Happy Melody of Memory release day, Kingdom Hearts fans! What better time to dust off the blog and share some of Clickbait Boyfriend’s hot takes on the demo version that launched a few weeks ago? We’ll be back later this month and beyond with thoughts on the real game, but for now, let’s dive in (to the heart) and see if CBB can get past his distaste for rhythm games of the Kingdom Hearts variety. Never forget Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts II. Never forget.
As an added bonus, enjoy some classic album covers starring your favorite characters!
(New to the series? You can catch up on years of CBB here!)
“I hate this. They didn’t have to do this. Where it used to come across as ethereal and very beautiful, this just comes across as really trite. It just sounds really forced to me. I’m sure part of that is just because I know this melody.”
-on “Dearly Beloved: Jazz ReMix”
One of these days we’ll do a bonus blog where CBB ranks every version of “Dearly Beloved.” For now, rest assured that the newest addition to the catalogue sits firmly near the bottom of the list.
“Look at them! Chibi! Chibi-chan!”
-on loading screen Sora, Donald, and Goofy
A surprising pandemic media discovery has been that CBB loves when animated characters turn into small, cute versions of themselves during particular scenes, so those loading screens really scratch that itch. On an unrelated note, at one point in my life, I thought Clickbait Boyfriend was maybe kind of dark and a little edgy (he likes heavy metal, after all). Ah, the naïveté.
“I’m interested in this!”
-on gliding
Gliding is far and away CBB’s favorite part of Kingdom Hearts, so this is perhaps the most predictable reaction of this post.
“That was hard as s#!t. I hate rhythm games like this. This is like the minigame where I’m like ‘please let this be over, it feels so deeply unfair.'”
-on the tutorial level
To be completely fair to CBB, the tutorial level did seem kind of hard. Fortunately, I’ve been honing my rhythm game skills with karaoke in Yakuza, so I feel prepared for some complicated rhythm fun. CBB has only been practice by noodling around on his real world guitar. Yep, I’m definitely the rhythm music master here!
“Oh, the Wonderland theme from Kingdom Hearts 1, I’ve been dying to have a rhythm game version of that, it’s the most memorable song ever!”
-on some soundtrack less-than-highlights
What did the Wonderland theme ever do to you?
“Okay, that was more my speed.”
-on Wonderland, post-throwing shade
After all of that hate, CBB doesn’t seem to be complaining as much when he’s succeeding.
“I wanna plug in a Guitar Hero controller and do that with this game.”
-on maybe getting ahead of himself a little here
Let’s calm down a little bit, buddy. You’ve gotten a passing grade on two levels. Maybe get more comfortable with the normal controller before you go full Through the Fire and Flames on this.
“Did they purposely throw it back to KH1 graphics?”
-on nostalgic aesthetic choices
Nah, Square Enix just lost all of their source code again, so they decided to recreate the first game for the third time just for giggles.
“Did I die? I hadn’t been paying attention to my health bar. Still got a B though, I dunno why.”
-on failing, and yet still passing
This is the point at which we both got a little too cocky. I’d been reading online about how “Wave of Darkness” was supposed to be super difficult, but I didn’t really believe it. It’s a Kingdom Hearts game! How hard could it be?
Reader, very hard.
“I’m not good at rhythm games, okay? I was good at Guitar Hero, that’s the one rhythm game I was good at.”
-on admitting your weaknesses
Will this be the game that finally breaks CBB’s love of the franchise (or just breaks him in general)? It’s looking like this could cause an existential crisis.
“I think maybe the plan should be to get better on other levels, but we’re not doing that.”
-on attempting Wave of Darkness on Proud mode over and over again
Practice with steadily increasing difficulty is for the weak.
CBB’s real score from that attempt
“Why am I doing this?”
-on adding performer mode to the mix
Might as well fail with some extra style and panache.
“Those performer things totally messed me up.”
-on what I’m sure would otherwise have been a perfect Wave of Darkness run
Yes, it was definitely the performer mode additions that messed him up, not a lack of skills, absolutely not.
“The reason this works as a simple piano melody is that this doesn’t need to go anywhere. They’re trying to make this into a full song, but the problem is it’s just a few notes. So they’re really trying hard to give it a sense of direction and momentum, but ultimately it does just boil down to ‘dun dadun dadun dadun dadun.'”
-on Dearly Beloved….but also maybe the whole series
What, you thought CBB was done having thoughts about “Dearly Beloved?” Stay tuned for his three thousand word analysis entitled “why song should go dun da dun” in our next blog.
That’s all for now! We’re off to Gamestop to grab our actual copy of Melody of Memory. Stay tuned for more CBB coming soon!