KINGDOM HEARTS Uχ Dark Road Reviews

by Chocotiki

I really love the KH franchise and been with it from childhood to my adult hood. I was so excited about hearing this game will unravel most secrets for the KH3. Well KH3 came out like a year ago and still not everything is unraveled and there is still more story to come. I should be happy about it but I’m not... 900 chapters and still there is more question than answer.

But that’s not the case here. The case is that every time I get a nice medal, study the perks of each medal and try to use it means nothing cause every time there is newer and bigger medals that you can only get with Jewels that you either get on days of celebration or daily or get money to waste it here. I understand doing this stupid thing for PVP or some special quest with no meaning to the story... But please keep it out of the story. It’s annoying to see my hard work comes to nothing because out of nowhere this gap in level on monster just exceed more than my medals and since my pull game is very bad... It only makes this experience frustrating. This is the reason why people have been pulling away from the franchise and each time losing more customer. I might be one of them if this keeps up... It’s sad seeing how such an amazing game is getting lower ratings for stuff like this. Hope this can be fixed.

by HawkEyeTS

After coming back to this game about a year ago there had been some short lived encouraging factors that made me think the game would continue to improve, but ever since the implementation of PvP and 7-star medals, the marketing department has not only taken over, but is actively trying to abuse the kind of people that spend too much on this type of gatcha game. With 7-star medals, which are absurdly powerful and completely took over the game, you either have to rank high at PvP to get items to evolve your old medals, or spend money on banners to completely replace them. The PvP system is set up so that the powerful become more powerful while those that don’t rank get further behind. Then they started tuning PvE content for 7-star and new banner medals almost immediately to get people to pull on banners. And the banners have been coming in a flood, while fewer events than ever show up, and when they do they have few or no currency to pull on banners. The latest abuse is a special board that provides bonus damage, but can only be completed by doing 30 pulls on the newest banners, which would cost approximately $600. And the buffs are temporary... This game is crumbling with current design, and the marketing department seems to be trying to extract as much money as possible before everyone gets fed up and leaves. New players, stay far, far away. You have zero chance of catching up and competing.

by Goldenpeltt

I am a lifelong fan of Kingdom Hearts who has been playing this game since the month it was launched. As a free to play player, I’ve struggled at times as my Medals lagged behind those who played, but it never felt like I was locked out of the game because of it. Whenever a new powerful Medal was introduced, I could press my luck, and if I didn’t get it, I’d be able to a few months down the line. This has not been the case the past six months. When the PVP mode was introduced, it heavily favored paid players, but once given feedback from the community, Square-Enix made efforts to improve it. Now, it’s obvious they don’t care. Without the Supernova ability, you might as well not bother, and every banner with the ability has had its guarantee locked behind a paywall. I understand that SE has no real obligation to its f2p community, but the VIP rewards have gone from bonus content to full on exploitation. The only thing left for f2p players is the story, but we’re losing any motivation for that as we’re six months behind the Japanese story, and with Kingdom Hearts III on the horizon, we will be trudging through another round of pointless filler while the JP community receives important plot developments. It’s been demonstrated in the past that mission cutscenes can be translated simultaneous to the JP game, so it’s absolutely inexcusable that the gap continues. At this point, the only thing keeping f2p uses coming back is Stockholm Syndrome.

by HPSTL

I’m a huge fan of the Kingdom Hearts universe, and I fell in love with this game almost 2 years ago. While the game was mostly fun the last 2-3 months have been a huge struggle to find positives in the game. The people in charge need to get a better handle on what the players want and not solely be driven by greed that pushes the player base to unhealthy emotional responses, either F2Ps feeling hopeless, or P2Ps feeling like they are feeding an unhealthy addiction. Enough is enough. Fix your game. Do not starve the players of resources like Skills, C&Ds, experience and evolve medals. Put out more content like HSCs, Phil/Pegasus/Hades cups, more frequent story/proud quests. And either give us more ways to earn/save jewels, larger jewel deals, lower pull cost, and or slow the hell down on the banner releases. On top of that for the love of god fix your PVP and PVE experience!!! PVP is broken and this is coming from a guy that has been in top reward tier every week. PVE should not be such an extreme either. Last 2 months it was a 60+ hour grind fest, and this month folks hit their wall 2 hours into it. Incredibly disappointing how disconnected the developers have been with the game recently. Please consult with your games YouTubers like Smelly Octopus to fix this broken game, or this Whale has been harpooned for the last time.

by Tkrofecheck

Update: downgrade to 1 stars. The game is only getting worse with too many high price jewel banners, not enough jewels to pull, and challenges that only a small percentage of players can complete. Fairy medals used to evolve to 7 star medals are only provided to the best of the best in PVP through silver and gold tickets. Munny is no longer a need and makes for useless moogle medals. This may be my last update as I see no entertainment value by spending hours to achieve nothing but cid medals as challenges are too difficult win.

——————

What was once a great game, has finally met its downfall. The story mode and key blade system of medals and power ups keeps this game in a 3 Star range. The problem now is Player vs Player. If you are not already the strongest, don’t ever expect to be. This new system is highly problematic, consuming large amounts of time with minimal reward to improvement for your avatar, medals and key blades. I believe this is SE’s way of signing off and letting its players decide when to retire. I suggest not paying, and going as far as the free game allows and then signing off for good. I have been paying the weekly $15 only to find myself struggling to get anywhere and continue to gradually get weaker. Paying should provide some benefit when I just feel cheated and robbed of game satisfaction. Thanks for a good run SE, but this is no longer my go to game.

by Oneekiri

This game has never been great at hiding their greediness but it is just getting progressively worse. I am a die hard kh fan and maybe that’s why I haven’t stopped playing this game.. but I am done giving them my money until they stop being so money hungry. I understand they have to make money from this game and honestly I was fine putting my own cash into this, but you literally have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars almost every week to be ‘good’ at this game. They’ve even gone so low as to having players PAY for EVOLVE MEDALS. They keep saying they’re listening to us and they’re working on fixing the problems but really they’re just thinking about how to make even more money and only catering to the whales. I was really excited when KHUx first came out and I was always going to support it by playing everyday and putting my own money into it (I’ve put over $2000 into the game over the past 2 years, it’s not a lot to them but it’s a lot to me). I even went to the KHUx fan event. I don’t want to hate this game, but it saddens me that some of my party members who have been playing since day 1, decided to quit and uninstall this game because of SENA’s greed and lack of content. If they ever come to their senses and fix this game I’ll more than gladly change the one star rating, but I’m not sure if it will ever happen.

by Madmanlabs

As the title says except instead of Ishmael it’s Square Enix America looking for there whales. Let me clarify I am huge kingdom hearts fan and have a private collection filled with every game in The series but KHUX is a joke. If you are trying to fill in the missing pieces before KH3 just watch the movie provide with 2.8 cause this game has slowly sunk into a money pit of constant banners that you will have to pull from that never give you what is needed for meta. As for pvp...yeah that is an absolute joke. For new players you will be so lacking in any of the required medals or key blades that you you will have two options 1. Grind and be frustrated or 2. Cave and simply fork over money to play catch-up. This game is not worth your time or your dollars. Events in this game barely give any reward (see the current global event, it gave a total of 2000 jewels which seems like a lot but in reality isn’t even enough to pull one pack) Square Enix America also has an extremely poor amount of communication skills that further makes this game a grind and a chore. With all that said if you are ready to shovel $60 bucks for Vip quest alone plus another $300+ for each new banner or avatar board released every month then yes you will enjoy this game but I do have to challenge you, wouldn’t your money be better spent elsewhere.

by SomethingW1tty

The decisions made by the developers are not at all made with free-to-play players in mind. They are so obviously locking the player's options of actually becoming powerful in this game behind paywalls that in some cases will cost hundreds of dollars to get through. The game also keeps incredibly vital parts of improving one's power in the game behind rewards given out to those who rank at the top in competitions where there is basically no strategy involved and just boils down to who has stronger equipment. This is insulting to us free-to-play players as it means that the people who give money to this awful game will only get stronger and those who do not will become weaker in comparison, creating an unforgiving gap between the "premium" players and the regular players. I want to defend this game as I love the Kingdom Hearts series but the treatment of the players is so poor that I cannot defend or recommend this game to others. The only thing good about this game is the story but there are such large gaps between story updates and there are so many filler quests in-between that even playing for just the story is not worth your time since the story can easily be experienced over the internet. Please, do not waste any time or more importantly, money on this cash grab of a game.

by Meharris15

The story is engaging, and I found that when I played KH3 that I was missing some information even with the “The Story So Far” pack. I really only play story mode because that’s what I care about, but the information on how to play is minimal outside of basics of slashing. I had to Google basically anything about medals, and honestly I still don’t know what half of the stuff means. It’s way too complex with little information. My other biggest issue is the game suddenly jumps to being nearly impossible to move along once you hit the Wreck It Ralph levels (around 800). Like honestly, it has no business becoming that difficult so suddenly. Originally I could beat levels in seconds with one SN++ medal that I barely tampered with, and now I can’t beat anything with 6 of those that I’ve done as much as I can with spending so many jewels and certainly without having to “continue” multiple times, thus spending more jewels. I know the game is converting to theater mode soon, but I just want to play and get all of the cutscenes. Haven’t done much with dark road because I wanted to finish KHUx first.

by Hikarimidori

I loved this game for over a year. The graphics and music are great and I’ve met some fantastic friends but unless you’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month you’ll never be a top player regardless of how much you grind. I paid $15 plus tax every week (weekly vip) plus extra ($10-50 although you can spend more) when good top medal banners came out only to see those medals become obsolete in no time. I’m so sad to see how greedy this company is to the point ppl are still paying hundreds of dollars a week just to be able to compete. To kinda compete as a free to play player you need to be super disciplined to save your earned jewels and wait for the next game changing medal only to see it become useless in no time. I get more from other games when I pay for those.

As for the story, it’s been at a stand still for so long I have to look at the last quest we were given because I forget where we left off. We also keep getting garbage, waste of a time side quests I guess in an attempt to keep us busy? PvP is ok but you only do really great at it if you’re willing to pay...not surprising. I wish I could love this game again but it’s not really worth the time anymore. I gave it 3 stars because the music and graphics are good and I’ve met some pretty awesome players in game.

by Meowyr

As a an active, long-term player of this game and many other major gacha mrpgs, I see so much dissatisfaction from this player base that I’m amazed it has any positive reviews.

Premium items are regularly outclassed within a month to the point of total ineffectiveness in meta. Prominent boost items are entirely obsolete. Low gacha rates are completely normal in all of my games but this game is greedy/sneaky in that the rarest and most expensive items don’t retain value and therefore do not warrant their pricing. Also, the Powers That Be seem to be phasing out their guarantee/pity-break mechanic. With a consistent time investment, it is possible for a F2P player to be competitive in challenging content (even a brand new player because whatever banner they find on their first day will be entirely overpowered). Dollars won’t guarantee any long-term advantage unless someone is prepared to regularly spend hundreds. Once your free currency is depleted, wait a week for it to accumulate and you will afford something better. Dolphins in this community constantly feel cheated that their money has been put to waste.

For free, there’s less reason not to enjoy this game; but I am personally more inclined to recommend the sustainable, user-friendly mechanics of Opera Omnia, Dragalia, Fate/GO, or FE Heroes.... in that order.

by Batmanrae

In the beginning the leveling system for regular noob medals was discouraging. I left. Then came back and finally figured it out. Got up to a decent level but it seemed everyone had overpowered medals and I couldn't beat anything anymore. So I left. I recently came back to find there are crazy strong medals and I did have enough to get SN Seph and Xion. And now there will be tier 9?! I feel like everything below tier 7 is just dead now. How are new players supposed to compete with that? It sounds super discouraging and I personally have not and will not pay a cent for this game unless jewel prices are lowered. I think more people would purchase jewels if they were cheaper. $99 can't even get you a 5 mercy banner pull! I also wish we could gift or trade medals. It feels like a waste to sell good stuff for room when you could give it to a friend or someone who needs it to fuse. Speaking of fusing, I wish we had an option to fuse EXP medals. I have a hoard of 1★, 2★, and 3★ exp medals that I don't use because at this level (referring to the above tiers and overpowered medals and whatnot) these are utterly useless and would take too long to use. If we could fuse them into 5★ or 6★ medals that would be great (for overall less munny).

by 3aDragon102

Hey guys, you guys made a great game to continue for the kingdom hearts series to show us there is still more we don’t know about but, I kind of don’t like the pay system I have paid so much money just to keep up with everyone and I still fall behind. It’s as if you guys need to buy the hundred dollar deals every week which I can’t do. The new medal system is cranking up to becoming over powered if you have all the right medals but those who are number one in PVP will have a much better chance than I will because I’ll get stuck at rank 10,000 any way. You guys need to create a better way for the medal system because that’s what is beating us and letting everyone else beat us too. I got to some more of the story that I didn’t see before which is now connecting but you guys need to fix the medal system to the point where even new comers can have fun. I can’t really have fun at all now because I’m constantly trying to grind for Medals and buying as well. It’s not easy anymore and almost not fun. I’m sure if you guys fixed this for everyone it would be fun because in a game like this everyone should be equal and not completely overpowered by spending so much money.

by ZorroTF

So I really enjoy this game at least as far as I have gotten, but I have noticed one significant issue. In the union cross game mode, I always get paired with people who one hit all of the bosses and before I know what’s happening the match is over and I haven’t gotten any items or lux. This is an incredibly annoying issue, as there are multiple items and cosmetics that can only be earned through playing union cross and getting points. I think that there should be some kind of ranking system in place where people who have about the same damage level get paired together and go against enemies attuned to their skill level so that everyone feels as though the enemies they face are challenging and the lower level players have a fair shot at getting a lot of points rather than racing against the op players just to get some lux. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anything higher than 0.1% in union cross, and it’s not because I’m bad, I just keep getting paired with people who can one hit every single boss before I can even contribute and earn anything. Other than that one problem, I have yet to notice anything in this game that I find unfair or don’t enjoy or at least tolerate. Would definitely recommend to fans of kingdom Hearts, or just Disney in general.

by By Ghbydjn

Despite all the people who complain about this game, I believe that they need to realize that this is both the only mobile kingdom hearts and is likely the most important to the story being a prequel to the series and they really should stop whining considering that it is for ages 4+. Anyways I do believe that when this goes down, please make an even better kingdom hearts for the phone with graphics that imitate an anime and story that people can be onboard with entirely and have it possible to get everything just by playing the game. I came back to this game after several years only to be greeted by a thanks for playing banner and that made me realize one of the best free to play games was ending. Unlike a few of the ff games you made for mobile, I actually am able to stay interested in this game which says a lot. I could go on and on about this but I just want you to know that I have always been a fan of your work and I want to say thank you for a great game.

by 万巻純

I see a lot of reviews mention how a lot of factors like PVP and Over powered players/having low tier medals can really effect this game. I think if your a consistant player, youll find more joy in this then somebody who is very new or comes on every so often. There are a lot of oppurtunitys to obtain lux and the currencies, with pretty much every other week being AP free, consistant updates to the actual story mode as well as raid and event missions. But to really tale advantage of it, its not just a game you log in every day and do a single mission, then expect to make alot of ingame currency. The game does actually take time to play, there is a Lootbox style medal system, and you will take a while to reach higher levels (and if your not active enough, youll be trapped at 300 for what will seem like forever). Game isnt as bad as people make it, but as litterally majority of app-based games are, it takes time to get to a higher tier and it takes a lot of play to get through the game. (This coming from someone who plays a lot and still stays high enough to one-shot most raids, stay high in pvp, and not spend 15 dollars every week. Trust me it doesnt take money and cheating to play this game...)

by DianaYo

This game is exceptional and allows for lots of free gameplay that’s led by a good storyline and fantastic side quests and various events.
The character customization is pretty in depth and fun.
You can breeze through quests and play to compete with other parties, or you can take it slow and read into the story.
There’s really no issues to the game and I’d like to address one of the top reviews I had seen. People claim that there are hackers in the game and I can say I have not seen any.
Fast jumps from low levels to high levels is easy. I returned to the game at a level 198, in 2 days after I finally got a medal that was 6 stars and 8 tier ranking. Despite the fact I had around 60k strength I was now able to do everything, with the raid boss and bonus lux event (not to mention free ap), in 2 days time I leveled to 301 and my strength is now 124k. I ended this week with almost 500 million lux. I can assure you there are no hacks, it’s just a game that allows for quick progression if that is what you want. Which I very much appreciate.

by TDOG670

Many complain about the Implementation of 7 star medals, PvP, and other factors which contribute to their frequent losses and such. People complain that they cannot afford to purchase currency in this game due to its ridiculous price-to-jewel ratio. There is a solution. RESTART ALL OVER AGAIN. Granted, you will lose level progress, and some medals, but restarting allows you to replay the game and make better decisions with the amount of jewels you get as oppose to when you first downloaded the game. You are granted with 25k+ jewels after finishing the tutorial, and also granted another 35k just for completing the story quests alone. Not to mention events, boards, etc. Restarting your data allows you to potentially pull the best medals KHUX is currently offering, and in the long run, I have NOT regretted starting over. Not to mention that I am a Free to play person. This game is incredible, you just need to play with the right people to help you develop knowledge about the fundamentals of this competitive game. Thank you for reading this. Good Luck!

by Haru Bee

Positives: The variety of story lines and game play are exciting. The metals are nostalgic and beautifully designed. You get to have a challenge at any level your at. VIPs are pretty cool if you want to buy them. You can play with friends and family as a team to destroy bosses together. Personally the team play it n this is my favorite part of this game, playing solo doesn’t do this game justice. Metals pulls come back around for a second try and normally have better chance of getting it later.
Negatives: I would love more free chances for Jewels, but I know the only way they can keep this game ad free is when the players buys some Jewels to balance out what they are missing from ads. Sad system. It’s sadder when rumors of hackers ruining competitions and rankings that people work hard to earn(please try to prevent this!). Plus metal plus are not guaranteed anything. You might have bad luck for a month and then pull the best metal of the game. You never know unless it’s a mercy pull, which only happens on occasion.
Over all one of the top games on a phone you can play. I would suggest it for anyone.

by Darknessfire

The game does not support a large component of their player base. Most of banners that advertise strong or useful units are blockade by a paywall, that requires a weekly vip subscription. The new implemented banners: VIP (pay a certain amount of online currency to receive a guarantee chance to receive said unit plus a double percentage rate of pulling said unit compared to the normal pull rates in the non-VIP), and non-VIP (pay as much online currency as the player has without any sign or leverage of getting said unit) is unethical. As a member of this community for over 3 years I have to say this game treats their player base like garbage. The real reason why this game has a 4.1/5.0 rating is because the gaming company, SENA, is luring a newer player base (and begging for reviews after the whole ‘newcomer rewards’ they provide at the start then abandoning them off to the side to play extraneous hours—to collect resource for them, the new players, to later fall miles behind because they could not pull for relevant units to compete with). If I could I would rate KINGDOMHEARTSUχDarkRoad as 0 stars; I am highly disappointed that Disney decided to continue working with SENA after their blatant displays of greed.