Kingdom Hearts Union X Retrospective | The Datascape
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- Co-Host @NoirLilbomber
Patreon ▷ / prodigyxcd
X (twitter) ▷ / prodigyxcd
Instagram ▷ / prodigyxcd
Discord ▷ / discord
Kingdom Hearts News / Info Sites I often use:
▷ www.khinsider.com
▷ www.kh13.com/
▷ www.khwiki.com/
#kingdomhearts #disney #gaming #thedatascape
More than anything i cant wait to have another Kingdom Hearts game on my phone that i can access anytime. That was the main draw for me towards Union X I've got countless memories of me doing story missions while in class
Hello there! Just a little comment on lifeboats. In UX, it is mentioned that the lifeboats are not fully ready to be used, and they WILL destroy the body of people who use it. Then, once the body is destroyed, the principal condition of time travel ("you can only time travel if you have no body, and you are only a heart") is met, and therefore they can travel to the future. This is simillar to how Maleficent could time travel only after Riku freed her heart with the Keyblade of Hearts: she didn't have the means to destroy her own body by herself while securing her heart would survive. The lifeboat is what enabled time travel in that sense, but it was because it was not finished or it had a massive failure.
Hundreds of years later, when Xehanort uses the lifeboat to get Kairi away from Radiant Garden, the devices were indeed complete and there was no risk of Kairi losing her body and time travelling.
My mommy went boom and became my keybalde :O
Just curious, do you think you would ever expand the podcast and put it on platforms like Spotify? I enjoy the KH content and keep up the good work.
Thank you so much!! ALSO YES I do plan to put the Podcast on other platforms (or at least spotify) sometime within the next month.
Here’s my personal opinion/hot-take on my experience with Union X/Cross:
The concepts of it’s characters are great, but the execution of it’s characters are bad. The writers clearly were struggling with giving so many characters unique voices, and with the Foretellers, they really couldn’t for gameplay reasons. So, it’s very hard to feel much for them as they all sound and feel like the same one person, if I removed their visual models I guarantee you wouldn’t be able to tell which person was talking most of the time. Ephemer and Skuld are the two biggest culprits after the Foretellers, their lines are practically indistinguishable.
The plot’s need to justify its different versions, and a localization team that clearly wasn’t in on where the story was going created some incredible awkwardness to.
As far as gameplay goes, it took a long time to become something meaningful. X’s gameplay was just flat out bad. AP cost for every action, a combat system where your attacks were randomized every turn, and a very clunky ability and power up system resulted in a combat where you mostly just spammed potions to get through most stuff, and which they handed out liberally.
Design issues aside at its core UX, not X, did very well at what it wanted to be which was a bite sized chunk of KH experience you could pick up and play on a dime. You had world exploration with a little platforming, Disney character/crazy Nomura fever plots, chests to open, heartless and bosses to kill, and flashy tactile combat with great music. I loved when I had some time to kill like cooking something or waiting for something to upload just pulling out my phone and replaying a few missions to get some of that KH juice injected into my veins.
At the end of the day, it’s a game experience entirely unique in the series, one that got me hungry for more. So bring on ML, I’m ready to get back on that rollercoaster! Just hopefully, they have better character writing this time…
Khux and Dragalia Lost, both gone too soon
Ngl, i miss all the Kairi medals being so strong to every set. Then those double cast copycat medals for but damage attacks was so fun. Plus, a remake of KHUX could work in the way Granblue Fantasy Relink handles is gameplay. Single player, fun combat options, multiplayer questing with endgame progression.
I have such a conflicting relationship with Union X. Im very fond of it and it helped keep Kingdom Hearts alive for me for a long time. It really scratched the itch and gave us a lot to theorize over for a few YEARS. On the other hand i think the management of the game was TERRIBLE, rife with negligent decisions, and the gameplay and graphic/visual choices were so baaaaaad. I HATED the weird, chibi, cutesy, blocky movement, kids-picture-book-esque, cut and paste style with low grade light and particle effects that they were doing. The movie cut of Union and those scarce high quality cutscenes were SO big for me cause i didnt want to go back and play that part again, and i was never reading the tone of characters dialogue right. Already felt like a slog to get where i was, and I had too much left to do still. It just wasn’t it for me and all my friends.
I have high hopes that Missing Link will use elements from the old Mobius Final Fantasy that shut down a few years ago. I saw a lot of similarities in the clips of Missing Link we have gotten. All i truly hope for is decent gameplay, not so crunchy graphics, and a monetization system that isn’t TOO brutal. For those familiar im praying Missing Link is closer to Genshin Impact, Punishing Gray Raven, and Wuthering Waves and not so much like Fate Grand Order in the gacha rate/forgiveness aspect (I wouldn’t be against similarities in the gameplay department as well lol). Regardless I’ll be happy to have that more readily available access to Kingdom Hearts again. Sure I can play it on my Switch but the graphics and rendering are CRISPY compared to the Series X lol. And, just, keep my wallet safe and intact lmao.