The issue of "could they handle this well as a mobile game", for me, comes down to this:
If they design it more in the vein of the original Coded—that is, delivering big chunks of the story at once rather than drip-drip-dripping it over a period of months—then I could be on board with that. I'd like to have a good sense of how long the story is actually going to take to come to a conclusion. With Union X, I never imagined the story would continue to slog on for as long as it has. And as much as people make fun of Coded, the updates that it got on its original DoCoMo platform were at least substantial and moved the narrative forward, whereas Union X's updates are an endless barrage of filler punctuated only by occasional progress in the main narrative that, until recently, has had nothing to do with the main player's missions.
Another thing Coded got right that UX doesn't: NO. MORE. RNG.
RNG-based gameplay mechanics are the worst. And people complain about Chain of Memories—at least CoM was a) finite in the amount of cards you could even collect, and b) designed to make you rely more on your skills WITH the cards rather than the cards themselves. It's infuriating to have main story locked behind enemies that you can't beat simply because you weren't lucky enough to get sufficiently strong medals to beat them, and to have to wait until you either get a lucky pull or cough up enough money to force a good pull. That crap needs to go ASAP.
Now, Xehanort is a character clearly near and dear to Nomura's heart, so I would hope that he would do all he could to ensure his game treated him (and the players) with due respect. But, I don't know how much control Nomura ultimately has over this—maybe the business suits at Square strongarmed UX to be a gatcha game, and maybe they'll strongarm him on this one, too. I have no clue.
But if this game is even going to be made in the same general vein as Union X, then I'm gonna pass. I won't put up with another one of these corporatized abominations. I just want these five things, and they shouldn't be that much to ask:
1) An upfront timetable on how long the story should be expected to unfold.
2) Sizable chunks of update rather than monthly drips that take 10 minutes to complete.
3) An art style that doesn't make the game look like it's for little babies.
4) Battle mechanics based on skill, NOT on RNG.
5) An actual story, and not 900 missions of pointless hunt-quests with bits of story snuck in out of left field.
These things should be basic. And if the new game doesn't have it, then hopefully no one will play it—only then will SE learn their lesson.
