I am surprised we are seeing Ansem SOD this early.

Honestly can’t wait to try it! Never got to play original X but this reminds me of Flick Rush

One thing that confuses me. Young Xehanort is leaving Destiny Islands is being shown, that's great. But wasn't the Young Xehanort playing chess with Eraqus younger then the Young Xehanort we all know? And we see when he's on the island he's in regular Young Xehanort age rather then the chess playing age, so I'm confused on Xehanort's age in this timeline.

Other then that the scenes look about as good as Union X stuff. Too bad I can't play this game and follow it regularly :(

Interesting that there's no "quest" tab in the bottom menu.
I can't make heads or tails of the deck preview. Hard to tell what any of that means.

You get higher multipliers by comboing cards of the same type, and Xehanort's friends can cast buffs.
Heartless appear to have a timer on their HUD, probably counting down to an attack.
Might be a lot more engaged/frantic than UX.

Looks oddly simple. I'd like to see more of the menus. Is there not exploration gameplay? Just combat?

Xehanort is such a grand manipulator that he used himself as a pawn.

I feel like the theme of Xehanort is this subconscious guide that he won't let go because he feels it's destiny and he eventually overlooks everything, including his friends and emotions to follow this etched path.

This is looking interesting. Cool to there will be other party members besides Eraqus.

Them apprentices with their gentle expressions and school clothes, and then there's Bragi lookin like a goddamn smug prick with his fur coat.

I love him.

It's probably been pointed out already, but I'm noticing Urd's design bears a lot of similar elements to that of Xehanort / Ansem SoD. Silver hair, yellow eyes, the color scheme of the outfit, the lined trenchcoat, not to mention the "Recusant's Sigil" cherry on top (shared among everyone else in the new lineup).

It's probably nothing.

I like what I see honestly. Everything certainly feels like a KH game, and that card screen just gives me flashbacks to CoM (the pleasant GBA related kind). Plus I loved Flick Rush in DDD.

Is it wrong to say this looks better than UX?

So this is the 'guidance from the future' Xehanort talks about in secret report 2. Eraqus seems curious about where Xehanort came from and as he's the descendant of (probably) Brain it would make sense if he was born in Scala an never left until his Mark of Mastery exam. I wonder if maybe all the other pupils are from Scala and Xehanort is the only outsider among them. The gameplay looks like it might be interesting so I am going to give playing this a try, at least

Wow just realized this is the first time we are seeing DI in the mobile game. It’s so cute!

Why do I get the creeping sense Xehanort is gonna murder all the new characters lol

Surprised that they are using older graphics for the cards instead of just skipping to KH3 icons. Characters like Alice seem so old and irrelevant to the series nowadays but I guess those are the worlds they’re visiting so oh well.

It looks decent. Having the cards be specific attacks may this time lend to some actual depth in the gameplay, e.g. having Protect as a card ability instead of using a defence boost. I hope that there is depth to the gameplay, it may actually result in this being a mobile game I enjoy lol.

Not too big on the story elements so far, like SoD seemingly be the one to take him to Scala. SENA have not given me much hope or expectations that this will be dished out efficiently since they still have UX's story be behind. I'm fully expecting them to create an artificial gap in the story so Global is behind lol. I also hope there's a substantial amount of of story and missions to begin with. KHUX had like 600 missions or so since it was all already created so to launch with only a small amount for Dark Road would be disappointing, in my opinion. Of course, I don't expect the amount on launch to be anywhere even close to 600. Heck, 50 would be pushing it I reckon, and I don't want there to be filler quests so early on as well. I just want to learn about these characters and understand their personalities and who they are and I hope we can get a good sense of that at the beginning of the game.

I wonder then, if you choose who goes with you on the quests and if that affects the cutscenes. Like, I may have Hermod tell me some plot details in Wonderland on quest 20, but would the same be done for someone on the same quest with Vor and would the info be the same as what Hermod would say? Just got to wait and see how this all goes down.

I do like the traditional level system they have going on. Reminds me a lot of CoM's CP level up system.

Oh, the combat might actually be enjoyable this time around :)

Ah, auto-battle, there it is. Now I know gameplay will be meaningless.

This is such a poor choice of a follow up to KH3 in terms of Disney content. Yen Sid's nowhere to be seen (I suppose he could be their master still) & the Disney worlds are once again not real ones that are pretty much just gonna be the same ones as in UX.

This game is giving me a 358/2 Days vibe with the cast.

I don't like how the first Disney worlds shown are Agrabah and Wonderland. Hopefully, the Disney world visits are directly lore related and build further development for Xehanort, Eraqus and their friends. Maybe Xehanort interprets the heroes in these worlds in a more negative light or begins to work with the villains of each Disney world which begins the seeds of distrust?



Clearly Xehanort believes that the light in people's heart is a farce, this game better give a good justification for that.

Ansem, baby. You're not supposed to appear yet.

Figured my Urd would be wrong, but didn't think we'd see their whole outfits so soon. So used to long news gaps. lol

Vor has blue eyes. *Kairi's Grandma intensifies*

Still unsure about my feelings on the gameplay, but it looks better than UX.

Ugh, Agrabah and Wonderland. Can we at least some Disney worlds be real and not constructs? I've been wanting King Triton's knowledge of Keyblades to be brought up again in some way for ages.

Still no Yen Sid. Just let Hermod be Yen Sid, please.

We're all discussing about the chronology of YX and Ansem, but they could very well have met more than once... Ansem was sent to destiny island to guide his past self and them waited there until Sora comes... So, if YX returned to destiny island in some point, he should be able to talk to Ansem once again. What I mean is, Nomura can use this as an excuse to explain the "looking older model" from DDD.

Am I the only one who think the cards are super ugly? They were probably going for more visual clarity (which is immediatly disregarded for the key scene cards) but they just looks plain bad, especially which how much background is visible in each of them. Both CoM and KHX avoided this, not sure why they didn't learn from these games.

So looking over the images I see a lot of good and bad things about the gameplay.

First off Xehanort has stats that's hugely different from UX where HP is the only stat your character has, everything else comes from cards/medals in X/UX. However I don't see any immediate way to scroll through characters on the stats screen this leads me to believe Xehanort is the only one we level and the only one whose stats inherently matter, maybe all the kids share the same stats as him. Unlikely though as we only ever see Xehanort's HP so I suspect that like UX's party member system your allies don't necessarily get direct control but rather they do their own thing once its their turn. So while in UX when it was Phillip's turn in the Drag Maleficent fight and he would boost your defense with his shield. In Dark Road you have stuff like Vor using her turn to buff Xehanort's magic. However in UX party members were set based on the story while it seems Eraqus is a permanent party member and the other 4 cycle out based on the mission. The question is then if Eraqus has different properties as permanent fixture while the others seem to be more just assists.

Second while I've mentioned this before, seeing stuff like poisona and protect (and items earlier) speaks of an already deeper RPG combat system than X/UX where every card/medal does basically everything and support or status infliction were chance based effects tagged onto things. It's been compared to flickrush before and that's probably what we are getting, a more RPG-ish version of flick rush where not every move is attack > attack > heal > attack. Likewise I find it interesting that the album doesn't show cards but enemies. It seems instead of collect cards the goal of the game may be to collect enemies by defeating them, perhaps the idea is Xehanort is collecting training data? Either way this probably means that the core point of missions will revolve around taking down specific targets, similar to UX but that's never the actual plot, this feels more like Days. Speaking of flickrush I'm guessing there are two limits at play your card limit represented by the number on the right, and a sort of energy use meter much like flickrush. As you flip cards in succession it probably drains that yellow energy out of the blade, the more cards stacked the more energy drained until you have none left and can't use anymore cards. When you're out of energy, which probably restores over time, you can't play any cards and must wait. If you totally run out of cards you probably either need to spend a longer time recharging.

The fact there is a shop with tickets and jewels means there is gacha element in play to no surprise, but the icons are exactly the same as UX. Now that could be asset reusing OR it could mean just they are actually linked and we might be able to share tickets and jewels across both versions. That also means they could potentially run cross promotional banners like "pull this medal banner 5 times and be rewarded with this card for DR" and stuff like that. Twice the ways to drain but also potentially an ability to bring use to out of date things just piling up like gold moogle tickets.

My interpretation of the battle mechanics is that this will be turned based, but enemies will have a timer before they can attack you, meaning you can accumulate as much Card attacks as you can before enemies hit you.

The party members possibly just giving you bonuses means you can get creative with who you can bring depending on the mission's individual circumstances.

I'm a bit optimistic because DR is looking to have a couple or so layers more of combat depth than KHUx.

Maybe we can finally get a clear explanation of Xehanort's motives in this game, without it being contradicted every 20 minutes?

I call the version of Younger Xehanort playing chess with Eraqus, Kid Xehanort, so I don't get him confused with Young Xehanort (the villain from KH3, DDD, and to an extent, BBS). I see them as related but different (kinda like Apprentice Xehanort, Ansem SOD, and Terranort) but Kid Xehanort really is just the earliest version. I wish more people would use that nickname ...

Out of his new allies, I'm most excited about Urd. She looks like a female cross between the Dark Seekers (especially Ansem and YX) and Kudaj (FF7 Advent Children). I think the design is interesting and mysterious. More people discuss Bragi and Vor though.

I'm curious what happens when your deck runs out. Reload like in COM and Flick Rush where enemies get a free hit? Just a reshuffle? Or SoL like Battle Network unless you had FoldrBak (I hate Alpha).

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