, that's all it needs to be. There's something to be said for knowing your audiences and playing directly to them, as opposed to trying to make everyone happy with bland homogeneity.

Instead of cranking out a scattershot product meant for broad appeal, Indieszero made a smart choice by leaning into what makes rhythm games work. With very few gimmicks, they took one of gaming's most convoluted, longest-running stories and spun it into a digestible package that hits most of the narrative hold notes it needs to. The developer understands the unique sensation of merging story and music, sound and input better than most, and it shows in this sublime, must-have experience.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory may only be for a certain audience, but for that audience, this is as good as it gets.

A Switch copy of Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory was provided by Square Enix for this review. The game will be available on November 13 for Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

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