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Dark Road ► Version 5.0.0 postponed, follow-up info at a later date



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ZeVaine

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Honestly, all they have to do is release a list of bullet points with what the scenes were supposed to be/show and it would be fine.

Its not like its going to be that visually appealing anyways, as the draw for me on the mobile games has only been the story revelations - not the graphics, and certainly not the gameplay.
 

Absent

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I'm glad y'all find humor in this situation. Frankly I find this embarrassing.
 
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FF gets a critically acclaimed MMORPG with an extended free trial up to level 60, Nier gets a mobile game that looks more fun than UX.

KH gets a flash browser game and a flash mobile game with only two animators that Square immediately gave up on once it wasn't a money maker and a PR team that doesn't seem to care either.
 

Zackarix

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Honestly, Dark Road was badly implemented from the start. Trying to use it to extend the life of the KHUX app instead of making it a whole new game probably drove away more fans than it brought in. I understand the desire for asset reuse, but it was clearly holding the game back. And then when you get to the gameplay it was just poorly designed and unforgivably grindy. It's no wonder it ended up failing despite seemingly being cheap to make compared to other mobile games.

But that still doesn't excuse the lack of communication here. Waiting until the last day to announce that you can't meet your deadline is just unprofessional.
 

Chaser

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I want to point out that it wasn't even the last day, it was 3 hours before the update would have launched. They made the announcement at 12pm JST and story updates usually went live at 3pm JST. The silence until the delay announcement gave a tiny glimmer of hope that it was on schedule to launch but then 3 hours before it was due they pulled the rug out from under everyone.
 

AdrianXXII

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I want to point out that it wasn't even the last day, it was 3 hours before the update would have launched. They made the announcement at 12pm JST and story updates usually went live at 3pm JST. The silence until the delay announcement gave a tiny glimmer of hope that it was on schedule to launch but then 3 hours before it was due they pulled the rug out from under everyone.
This makes it even worse. A silver lining might be that they probably are pretty close to having it in a releasable state.
 

Alpha Baymax

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I'm cool with that if it means that we're going to get a better story. They could have let us know earlier but it's not as big of a deal as everyone else is making it out to be.

Of course they had to wait until the last day of the month to tell us this.
The management of this mobile games are a disappointment until the very end.
This is a free product.

I'm glad y'all find humor in this situation. Frankly I find this embarrassing.
Again, it's a free product.
 

Oracle Spockanort

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I'm cool with that if it means that we're going to get a better story. They could have let us know earlier but it's not as big of a deal as everyone else is making it out to be.


This is a free product.


Again, it's a free product.
Who cares if it is free or not? The problem isn’t the fact that they didn’t release it. I think everybody knew they wouldn’t. The problem is their piss-poor communication with their audience that has persisted since forever.

There is no way they did not know they wouldn’t be hitting their late September release. They should have informed people sooner than three hours prior to their usual update time on the last day of the month.

Fans recognize the goodwill that is there in releasing a free product, but they cannot continue undercutting their own efforts and torpedoing that goodwill by being absolute crap at communicating problems with fans. There is only so much that people are willing to deal with, and people’s patience ran out years ago with UX and their blatant exploitation of fans via microtransactions, the already-existing poor communication, and the constant refusal to bring parity between Global and Japan on the story and medals/banners.

Tone-policing people is ridiculous and undermines the long line of bullshit people have dealt with from UXDR.

It’s tiring. You do this constantly by siding with SE and Disney on things that are blatantly anti-consumerist.
 

Alpha Baymax

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Who cares if it is free or not? The problem isn’t the fact that they didn’t release it. I think everybody knew they wouldn’t. The problem is their piss-poor communication with their audience that has persisted since forever.

There is no way they did not know they wouldn’t be hitting their late September release. They should have informed people sooner than three hours prior to their usual update time on the last day of the month.

Fans recognize the goodwill that is there in releasing a free product, but they cannot continue undercutting their own efforts and torpedoing that goodwill by being absolute crap at communicating problems with fans. There is only so much that people are willing to deal with, and people’s patience ran out years ago with UX and their blatant exploitation of fans via microtransactions, the already-existing poor communication, and the constant refusal to bring parity between Global and Japan on the story and medals/banners.

Tone-policing people is ridiculous and undermines the long line of bullshit people have dealt with from UXDR.

It’s tiring. You do this constantly by siding with SE and Disney on things that are blatantly anti-consumerist.

I do this constantly? Please showcase the times when I constantly side with Square Enix and Disney for their anti-consumerism practices. I'm all eyes. Anyway, I stand by what I said. A free product means that Square Enix gains nothing out of it as a business. There's no longer any revenue to be made from Kingdom Hearts Dark Road.

And before anyone thinks I'm defending Kingdom Hearts Dark Road as a product, I'm not. I hated Dark Road, the gameplay was trash and the asset reuse was lazy with the only redeeming factor being the story. If this was a product that people had to pay for or if any free-to-play elements were still involved then it would have agreed with this outrage, but as is, I just don't see the justification for it. And as I mentioned earlier, it would have been better if they announced the delay earlier but a delay is a delay regardless.

It's October right now, Kingdom Hearts' 20th Anniversary is at March. So this update which concludes the narrative of Dark Road could drop anytime between this month and March. That's completely manageable especially if it means that Dark Road is a better game for it.
 

Zackarix

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I'm cool with that if it means that we're going to get a better story. They could have let us know earlier but it's not as big of a deal as everyone else is making it out to be.
I'm just going to point out that delays don't guarantee a good product when it eventually comes out, they just lower the chance that it will be literally unfinished. As it is we're probably going to get the most abbreviated version of the story, no filler but also no breathing room.
 

AdrianXXII

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Anyway, I stand by what I said. A free product means that Square Enix gains nothing out of it as a business. There's no longer any revenue to be made from Kingdom Hearts Dark Road.
I'd see this as a fair take, if it weren't for the fact that they were doing this already way before they removed monetization.
Plus, saying they gain nothing out of it as a business isn't quite true, seeing it still serves to promote future games and is basically something that's meant to get people excited for what's next in the series. Sure, it's less valuable then it used to be, but it still helps keep people talking about the IP while there are no new games announced.
 
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As soon as the finale of UX was delayed I figured it would likely mean the same would happen to DR. So I'm not surprised or disappointed, just annoyed.
 

The_Echo

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I guess I'll be the odd man out and give a charitable reading of the situation
Of course, I was already pretty sure there'd be a delay
And I'd said before that I expected them to push the September window as far as they possibly could
So I think that's what they did.
There's no new release date which under normal circumstances suggests so much work left that they can't determine a concrete finish line. But if that's the case, then the announcement could've come weeks ago.
So my thoughts right now are that they were nearly there and almost made September 30. Almost.
But when it was clear it was no longer possible, they decided to just take their time to finish it right. Hence no new date.

The lack of transparency and communication is obviously a problem, but at the same time I'm pleasantly surprised that Square is even allowing this literally profitless project even more time than it's already gotten.
 

Noivern

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I'm not going to keep guessing why there are people even giving this the benefit of the doubt or anything of the sort.

I play quite a few gacha games; Genshin being obvious from my current pfp and signature, but I'm also a longtime player of Granblue Fantasy, Dragalia Lost, Fate/Grand Order and have also tried a few others like Arknights or Alchemy Stars.

None of these games had anything remarkably close to this level of clownery. Granblue being the closest having some main story updates being postponed, but it was nowhere near this level of bad.

My biggest issue with the X franchise, including both UX and DR here, is the clear lack of planning. The original game had a clear identity and objective in mind as a browser game, but when it was ported over as a "upgraded" mobile game things should have turned out better;

But what we got was an extremely bad gacha game with questionably bad gameplay, probably the worst Gacha of all games I've seen (just some ugly medals with reused artwork that affect gameplay.. lol. No visual customization, no new characters, nothing. As far as considering gacha stuff as "a collection of PNG's", UX is easily the worst offender). Even the idea of customizing your own Keyblade Wielder got thrown into the trash because the customization options are extremely limited.

Like, I would be ok with the delayed and questionable story updates if the base game itself was at least fun enough to fool around; but it's purely a mechanism of showing the story, which was barely even there.

And then there's the shitty translation issues with long delays between each version and the translation itself having a lot of questionable things that are now permanently etched into the KH lore (like the whole Ark name change lol), and now we don't even know when this thing is going to end.

The worst part about everything is that Square has the backlog that should have prevented this. And I'm not even talking about how expensive this company is to afford a better game. I'm talking about the gachas they already have on their hands, Final Fantasy alone has like 5 or 6, and all of them are decent (Dissidia Opera Omnia being my favorite).

I'm not sure what Square and the KH Team are going to do after this officially ends but if we ever get another mobile game, I hope it's actually a good one. I don't mind if it's another gacha; Just please, make it so the core game is actually fun with the gacha aspect being worth stressing over, so we could just keep playing while we wait for the story, instead of just going through a sequence of dead weeks/months until SOMETHING happens.
 

Zackarix

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Reminder that KHUX was created BitGroove, who only have one other "game" in their portfolio. Final Fantasy: All the Bravest was literally just swiping and tapping, and its only redeeming value is that it was possible to beat it without spending money.

Hopefully future KH mobile games get outsourced to better companies.
 
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