It’s been 11 grueling years since the last mainstay installment of Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts (Kingdom Hearts). The critically acclaimed series has seen more twists and turns in its plot progression than Donald and Goofy in traverse town, mostly due to the ten (soon to be eleven) spinoffs that have both added and plagued the universe.
While Kingdom Hearts Unchained X (KHUX), a port of it’s Japanese cousin Kingdom Hearts X does neither, it fits the mold of many of the other KH spinoffs. Somewhat pleasurable casual experiences that are unique/quirky, but not enough to hold fans over until Kingdom Hearts 3.
Before stepping into one of the game’s six worlds, the most frustrating enemy the player faces is a lack of offline play. Instead of becoming the greatest Keyblade master before the great Keyblade War, you become a victim of an overlooked design nuance in order to receive minuscule daily tasks and unnecessary updates. This becomes truly cumbersome to the experience especially if you’re relegated to the confines of even a partial underground commute.
Turn based gameplay offers a pleasant distraction from the connectivity issue, featuring a throwback to Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories card based system in the form of medals. Players earn power,speed, or magic medals as prizes for keying down random heartless to utilize special attacks on-top of the normal Hack and Slash mechanics. Between upgrading, selling, merging, or evolving your medals, what starts as a 30-minute check- in can easily degrade into a pants-less multiple hour long session in an effort to prepare for battle.
Although most of the combat takes place alone, KHUX stays true to its nature as a social Role Playing Game (RPG) by allowing players to party together to conquer raid bosses. The encounters are extremely sparse like the solo battles but feature enough recognizable heartless like Darkside making the feature a cool caveat rather than something to actively participate in. While they’re easy to jump into if you already have a group of dedicated Keyblade Warriors, the system for random grouping is too cliquey for casual players to participate in and ultimately proves to be a useless feature especially if you don’t meet the harsh requirements for entry often required by the random groups.
Visually, KHUX is decidedly consistent, pitting the player as customizable Mii- like Sora runoff that’s surprisingly gorgeous for the mobile side scroller. Whether it be the facial expressions or even the medal art, there are more than a few sequences that are appealing to the eye. The music is just as engaging offering a tasteful variety of nostalgic compositions from the original mainline games.
Luckily for us, Unchained X does nothing to de-rail the plot. Even as a prequel, it sets no real background for the universe, there’s no unity between worlds , nor any proper explanation as to how Unchained X transitions into the next game until the end, leaving an expanse almost as vast as the Kingdom Hearts itself.
Unfortunately for Square, another vague prequel is not what the series needed to keep fans at bay before the release of Kingdom Hearts III. Somewhat unfulfilling battles, yet another bout of messy storytelling, and few useful innovations leave the player wanting more than what the game has to offer.
It’s a shame because the gorgeous visuals and music throwbacks are simply a tease to what the game could have been if they focused more on the fundamentals that made Kingdom Hearts so great instead of more accessible to social networks. That being said it’s still enjoyable for what it is, a mobile phone game. Hopefully, Kingdom Hearts 2.8 remix, due in December of 2016, is Simple and Clean enough to hold fans until the next mainstay release.
Leave a Reply