The saga of Kingdom Hearts was the long awaited answer to half of the world’s adolescent’s prayers, as it mixes icons from their childhood like Disney characters together with the Final Fantasy classics from Square Enix. Seeing Mickey Mouse fighting side by side with Cloud Strife was such a major success that from its first launch in 2002 until now there’s been a total of some 20 odd different titles among sequels and re-editions. Today it’s huge news that Kingdom Hearts Unchained X, was just unleashed on US soil. Essentially it’s a free Android game that acts as a pre-quel to the events that are to occur later in the saga.
The vast majority of titles already published in this saga were created by mixing RPG elements with hack and slash controls, and this time it’s no different. Based on a game created for browsers back in 2013, mouse controls were easily adapted to touch screen gestures for smartphones. This enhancement allows you fluid, easy movement control and makes attacking with your characters simple. It’s also very in line with the general underlying idea in this saga.
The game presents little challenges that you’ll have to beat while following a storyline where a number of Disney characters and scenes are mashed up from all over the Disney movie universe. This is one of the reasons why you’ll jump from helping Snow White’s dwarves tidy up their cottage to rehashing Aladdin’s misadventures with Jaffar. As you beat different levels, you’ll obtain new objects and improve your team stats which will allow your heroes to progress as your adventure runs its course.
Gameplay that involves short challenges fits in extremely well with the Android ecosystem, adapting perfectly to usual Free-to-Play standards like; regaining life points to play the game in bursts from time to time, repeating special events with a limited duration to get special bonuses, and the must-have shop with special in-game objects that allows you to optionally accelerate your check-out. The next extract, written by Tetsuya Nomira himself (the creator of the whole saga) comes from the official Square Enix blog:
y permite adaptar su uso a los estándares habituales de títulos Free-to-Play: recuperación de puntos de vida para jugar de forma escalonada a lo largo del tiempo, repetición de eventos especiales con duración limitada para obtener bonificaciones especiales y la inevitable tienda de objetos ingame que permite, de forma totalmente opcional, acelerar nuestro avance pasando por caja. El siguiente extracto, escrito por el mismísimo Tetsuya Nomira (principal responsable de la saga) proviene del blog oficial de Square Enix:
We wanted to thank all the KINGDOM HEARTS fans for patiently waiting for the launch of KINGDOM HEARTS Unchained χ in North America. Ever since the launch of the Japanese version, we’ve received many inquiries about when the North America version would become available. Because this is the first KINGDOM HEARTS title that we are providing operation support for outside of Japan, I’m afraid the preparations took longer than expected; but at last, we are ready to begin services for the North American version of KINGDOM HEARTS Unchained χ.
KINGDOM HEARTS Unchained χ falls into the earliest part of the KINGDOM HEARTS series chronology, and it is also the story of new beginnings. The main story may progress slowly, but part of the narrative experience is to take the time to tangibly feel other players existing in the same world as you do. By unraveling the mystery behind the era of “fairytales”, and experiencing the truth leading up to the Keyblade War, we believe players will be able to enjoy KINGDOM HEARTS II.8 even more, which is expected to launch this year. […]
Kingdom Hearts Unchained X for Android is now available in English for some countries, even though it hasn’t been launched globally yet, you can download it here in APK format on Uptodown, without any regional restrictions regardless of where you are located.
More information | Square Enix official Blog
