Tales of Memo is a memory based game available on Apple Arcade. Memory games are hard to come by so I was anxious to get into this one. Will this one be remembered? Or will it be very easily forgotten? Let’s find out.

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,Gameplay,,

Each level puts you up against an enemy with a certain amount of health. The goal is to open up chests, match the number, and then that number becomes your attack value. Your numbers stack, so if you match two fours, and then match two sixes, your attack would be a ten. As you progress, they throw special boxes your way; some are multipliers to make your attack higher, others are negative numbers lowering your attack, and others are simply just a “?”. Match two question marks, and you have a few different possibilities it could be, which you have control of. The number changes, and you stop it on what you want. It moves fast, but not fast enough to make it random; you can always get the number you want from the “?” chest.

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Sounds like it should be a fun game to use your brain right? Wrong! The first few levels are good: you open a chest, remember where things are, and match. A mechanic that they add pretty early on is a giant gust of wind that comes and moves around all your boxes, basically randomizing them again. If memory is the goal, what’s the point in making you forget everything you just learned, just for it to get randomized again?

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Another frustrating gameplay mechanic was the enemy attacks. It seems random when it happens, but an enemy will attack you. When the enemy attacks, everything you have matched, and not yet used in an attack, gets put back on the board once you’re hit. This would not be too bad, but some levels you need to match certain numbers and get certain multipliers to get a high enough attack to win; when an attack randomly occurs, that resets your progress, on top of the wind randomizing the chests all over again, just makes this game a frustrating headache.

n,Story and Art,,

As for the story, there isn’t really much here. You’re playing as Memo, who has a few animal friends, on your journey across the frozen world. You pick a level and go into it, beat it, and then advance to a different area.

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After you beat the group of levels on screen, you’re treated to my favorite part of the game: Memo and his friends stand near a rock that usually helps to introduce a new mechanic for the next few levels. It’s my favorite part because the art is beautiful. Not only is this my favorite part, but the art is really the only unquestioned positive take away from this game.

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,Puzzles,,

As you progress, new mechanics are introduced to take down enemies. Some are timed, where you have a certain amount of time (usually not enough to deal with the terrible mechanics though) to take down multiple enemies. Others, where the attack number has to be less than or greater than a certain number, and then the absolute worst one: your attack has to be equal to a certain number. All of these number puzzles require you to do very quick math, and hope you open up the right chest, before you’re either attacked or the wind randomizes them again. Most of these took multiple attempts to get through, usually at no fault of mine, just bad gameplay. When you finally do get past it, it never felt rewarding, it was just a sigh of relief.

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Verdict

nTales of Memo, is far from a good game; it’s honestly pretty far from being a game. Terrible gameplay and bad mechanics really drag this down and make it a chore to go through. I give this one two thumbs way down. This game’s only redeeming quality is the art, but it’s nowhere near enough to save it. No reason for anyone to check this one out. When you beat the game it tells you it’s the end of chapter one; let’s just hope it’s the end and we don’t get a chapter two.

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nFinal Score: — 1/10 —

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For more reviews, be sure to check out my thoughts on Impractical Jokers: The Movie and She Sees Red, and as always, check us out on Twitter @TheSpinchoon and I’m @Big_Broons.

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