Square Enix is in an unusual position in their history. Formed from the merger of two RPG giants, there’s never been a time where some part of the company wasn’t on top of the RPG business. In recent years, however, things have changed. The Square Enix style of JRPG doesn’t sell the way it used to on consoles, and in the domestic Japanese market that once seemed a reliable stronghold for the company, a new kind of RPG has gained favor among the masses. Perhaps frustratingly, no matter how much talent, how many big IPs, and how much money they throw at the booming social RPG market, Square Enix can’t seem to catch a break. Even the mighty Final Fantasy name has proven only a temporary success, with the most popular social RPG bearing the brand being largely the product of another company.
Time, then, for new tactics. If Final Fantasy isn’t going to work, it’s time for one of the other big guns to have a turn. Kingdom Hearts: Unchained Key is not the franchise’s first turn on mobile, but it will hold the honor of being the first to release worldwide. It’s a port of a browser game released a few years ago in Japan, and while it has all of the usual features we’ve come to expect from Japanese social RPGs, it has a few things that make it feel like its own animal. Is it going to be enough to convince people who are burned out on social RPGs, or those who didn’t like them to begin with? Well, I don’t know about that. Kingdom Hearts fans won’t want to miss this one, though, even if only for story purposes.
Set during the period before the Great Keyblade War, the story follows your custom-designed character, a keyblade wielder who is a member of one of the five factions that are battling over the dwindling supply of Light in the world. The story is meant to serve as a bridge into the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3 for consoles. There is a fair bit of text in the game’s story mode, more than we usually see in this kind of game. I’m not too far in yet, but I’ve seen a couple of different Disney-themed worlds so far. Most of the missions have your character interacting with a popular icon from that world, while the opening and closing missions for each chapter deal with the overall plot.
Square didn’t skimp on the talent here, and it shows. Director Tetsuya Nomura was brought on as co-director with The World Ends With You‘s Tatsuya Kando taking up the other director’s chair. Kingdom Hearts series composer Yoko Shimomura was brought in to do the music for the game, and she did her usual wonderful job. Despite the big names, however, it follows most of the standards of the social RPG genre. You play missions made up of a series of battles, collect goodies that you can only keep if you finish the mission, and battle a boss at the end of each. You consume stamina from a timed meter for each attempt, and collect character medals of various rarity levels to use in battles. There’s a random pull gatcha system for getting new medals, though some will drop from enemies. You can fuse them, sell them, evolve them, and so on.
Aside from the star power in the cast and settings, there are a few interesting things happening in this game, however. First, the missions take place in reasonably-sized areas that you are free to run around in. The lurking enemies can be fought by running into them, but if you’d prefer, you can go right for the boss. The battle system is turn-based, and you can take as many attacks as you have medals equipped. Tapping on an enemy will do a strong attack with your keyblade, while swiping will do a sweeping attack that will hit everyone. As you fight, you’ll build up a meter that you can use to summon the characters from your medals to do powerful attacks. Every attack carries the element of its associated medal, something you’ll want to consider when choosing which ones to bring with you. It’s not rocket science, but then, neither is the battle system in the console Kingdom Hearts games.
The other distinguishing factor here is how much your personalized avatar plays into things. You level up your character’s stats using Avatar Coins. You’ll find Avatar templates as you play, and each one is like a mini-Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy 10, allowing you to spend your coins to power up individual parameters. Open up every node, and you’ll earn a new outfit for your avatar. It’s pretty cute. That seems to be the look the game is going for in general, actually. Everything is very friendly-looking, even the fiercest Heartless.
So far it’s pretty interesting from a presentation standpoint, but the actual gameplay doesn’t seem to have a lot of depth to it. Of course, Kingdom Hearts is meant to appeal to a wide audience, including some demographics that rarely play games, so that’s to be expected to an extent. The story snippets and the character fan service should be enough to get people interested, and time will have to tell if Square Enix can keep them this time around. Kingdom Hearts: Unchained Key has been announced for an English release, but there’s no date set at the moment. We’ll bring you more on the game once we’ve got word on its worldwide release, and likely a full review whenever said release happens.
