Until now exclusive to consoles, Kingdom Hearts recently appeared on the PC (and a little earlier on Xbox) to the delight of players, especially for those who finally want to mod "properly" the games of the license. Rediscovering this license as a whole takes time, and Melody of Memory allows, in any case in the intention, to return to the major events that have punctuated the series over the episodes. It was almost as a novice that I went through the game, having only played the first game in the series... and I admit that it just made me want to dive back into the license, to discover the saga in more detail.
Aladdin is with us on this track!
MoM (the acronym of Melody of Memory) is a rhythm game that takes up some ideas from Theater Final Fantasy, except that instead of horizontal scrolling and notes on the top of the screen, we move on a very in-depth layout, with the many visitable areas of the games in the background. From the Islands of Destiny to the City of Traverse, passing through the many worlds of Disney, the game is not stingy in content, even if we will see the end of the main scenario quickly. The game will indeed roughly summarize the different episodes published to date through Kairi's point of view. If like me, your knowledge is limited to one or two episodes, do not count on Melody of Memory to catch up on the whole story and understand all the ins and outs. Certainly, we will find many emblematic places of KH, but the narration being summary, we cannot count on this single episode.
Here on a Standard difficulty level
On the gameplay side, as indicated a few lines above, we are faced with a rather successful rhythm game. Getting started is simple and explained via the few tutorials at the start. On an Xbox controller, you use the A/LB/RB keys to attack monsters and other obstacles. To jump and fly, we will press / hold the B key and, to cast a spell, the Y key will be our ally (to hit a crystal used for the incantation). The left joystick will also be used in our flight sequences to move horizontally on the track and retrieve floating musical notes. We will quickly skip the first difficulty mode (Beginner) which does not honor the different sound tracks, the notes not always being audible in the score. As often, it is the last difficulty mode that will offer the most faithful score (Expert), but difficult to attack directly with this mode requiring a lot of reactivity and dexterity. To grab the 3 stars for each track, you will have to complete a series of objectives (reach a certain score / miss few marks / do not use items for example) on the three types of courses offered:
- Standard combat: music based on where you are, where you will face the various standard enemies of the game. Heartless, Dream Swallower or even Nobodies are on the program.
- Memory dives: a bit special course on a background of cutscenes.
- Boss fight: level where you face a boss in an arena.
Our heroes accumulate experience after each stage!
Each level will offer its own set of rewards and a certain amount of experience. Note that, depending on where you are, the trio of heroes will not always be the same (from the classic trio of KH1 composed of Sora, Donald and Goofy to that of BBS with Aqua, Tera and Ventus ). We will even be entitled to guests on certain levels (Aladdin in Agrabah for example). The soundtrack of Kingdom Hearts being what it is, we can only salute the quality of the music, always so beautiful. I haven't done 100% on my side, but we can easily count on 50h+ if we want to unlock everything!
Graphically, sorry for those leaving KH3, the quality will not be of this level. We end up with a title close to the rendering of the remasters published a few years ago now (or weeks for PC players). For my part, my faith, I did not find it ugly. The advantage is that it runs well on most machines.
The game is interspersed with cutscenes that very roughly summarize certain events.
Being a customer of games of this style, I come out rather enthusiastic about this MoM. Too bad, however, that the game is not more welcoming to newcomers. It's almost a clean license KH, all the opuses are interconnected and it's difficult to find your bearings if you only have snippets, it makes attaching to the universe a bit difficult... or, conversely, for players like me, it will make you want to go back to the old games to have a more complete view of this oh so rich work!
The title has been available on PC since March 30, at a slightly salty price of €59,99. That said, on consoles, the price is the same.
KINGDOM HEARTS Melody of Memory - 59,99€
