Aside from the greater volume of foes, you’ll have to contend with attacking enemies simultaneously (hence the three attack buttons), and more.

Melody of Memory employs some fun ways to make its core mechanic more complex as the difficulty amps up. (I was a little bothered by the fact that Sora could hit the Large Body on the stomach after years of having to run around behind them to attack, but, we all have to make sacrifices sometimes.) Sora’s jump can be used both to reach floating enemies, as well as to dodge attacks of foes, and you’ll want to keep your consecutive-hit streak up by making sure not to miss crates and barrels in your way. Some enemies will die after one attack, but some, like the Large Body Heartless, may require multiple hits to take down. And the score itself does a lot of heavy lifting in making these levels fun to tap along to.īut the developers have also made some smart choices in adapting the Kingdom Hearts bestiary to be beaten by beats. Hell, the first thought I had while playing was “How did it take this long to get a Kingdom Hearts music game,” because it just makes so much sense.

Yoko Shimomura’s fantastic soundtrack work is a perfect fit for the music genre, with the Kingdom Hearts’ scores combining iconic Disney and Square Enix sounds, while delivering new indelible tracks all their own. The easiest thing to say about Melody of Memory is that, unsurprisingly, the score is phenomenal. If you have much rhythm gaming background, I recommend starting with Standard for a fun but still rewarding challenge.Īnd I was by no means an expert by the time I finished each of the demo’s four tracks, which range from Traverse Town to Alice in Wonderland, and selections from Kingdom hearts: Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 0.2. I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit playing Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and other music games, so I actually find myself wanting to fill in the gaps between notes on Melody’s easiest difficulty. There’s a slider you can adjust in the menu, but I wish it had a matching example to showcase where the calibration was on your respective TV.įor the most part, though, the base setting worked well for me, especially as I quickly bumped the difficulty up from Beginner to Standard or even Proud. That said, I do hope the full game has a bit more of a calibration option. Playing on PS4, the X, L1, or R1 buttons can all be used to attack, Circle is jump (and holding it down lets Sora glide), while you hit Triangle to employ context-sensitive spell attacks, similar to Situation Commands in KH3.Īnd in that regard, Melody of Memory really works well - the swing of Sora’s keyblade takes the time that it should, his jump and glide have the right weight and speed, and the timing of it all felt true to both the series’ main combat and the beats I was trying to match. The beat-matching mechanics are actually a pretty solid approximation of Kingdom Hearts’ combat.

Kingdom hearts pc demo