Editorial ► Where Square Enix North America Went Wrong With Kingdom Hearts Unchained X

[WaveK89]

It's tough for me to say how I feel as I haven't paid much attention to the JP versions.

I haven't used money, nor have I used jewels, for medals. All I've used my jewels for have been continues, storage, and replenishing AP & Gauges. I've used nothing but the medals that have dropped, special open events, or have been given to me (Mickey at the start, and Aqua).

I'm currently on quest 395, and I haven't really been playing much anymore. I will certainly state the ramp in difficulty at quest 300 with this Witch boss following by the Cerberus and the enemies of the Underworld. Yet, I'm unsure if I was expected to conquer these difficult bosses in one turn or without a continue? It just seems a bit messed up.

Then there are the Adamantite quests which I can understand are intended to be extremely difficult. As I've only been able to collect 1 or 2 due to luck. I've been working on boosting stats, synthesizing, and guilting my medals, but I still feel incredibly underpowered. I then look at videos online, and it appears that there are much stronger medals to be acquired at the store.

However, I can certainly see clearly how different the games are between JP and NA. Though I don't really know if that's the reason for my struggle in the game, or merely because I haven't used my jewels to purchase medals.

I already spoiled the story thus far with the wonderful and appreciative translations that members of KHInsider has provided because I already had a feeling that we weren't going to catch up in time for Back Cover, anyway. The story was my main purpose for playing, but I also enjoyed playing the game. I just wish it was a bit more friendly.

 

[LightUpTheSky452]

Thanks for the editorials, guys They sum up our problems with this localization, perfectly.

I was actually thinking of doing my own write-up about this, but now I see that that won't be necessary. This topic was held in much better hands than mine

Also, in telling two of my party members just how cruel the English version of the game is compared to the Japanese one, they've now decided to play the Japanese game.

If that right there doesn't tell you how bad things are, I don't know what would. They had no idea about any of this until I mentioned it, but right then and there they realized, "You know what? You're right. From everything you've said, what SENA's doing to us sounds horrid", and basically went from zero to fifty just like that, and I don't blame them at all!

Anyway, you guys maybe want to try not buying jewels--and not going for the Epic Carnivals and stuff--and see what happens? Do you think that might finally wake SENA up some?

 

[Bank]

Great collective job everybody! It's unfortunate all the people who heavily fund KHUx SE's business milestones don't care, nor do they frequent the information outlets like KHInsider.

I'll continue doing my best to take advantage of what SE offers us in hopes to beat them. I'm still letting them beat me for now. I haven't spent jewels for 9-10 weeks and I hoard Weekly Extravaganza every week to eventually break the game for myself when the power creep hits (Illust Kairi, I'll have 42,000 next week).

After I hit 45,000; I won't buy another Weekly until we get Daily Jewels and increased login bonus. That's me trying to do my best for the game I love. And by that point I most likely won't buy Weeklies, since I played JP as F2P for 100 days until this Anniversary and am now at least a top 3000 player.

I'm not falling for their High Score Challenge bait ever again! Behemoth as a competition medal to guilt? Hah p-leeease.

If you guys are interested in my activities and endevours then feel free to check me out on:
www.twitch.tv/bankea | https://www.youtube.com/user/zhadow7

 

[ShadowCoon]

It's nice to see such a notable hub site for KH being willing to publish pieces on the complaints from the community. Having it all laid out in a rather concise, constructive fashion is going to make it a bit easier for folks to really understand what the frustration is rooted in, without the sentiments being lost among toxic attitudes displayed by members from both sides of the spectrum in regards to this issue.

For the most part, both articles pointed out the awkward and unfortunate changes we got in our localization, but it was surprising to see that neither mentioned our banner super rares/premiums being stripped of the three guilt dots/orbs they come with in the JP version. Admittedly, I don't believe they were in the very first JP banner premium (SP Roxas), but they were definitely included on them from Sephiroth (November 2015) onward.

That aside, as a huge chunk of the community has been saying for months now, the whole situation is just a frustrating mess. And SENA knew what they were opening themselves up to the second they opted to go for all of these unfortunate changes. I know I'm a broken record, but: we live in the age of the internet. Just about anything and everything can be Googled in all of about ten seconds, so when they chose to kneecap, withhold, and/or flat-out remove beneficial features from the localized/translated version of this game, they had to have been completely aware of the fact that people would be able to discover that and put them on blast in no time at all. You'd think that most companies would know better than to try to pull a move like that, but they've done a pretty good job of putting their hands over their ears and ignoring the complaints (or, at the very least, simply not acknowledging any of them publicly). While they've made a point to apologize for some of their slip ups, they do not seem to be making much of an effort to address many of the most-troubling issues within the global/NA version of KHUx in terms of how the player base is treated. The closest they've come to doing that is putting out that survey in June/July (which we've seen neither hide nor hair of since).

We can hope for the future because it's never too late to take to change and grow, but not having much faith in them isn't too unreasonable, given their track record. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Beamer]

You know, I was really aware of the problems the NA version of the game had until now, and in retrospect I can see it. I played the Japanese version of the game when it first came out and I noticed a couple of things different that baffled me when I first played the NA version (the "Defeat an enemy in 1 turn" objective and lack of a 2 turn bonus being the most notable). To be honest, i didn't even know the story was being delayed until January either until this post, and I must say that it's absolutely ridiculous and somewhat unprofessional that we're not caught up yet, and by the time we're partially there, Back Cover gonna spoil a lot of stuff for English-speaking fans. Thanks again for writing this, there's probably a lot of people like myself who have no idea what's going on.

 

[Xickin]

I sent the development team a strongly worded letter about my complaints and how they embodied al our general issues.

 

[Cactuar]

Wow this editorial has truly been an eye-opener. I haven't playing the JP version or have been keeping track of their updates so I had no idea these differences existed between JP and NA. Well done you guys!

I must admit that I felt as though I had a suspicion of these sorts of things.... Being a F2P player it's hard to get good medals and guilt them without playing everyday, and of course getting enough jewels to buy a 10 medal pack in an attempt to get better medals can take weeks. Saving up jewels for so long only to pull and get bad medals is disheartening for sure. Not having the ability to buy better medals with jewels more often sometimes makes the game frustrating, as it's super difficult/impossible to complete some of the higher level proud or adamantite quests without such medals...

 

[Luxu]

I sent the development team a strongly worded letter about my complaints and how they embodied al our general issues.

They won't read it nor take it seriously

 

[BufferAqua]

They won't read it nor take it seriously

I'm pretty sure they'll take complaints seriously to satisfy every customer. But you could be right lol.

 

[Luxu]

I'm pretty sure they'll take complaints seriously to satisfy every customer. But you could be right lol.

I hope I'm wrong, it would be sad if I was right

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

They won't read it nor take it seriously

They monitor community happenings, especially on forums and social media. They know about these complaints.

 

[The_Echo]

They monitor community happenings, especially on forums and social media. They know about these complaints.

To be honest that kind of just makes this whole situation worse.

 

[Luxu]

To be honest that kind of just makes this whole situation worse.

Well, we have no choice to get our opinions out!

 

[Cyborg009]

anyone wanna bet that they'll make some form of response to this?

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

anyone wanna bet that they'll make some form of response to this?

As far as I am aware, they don't usually make announcements or responses. It wouldn't do anybody any good if they did without having any intention to fix the problems. Instead they just need to continue to make changes that make the game more equal to the Japanese version and make sure those changes benefit the players.

And apology Jewels. 5 months worth of backlogged Jewels we were cheated out of 8D

 

[everlight]

Nice editorials there Actually, I was also a bit surprised when I saw the letter from developer. If the story update will be held until January when the Back Cover X in this December MAY spoil everything, then I hope this isn't a kind of foreshadowing the KH 2.8 ENG version delay...

 

[Ballad of Caius]

Nice editorials there Actually, I was also a bit surprised when I saw the letter from developer. If the story update will be held until January when the Back Cover X in this December MAY spoil everything, then I hope this isn't a kind of foreshadowing the KH 2.8 ENG version delay...

There is no correlation between the story update being in 2017 and KHII.8 being delayed. Like the four pages worth of thread has in it, it's just NA SE being incompetent.

 

[Drawer]

Basically,this GIF represents your glorious post (kind of. ignore dem burgers.)

And if you guys are asking,yes: The petition I made is still up and running. From day 1 I sent 1 e-mail every 10-12H explaining them about the petition,what we're asking and stuff like that.

The first 3 e-mail I got the "we'll send this to our superiors" thingie (I think they're being sent by a bot too. I don't even know anymore),from there until today I got no response for ANYTHING. No "superiors" stuff,no "thanks for the feedback"... Nothing. D;

 

[Shatterhusk]

It's good to see this being addressed here. I've mostly used reddit for my KHUX updates, but if SENA monitors this site more, then let's hope this gets their attention.

I try to still have fun with this game, but I'm almost at my breaking point. I'm definitely not spending any more money; haven't spent that much overall anyway, maybe ~$75, but that is more than I would ever have to spend to get one or more complete games elsewhere. If there were more incentive to purchase, I might be more tempted, but my experience so far has proven it's not worth it unless you are willing to spend a fortune. I've been playing for over 100 days now, I am level 215, I've pulled 150+ medals with jewels, and not a SINGLE one of them has been a premium medal. I've scraped by on a handful of decent epics and the few event medals we've gotten for free, but so much content is unreachable behind the paywall and it's despicable. Think about the fact that the only way to guarantee getting a single premium medal without hoarding jewels forever is to spend $215 on jewels in order to pull 10 times. That is just BS, plain and simple. Between facts like this and the ridiculous, greedy changes that have already been addressed in this thread, I really can't see myself playing much longer unless there are drastic changes in the right direction.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

it's just NA SE being incompetent.

When overlooking the whole situation with several different experience reports and filed complaints taking into account I wonder if this is really incompetence or just a partly covert attempt to wangle money out of the players that is starting to backfire.

I mean, changing the stats of medals (for worse), free daily jewels (for worse) or objectives of quests/tasks (for worse) has nothing to do with localisation/translation and certainly requires extra work as you have to change something in the app that is not in the text/dialogue files.

Who gave the order to implement these changes anyways and why?
Frankly, what should have been done is to take the japanese version, do the translation of texts and dialogue and maybe accomodate needed technical changes for western servers, but leave everything relating to actual gameplay alone as it is!
There should be no differences between medal stats, free daily jewels or quest objectives at all between the JP and International version.
If there are changes to be made to something like this, they should be made to ALL versions of the product or to none at all.