Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory just got announced for the Switch and other major consoles, and it’s a rhythm game, featuring the wonderful music by Yoko Shimomura. While it’s not what we were hoping for as Switch fans (A Kingdom Hearts All-in-One Collection), it sounds like a fun trip through memory lane, but, and this a big but, this game has major story factors for the future of the series revolving around Kairi and how they’ll be able to find Sora.
Now, I’m a huge fan of the series and have bought multiple systems to play each entry as soon as it’s out (A GBA for Chain of Memories… oof), but this is where I’m really considering my passion for this series and how far I’m willing to go. I’m tired of the lore dumps being unnecessarily put in derivative games. The existence of the mobile game, Union X, is incredibly frustrating for me as a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series. It’s super repetitive, easy, and very minor cutscenes are given as a meager reward for your patience for a majority of the experience.
However, there are elements in the mobile game that are incredibly important, and this is where Square Enix lost me with Kingdom Hearts III. The foretellers portrayed in this mobile game seem to be the lead antagonists for the future of the series, and at multiple times, KH3 refers to Union X‘s characters. I am left confused, annoyed, and just bewildered as to how a repetitive mobile game with microtransactions up the wazoo can be so important. I am left with a question: Do I struggle through this tedious game that has arduously been updated over the past few years so I can understand the story, or do I sit through a bunch of text-based cutscenes on YouTube? Neither sound appealing, but this is where I stand now as a Kingdom Hearts fan, and I’m sure a lot of others feel the same way. To be honest, I’ve kinda drifted off the series a little because of the lore being dumped on to the mobile game.
And then there’s the Nintendo audience. They have never had a major game in the series on their platforms. They’ve had 358/2 Days, Re: Coded, Dream Drop Distance, and now Melody of Memory, which are all at different points of the timeline. How are they supposed to know what is going on in this new rhythm installment? Square Enix really needs to look at how they’re telling the story of KH to its core audience, because most will scratch their heads and move on. A collection would help a lot to keep Nintendo fans up to speed, but Tetsuya Nomura and the team really needs to consider how to keep their console fans up-to-date with their mobile shenanigans and other offshoots.
Do you care about Kingdom Hearts at this point or will you just stick to series with standalone entries like Xenoblade Chronicles? Let us know!
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