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Does Union X feel like a Kingdom Hearts game to you?



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jahob000

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Out of all of the games so far. This one feels the least like Kingdom Hearts. I know that they've mostly been creating these games to keeps us fed until KH3 over the years and also to try new game mechanics to see what would end up in KH3. However this one doesn't feel like Kingdom Hearts at all. The art style, the fact that there are unions based on animals or something and a few other small things.

I played the game when it fist came out and played up to about 6 months and couldn't play it anymore because it seemed like the story was not that important since the most important thing for the game seemed to be to just keep people playing. I feel like these union things came out from left field. I can only surmise that maybe these things could potentially be a part of the new saga after Xehanort (I could definitely be way off).

I know that obviously people who faithfully play the game are going to defend it but I still wanted to see if anyone else felt the same. Opinons? Reasons?
 

DarkosOverlord

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The game being less Kingdom Hearts isn't really the issue for me, the game is just being poorly handled.

It's... I can't really say it does things non KH-like, because it should do SOMETHING first for me to judge. Clearly I can't count the gameplay stuff, as I said that's just part of the MMO nature and has its own problems.
Give me a story, characters, themes, ending and moral and I can discuss how KH it is.
 

Sephiroth0812

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Gotta agree with Darkos on the core message.

One cannot really judge its "KH-ness" because Union X isn't doing anything worthwhile that can be analyzed towards how much KH it is.

Soon there has not been a single main story update for a whole year, all the supposed important named characters haven't been seen for what feels like ages and even worse, there has been nothing but their introductory episodes so far.

Normally in a KH game the story is a big part of it but Union X so far doesn't even have a story. It has a character introduction and nothing else, so story-wise so far it is pretty close to be absolutely worthless.
You can't compare it with other games of the series in this field because there is nothing to compare.

I'm no expert on the gameplay aspects which are the second big part of what KH makes KH, but from what I've seen of the gameplay it doesn't seem too well balanced, mainly because of all the blatant attempts at cash grabbing and favoring only "whales" who pay real money.
From recent reviews and opinions I've read from different people in this community who do play it, I get the impression that "normal" gameplay doesn't even mean anything anymore and all (supposedly) "interesting" stuff happens only in the PvP mode in which "normal" players (meaning those not paying tons of real money to get extra buffs) are again purposely put at a disadvantage.


Needless to say my personal opinion of the whole package isn't very high and the sole reason I even follow it somewhat on the sidelines is because Nomura feels the unending need to make everything canon and connected to the main era.
If I had it my way, Lauriam/Marluxia and Ventus would have no part in this at all and it would be irrelevant to KH III and/or the characters of the present era, remaining background lore and possibly a part-explanation for Xehanort's obsession and nothing more.
While it is true that Lauriam/Marluxia and Ven could use a little more focus, back story and characterisation it doesn't need to be so over-the-top and facepalm-inducing as squeezing them into a completely different era.
 

Veevee

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Well, it does feel like KH to me in a negative way. The latest KH entries were kinda bloated and overcomplicated and this one, where you don't even actually know what's going on and why we're here doing this stuff now, even maxes that out. The gameplay feels rather disconnected from the story and makes little sense ... for example, we have Ventus in the story and we borrow the power of future Ventus through the power of medals which feels kinda weird to me. To introduce PvP AFTER the war has taken place and everybody agreed on trying to make everyone involved forget about this is another weird design choice and by inserting your own character, thus neglecting any meaningful interaction with anyone makes it rather feel like a fanfiction than an actual lore game. It doesn't help that it's a blatant cashgrab from a franchise that constantly talks about hearts and connections ...
Another weird thing is to make every Kairi some totally broken uber-buffer in this game while she hardly even has any presence in the regular games and while this usually comes off as some kind of running gag, it makes you also question "why?".
The whole plot about the foretellers feels completely pointless. They try to prevent the war, they fight, thus sparking the war, they are never to be seen again and are replaced by kids who do the same stuff that failed the first time because some shady dude told them so. Neither Ux nor the Back Cover movie gave me any reason to care about these characters anyhow and since they all die / disappear / we don't know exactly, you don't even need to bother. Heck, I care more about the nameless Keyblade Wielders that appear now and then and still lack a proper name which speaks a lot about the quality of the game. So, no, it doesn't feel like a KH game to me, because I usually give a shit about the characters in a KH game which I'm miles away from in this one.
 

alexis.anagram

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It's pretty KH in the sense that everybody is expected to (still) be holding their breaths for the inevitable eleventh hour ~twist~ that will explain everything (which the community has likely deduced anyway) and reduce everything that came before to red herrings and filler. Sure to make everybody feel extremely gratified about allll that time they sunk into piecing together the game's skeletal treatment that advertises as "canon" material into something resembling an actual story.

The problem is that it lacks any of the other definitive qualities that are generally associated with successful KH installments. Pretty basic stuff like characters who we care about on some level beyond their anonymous intrigue and who are more than personality templates copied and pasted from a GaiaOnline roleplaying subforum (Org XIII notwithstanding), a dramatic crux around which the story is oriented (this a story about the Legendary Keyblade War!which just kind of happens and nothing changes lol), writing that at least evinces an appearance of digging a little deeper than the lowest bar for tired tropes, deus ex everything and "juuuuust wait for it!" style delays on delivering the actual plot-- which no longer even operate under the guise of building some sort of anticipation but are instead clearly being pursued for utterly ordinary business purposes like sticking to some all-important timetable with relation to KH3 or some such.

So while the mainline KH games don't universally deliver a really high standard, they at least allow for some confidence that somebody along the assembly line was actually trying to make the product accessible, interesting...fun? KHUx seems to abandon that motif on purpose and relegates the fun to a second or third priority behind running a casino business model where you get lured in with the prospect of good things to come and stick around for a while only to realize it's you that's been played the whole time.

Also yes I always felt like the Foretellers being themed after animals was awkward. I still don't get it.
 

The_Echo

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I remember playing χ[chi] all those years ago, on launch day, when it had barely any features or content, and wouldn't receive a real story update for several months, and even then it still felt like a Kingdom Hearts game to me.

It probably helps that, in regards to gameplay and format, KH is not very consistent. The second game in the series dropped combos and magic for cards and math. KHII reinvented what KH1 had established to an almost unrecognizable degree, Days used a mission and loadout structure, BbS shifted to a cooldown special attack system, coded was a puzzle-platformer, Re:coded added dynamic combat abilities and a Sphere Grid-esque system, DDD introduced monster breeding, 0.2 introduced Situation Commands and KHIII has Keyblade transformations and Attraction Flow.
So for χ[chi] to have been a setup-centered turn-based RPG, I guess it didn't strike me as "oh, this can't be Kingdom Hearts." In a way it was reminiscent of CoM.
If the franchise hadn't been as fluid as it was up to that point, it may have been harder to swallow.

Moving to Uχ, the combat was revamped and made a lot more involved on the user end and adapted for the mobage/gacha format, which might feel very different for KH but coming from χ[chi] was nothing short of natural (though I still miss open exploration of worlds).

The game has KH's signature polish (management of the localization notwithstanding), everything looks and sounds like a KH game should.

At the end of the day how a game "feels" is really up to the person playing it, but for me the χ series has always been definitively a Kingdom Hearts​ experience.
 
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