Square Enix Announces Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, a Rhythm Game with Hinted Plot

Square Enix announced Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory today, a rhythm game for consoles set in the Kingdom Hearts universe.

From what was shown in the trailer, it seems to have fairly straightforward rhythm controls, where three buttons correspond to the three characters, Sora, Donald and Goofy, and you hit the button when prompted to in time to a song. However, there also seem to be boss fights and other weird elements that might make the game more interesting and challenging. Some characters beside the core trio make appearances as well, such as Hercules from, um, Hercules, and Aladdin from, well, Aladdin, among other original Kingdom Hearts characters.

There’s no analysis I can do here, as Kingdom Hearts is already like another language to me and the trailer is in Japanese, a language I studied for a year and understand almost nothing in. That said, some “plot” stuff seems to be happening in the second half, and if I know anything about Kingdom Hearts, its that series director Tetsuya Nomura loves to put super important plot points into its spinoff games. So if you want to understand Kingdom Hearts IV when it comes out in 2059, you might need to play (or read a Wikipedia article about) this game in order to comprehend it.

What I’m most excited about for this game is the potential to include music not just from Kingdom Hearts history, but also Final Fantasy and Disney! As an avid fan of music from both franchises, having one place where I could jam to both “One-Winged Angel” and “I’ll Make a Man out of You” would be perfection, as long as the actual rhythm gameplay is enjoyable.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory launches 2020 worldwide on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch. That last platform is significant, as it’s the first Kingdom Hearts game to come to Nintendo’s hybrid console, and also likely the reason for the graphical downgrade from Kingdom Hearts III’s gorgeous visuals.