YMMV / Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

• Annoying Video Game Helper: Chirithy in the online multiplayer mode. It doesn't help that he lets the player know when they're ahead or falling behind even if it's a small percentage.
  "You're falling behind!"
  "You pulled ahead!"
  "Incoming triiiiick!"
  "Trick activated!"
• Audience-Alienating Ending: Some players were not particularly enthused about Kairi still being unable to hold her own in a fight and needing Sora to come to her aid yet again, although it's at least against one of the most powerful Keyblade wielders in existence with neither him nor Sora being technically "real" at the moment which means it makes sense that only Sora can defeat him. There's also the fact that she declines to go to Quadratum due to her inexperience and decides to stay behind to train, with fans dreading another Kingdom Hearts III scenario where she suffers from severe Can't Catch Up and is almost permanently sidelined because of it.
• Broken Base: Kairi's decision to continue her training instead of traveling to Quadratum with Riku has divided many. Some fans aren't bothered by this because she is still a rookie Keyblade wielder who is obviously less experienced compared to Riku as she only recently started fighting as early as the climax of Kingdom Hearts III, still required Sora to rescue her from Xehanort in this game alone, and are excited to see her receive training from Aqua. Meanwhile, other fans aren't too happy about the idea, seeing it is another example of how Kairi Can't Catch Up with the rest of the cast and suspect it as another excuse for Kairi to be Put on a Bus once again in favor of Sora and Riku.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • You can play as "Team Days" in just about any stage, and around mid-game is a boss battle against Xemnas. What must be done is both clear and immensely satisfying.
  • Seeing how Maleficent played a key role in Terra, Aqua, and Ventus's Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure by brainwashing Terra into stealing Princess Aurora's heart and feeding lies to his friends about how he did it 100% willingly, it's immensely satisfying to pick "Team BBS" for the boss fight against her and have all three gang up on her at once. The game even seems to encourage this, having her boss fight occur during the BBS section of World Tour and being done to that game's version of "The Encounter."
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: "What Lies Beneath" (the Kingdom Hearts II Olympus Coliseum battle theme) is very frequently played because it has a lot of multi-notes and is very easy to get a Full Chain on, making it ideal for grinding 100000 enemies for the Enemy Buster achievement.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome:
  • Kairi has absolutely none of the memory of Master Xehanort's taunting and gives it her all against his phantom, using third tier magic and displaying enough prowess that he admits she's trained well, even if she doesn't poise a threat to him.
  • When things look bad, Kairi summons the Kingdom Key as the memory of Sora takes control of her body. Even beyond the veil, Sora will never stop being there for the people he cares about the most.
• Difficulty Spike: The Final Boss fight against Master Xehanort, "Dark Domination", stands out for being noticeably more difficult than the vast majority of the songs in the rest of the game. Proud Mode especially so, as the game hammers you with never-before-seen patterns and mix-ups that can throw you for a loop. It's also the only song in World Tour where you're not allowed to use items, so Potions can't save you in a pinch.
• Disappointing Last Level: Not the actual last level, but the last segment of World Tour, Kingdom Hearts III. Despite the game having a ton of original music and several new worlds, III is among the shortest sections of the game, with only seven songs, five of which are Memory Dives. The only sections that are shorter are Chain of Memories, Days, Re:coded, and 0.2, all of which feature comparatively little original music on their own. This can be explained away as III's Unreal Engine 4 graphical assets being hard to demake into the PlayStation 2 art style, and the development of both games being in tandem leading to a lack of music (as stated in interviews) but it's still a bit of a letdown to some.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • The hooded figure featured in the trailers garnered a lot of attention. The two biggest theories surrounding them were that they were the Master of Masters, helped by the teasing shot of the figure reaching up to lower their hood or they were Master Xehanort, fueled by Kairi mentioning how the figure was always altering her fate, which nicely describes the trouble the Xehanort incarnations caused her and Sora. The figure was ultimately revealed to be a sort of Ghost Memory of Master Xehanort.
  • The world on the other side being called "Quadratum" (meaning "square" in Latin) has given rise to the theory that it could potentially be the universe where the Square Enix characters come from before being displaced into the Kingdom Hearts universe.
  • Apprentice Xehanort’s use of the word “hope” (like how Luxord described the Black Box) and a few choice words from Master Xehanort on how his actions “paved the way for Sora’s disappearance”, as well as Yen Sid surmising that Xehanort knew about Quadratum for years, has led a number of fans to suspect that Master Xehanort may not have been quite the Unwitting Pawn of the Master of Masters he appeared to be when Xigbar’s true identity was revealed in the previous game; in fact, they believe that he may have been complicit with the Master’s plans all along.
• I Knew It!:
  • Fans made the prediction of Sora being sent to another dimension completely outside of Kingdom Hearts' reality for abusing the power of waking. This game confirms this by revealing that Sora was sent to the realm of unreality, a universe completely outside of the realm of light, darkness and inbetween, which is where Yozora originated from.
  • Many correctly guessed that the hooded figure featured in the trailer would be either Master Xehanort or one of his incarnations.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: In regards to being a rhythm game, Melody of Memory is not an especially difficult one. If you are remotely seasoned with rhythm games at all the game presents relatively little challenge save for the Level 15 songs (the highest level in the game) and Performer Mode, and even then they are fairly simple to pick up and practice. There's an argument to be made for how the game appears to be made deliberately easier than the preceding Theatrhythm Final Fantasy games since the core Kingdom Hearts players are the target audience, but to many it feels like a faltering attempt at trying to find a middle ground between being a rhythm game and being a Kingdom Hearts game and doing neither particularly well.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: For what it's worth, the game is fairly light on content. If you're not going for 100% Completion most of what the game has to offer can be seen in a day's worth of play time. The game does bank on Replay Value as it is a rhythm game at its core, but there's not much else to justify replaying songs besides the Player Versus Player or collecting all the cards. The general consensus is that while the game is still good, there's not enough to justify being sold at full-price unless you're a die-hard fan.
• Memetic Mutation: It's not a Kingdom Hearts game without a meme. See the franchise page for them.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The End of the World returns and is just as eerie as it was in the first game.
  • After the World Tour is complete, the ending, "Melody of Memory's End", asks the player if they're sure they want to proceed since they can't save until they complete the game. After how lighthearted the World Tour has been, this sudden warning is rather ominous.
  • Kairi arrives in the Final World, and we get the world's logo sequence. However, while the original was mysterious but peaceful, this game's logo sequence is ominous and unnerving with a darker theme playing. The emphasis on "final" in the world's name was already chilling, but the fact that Kairi is searching for Sora, who has all but died since he’s left this reality (and seemingly DID die, if temporarily, in the non-canonical ending of his battle with Yozora) makes this even more so.
  • The flashback to when Kairi was abducted as a little girl. After being cornered by the Heartless at the gate to the castle, Xehanort calmly appears in front of her, casually reaching out to take her. His apathy towards the danger he is likely putting the little girl in during the following cutscene is just as frightening. And just to top it off, it's revealed Kairi was placed in one of the lifeboats in the room at the End of the World where you received the ominous prophecy about the closing of Kingdom Hearts in the original game.
  • The characters point out that the existence of Quadratum is something they've never dealt with before, and Riku is heading off into it alone, having no idea what he'll find. If Yozora, who is not even a villain, could give Sora the fight of his life, what's the rest of this world like? Is it possible Yozora isn't even the strongest character from his reality? Who was it that took the Nameless Star's form? Mickey is more than within his rights to be fearful for what Riku may be facing in the unknown.
• Spiritual Successor: Melody of Memory is more or less the Kingdom Hearts version of Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, as the games are both RPG Elements Rhythm Games that share more than a few gameplay mechanics between them.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The idea of a Kingdom Hearts rhythm game didn't endear to everyone, given that the series' past uses of the genre weren't exactly well-received. The trailers also showed what appears to be important story events for future titles, meaning players won't be able to just ignore this title. Even though the gameplay was shown to be a more involved affair in the style of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy instead of a simplistic mini-game like Atlantica's Musical or Ice Cream Beat (it helps that Theatrhythm developer indieszero is co-developing the game), a significant amount of comments on the trailers declared intent to just watch the story cutscenes on YouTube and not purchase the game.
  • Judging from comments on the trailers and pre-release articles, the heavy re-use of old graphics led some more cynical people to dismiss this game as a cheap cash grab with plot added in to force fans to spend 60 bucks on it.
  • While the game presented Kairi as the main character, the rhythm game style (see above) and the heavy focus on Sora turned off many fans at first, because they were still sore of her treatment in Kingdom Hearts III, prior to Re Mind's turnabout portrayal of her. This game attempts to present a middle ground that isn't quite the Memetic Loser of III or the Memetic Badass of Re Mind, which of course only divided the fanbase even further.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Sora's very short return for the game's final boss, Xehanort. Not only is is he unable to talk or communicate at all, the realization that this moment with Kairi is probably the first and only interaction he's had with his friends or his home in the year he's been gone. Sora's expression as he appears and disappears looks so sad and empty. It's hard to guess what the guy's been through this whole time.
  • Kairi wants to go with Riku to Quadratum to look for Sora, but both she and Riku know that she can't come as she isn't strong enough yet. Kairi has been one of the two people most desperate to find Sora again (the other being Riku), and the fact that she can't do anything is obviously frustrating to her.
  Kairi: (Sadly) I want to go with you. But... I know that I can't.
• That One Achievement:
  • One of the in-game Feats is listed as "If you collect a lot of Rhythm Points..." before being unlocked. How many is "a lot"? 1,000,000. To put that in perspective, under the best of circumstances, each song played may give up to a few hundred Rhythm Points. This ultimately amounts to thousands of songs that will have to be played and hundreds of hours spent in-game just to hit that threshold, at which point all the other Feats will likely have already been accomplished long ago. Fortunately, it is not one of the Feats that correspond to a PlayStation Trophy or Xbox Achievement.
  • The "If you fill up all the Excellent Bars..." Feat is arguably more frustrating. In order to unlock it, all the sections of every song must have had all the notes hit in that section with a rating of Excellent or higher on all three modes. While this is easy enough to achieve on the Beginner and Standard modes, once you hit Proud mode, particularly the Level 14 and 15 songs, some sections become so filled up with notes/enemies (i.e. the end of "Fate of the Unknown" or the giant Heartless horde near the beginning of the Field Track version of "Dark Domination") that it's nearly impossible to get a Full Chain on them, much less get all Excellent ratings on them. If the aforementioned 1,000,000 Rhythm Point achievement isn't the last Feat accomplished in the game, it's because you're still struggling to make it through this one. Fortunately, you don't have to have an All Excellent rating for a song to accomplish this Feat, so you can afford to make mistakes on sections you previously filled up the Excellent Bars of as long as you manage to get Excellent ratings on the sections you previously failed to.
• That One Level: Any of the Level 15 songs can be considerably challenging in regards to the rest of the game's difficulty. Unsuspecting players who hop onto Online VS. Battle and fight a player on Proud difficulty might find themselves being slaughtered when the opponent picks songs like "Vector to the Heavens" or "Wave of Darkness I" and wins the coin flip. That being said, if you're good enough this works the other way around too.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Kairi, despite being given A Day in the Limelight, is underwhelming to many players who were hoping to see her shine in battle even more after showing off her fighting skills in Re Mind. She is used for a few select levels, but doesn't even get to fight the final boss, with that honor being given to the memory of Sora possessing her body instead. In the end, rather than brave the new world to find Sora by Riku's side, she goes back into Keyblade training (albeit under Aqua's tutelage this time). The game attempts to justify this by the fact that despite the strides she's made in combat, she's still a rookie, but many fans find it frustrating that she's still shoved to the sidelines at this point and find that the My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours excuse no longer holds water when Sora and Riku participated in many adventures in other worlds when they were just rookies (although they also didn't have a real choice in the matter initially), and Re Mind has shown that Kairi is skilled enough to hold her own at this point.
  • Similarly, despite Naminé having the power to manipulate memories and being Kairi's Nobody she's completely absent from the game, barring flashbacks to prior games.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Symphony of Sorcery, the one Disney world that has music as its central motif, is Adapted Out of this rhythm game, although in fairness this could be because the music there is composed of public domain classical music as opposed to Kingdom Hearts and Disney-original music.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Despite the inclusion of multiple unique boss themes, the game only features four actual boss fights. Many players were left wondering why memorable bosses like Marluxia, Sephiroth, or Young Xehanort didn't make it even though their songs are available as Field Tracks, or lamented that the exclusion of Symphony of Sorcery meant that Chernabog was not used as a boss with "Night on Bald Mountain" for his fight.
• Unexpected Character:
  • More a case of "Unexpected Song", but very few people expected the actual in-movie versions of "Beauty and the Beast", "A Whole New World", and "Circle of Life" in the track list. Only the former was heard re-arranged in Kingdom Hearts II, while the other two have never appeared in any form in a Kingdom Hearts game, despite their respective films appearing.
  • While Master Xehanort was expected to appear in the game in some form given the game is a recap of his tenure as Arc Villain, not many were expecting him to be the surprise Final Boss.
  • To a lesser extent there were little to no hints in the trailers or advertisement that the Fairy Godmother would even appear in the story, let alone help provide the biggest development in everyone's search for Sora.

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