Clickbait Boyfriend is back, just in time for the holidays! This time, we’re getting groovy with the latest Kingdom Hearts installment, Melody of Memory! After Clickbait Boyfriend’s impressions of the demo, I was worried that this game would not be his cup of tea. Was I right on the munny, or does Clickbait Boyfriend still have some surprises up his plaid sleeve?
(New to Clickbait Boyfriend? You can read all of our previous entries here!)
“This music is simultaneously calming and triggering. On one hand, it’s like ‘ah, I like the music of Kingdom Hearts,’ on the other it’s like ‘think of all the trauma this game caused me.'”
-on strong musical associations
It’s amazing how just a few notes can spark such a strong and complex emotional response!
“I see something fly and I need to jump.”
-on misleading enemies
Sometimes, Sora is smart enough to jump on his own to hit the Heartless, but only sometimes. You can tell we were just getting acclimated to the game; soon jumping would become second-nature.
“This is too easy. I’m still effing up though.”
-on failing to meet your own expectations
Like I said, it took a little while to get into a good groove with the controls. Weirdly though, sometimes CBB made more mistakes on the easy levels. You really need to get into the flow state of “no think, only notes” to excel at rhythm games.
“Did I die? I can’t believe I died on the last note!”
-on the most crushing kind of failure
Nothing more disappointing than losing at the last possible second. For the record, this happened for the first (although not the last) time on “This is Halloween.” Spooky stuff indeed.
“How are they going to make Olympus interesting? That duh duh duh duhduh duh duh is going to be the death of me.”
-on that iconic fanfare
Olympus appears in every freaking game, and while it is certainly a fixture in Melody of Memory, they did at least show some restraint in not bringing it back at every possible juncture.
“Seven eight is definitely one of the best time signatures.”
-on being a real music dork
One of Clickbait Boyfriend’s very favorite tunes from the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack is “Hollow Bastion,” because he loves nothing more than a funky time signature. Every once in awhile, I hear him summoning the Heartless to our home with this one on his guitar.
“I gotta hand it to the Kingdom Hearts games, they have pretty good music. Some of it is a little forgettable, but all of it suits the world it’s in pretty well.”
-on praise! From CBB!
So much of Clickbait Boyfriend’s brand is hating on Kingdom Hearts that it takes me by surprise when he reminds me that he does actually like the series.
“It’s kind of like a phone game, it’s addictive. You just want to keep playing one more.”
-on overall impressions so far
Clickbait Boyfriend and I got dangerously obsessed with this game for a few days. This is the first Kingdom Hearts game that we were able to play together, rather than starting and stopping to let me get a few hours ahead of his progress. Without the guilt of confining CBB to our kitchen to stop me from playing for hours and hours at a time, and with that phone game drive to play one more level, we spent frightening amounts of time on Melody of Memory in mid-November.
“I’m not ready for this, I’m not ready to beat Ansem.”
-on already getting too emotionally involved with a rhythm game
Say what you will about Kingdom Hearts, but this series knows how to hit you in the feelings. Even if those emotions are tied to weird things, like a semi-clone of the main antagonist screaming “darkness!” over and over again as he turns into a giant spaceship.
“In typical Kingdom Hearts fashion, the boss battles are just punishing.”
-on a series trademark
I can’t believe CBB missed an opportunity to whine about the lack of aforementioned Spaceship Ansem, but maybe he was too demoralized by how hard the Boss Battle songs are relative to the normal interface. Something about transferring from glide to glide is about twenty times harder than it should be in theory.
It’s an F Chord.
“I thought I would not like it, but it’s exceedingly simple and addictive. I get to relive moments, at least right now, at this stage of the game, from before Kingdom Hearts was an absolutely mess of a plot, so it’s great.”
-on positive feelings?!?
He likes it! He really likes it! Even if it’s just nostalgia for simpler times, I’ll take it.
Right now, this is looking like a three part series, so we’ll get to some TOUGH songs in our second edition, before getting to the Kairi part of the Kairi game in the third.
Next time: SE PHI ROTH!