So Kingdom Hearts χ[chi]. This game take place far far in the past of Kingdom Hearts in “the time of fairy tales” (a common misconception is that this is an actual fairy tale that Kairi’s Grandmother told her, but I’m not buying that until I see the localization. Oh the game is almost certain being localized, BTW. Now released…). There’s two basic components to the game: boss battles and quests. The quests are further subdivided into three areas: story quests, event quests, and weekly quests. The story quests are just what they sound like: a Disney character will tell you “Save me from the heartless that’s attacking” or “Help me find X number of X” and you’ll go do it. It’s just like any other MMO. Completing story quests actively effects the world in a way reminiscent of 358/2 Days: things you do in story quests like unlocking a door with cause that door to be forever open in that world and the types and strength of Heartless will increase as you continue. Weekly quests run from Sunday to Sunday and are basically run off the mill grinding. In fact, you can mostly ignore the weekly quests for story any event quests, because a good number of them overlap. For example, if the story quest is to kill 20 Yellow Operas and the weekly quest is to kill 10 heartless of any type, you’re complete the weekly quest in the middle of the story quest. The Event quests are much like the other quests except much more esoteric: you have to kill X heartless, or do X damage to raid bosses, or (and this was very odd) you have to talk to your union members. The events tend to run for 2-3 weeks and can completely change the look of KHX; for example, the hub world is currently covered in snow and has a christmas tree up. Also, there are a ton of level 444 (!!) Christmas Tree Nightm- I mean Heartless. (I can’t kill them).



The biggest difference between this and a regular MMO is that any action you take uses up your AP (ability points). Run out of AP and you either have to wait for it to recharge at 1AP every three minutes or use a potion to restore 10AP or hi potion to restore it all. You start out with 50 points and you gain an extra point for every member of your team up to 80 points. PLUS one of the bonuses for one of the weekly missions is an AP Up item, so I actually don’t know what the max AP can be (likely 99). Also, you’ll get potions almost constantly as rewards for missions and logins, so you can more or less play as much as you like. I for example have been playing for about four and a half months and I have 186 potions. This is the world screen showing Makine in Dwarf Woodlands:





The other major part of the game is the Raid Bosses. These are team based fights where you take on some of the major Heartless Bosses from the series, such as Darkside and Trickmaster. The key to these fights is to time it with your allies properly: if you attack within three minutes of your ally’s attack, you’ll get a combo bonus, which is literally your teammate(s) coming out and doing Sonic Rave on the raid boss for extra damage before you start up your own attack. The number of hits is equal to the current combo chain, so if you manage to get it to something ridiculous like 25, you see a nice orgy of keybladed violence unload on the bosses face before you even step in. In addition to the combo bonus, you’ll get a bonus if your keyblade matches the enemies weakness.





The current raid boss is Trickmaster and since I’m wielding Starlight, I get a damage bonus as well. Doing attacks uses up BP (battle points). You have a total of 5 BP and the max you can use in an attack is three. Much like the AP, when your BP is gone, you can either wait for it to recharge at the rate of 1BP every 15 minutes, use and ether to restore one point or a hi ether to restore them all. Alternatively, you can use the BP share (I don’t actually know what it’s called) to restore a union mates BP, which will also restore a point for you as well. You can restore up to five points a day. They recently added two new wrinkles to the game that make it much easier to play. Alongside of gieing you a SR card for free once you hit level 20, they’ve added the Guilt system and a second chance mechanic. The second chance is pretty straight forward: if you are fighting a heartless and that heartless knocks you out in battle, you can immediately take the heartless on again with their HP to whatever you reduced it to and your fully restored. The Guilt system is actually quite interesting. Whenever you kill a heartless, you release three things: Lux (which I’ll get into later), the Heart (of course) and occasionally this thing called Guilt. Again, since I can’t read Japanese I don’t know what was being said in the cutscene explaining guilt, but I do know that the players had been working for an imposter and something is pretty messed up ATM. In any cause, hunting specific heartless will release a certain amount of guilt, which will cause your damage again raid bosses to increase. This is Makine fighting Trickmaster and you can see her current guilt bonus off to the left hand side:



The other major thing is the customizing. I’m certain by know you’ve all noticed Makine’s adorable reindeer outfit. There are a number of outfits to be gained in KHX, but the main customizing is the Keyblade and your attack decks.



Here you can see the current keyblade I have equipped and my current attack deck. If you look at the upper left corner of the card you’ll see the red physical symbol, the blue magical symbol, and the green technical symbol. If you look beside the keyblade, you’ll see the same symbols with a multiplication symbol and a number under it. This is how you make your critical hits. When you go into battle, your deck of nine is shuffled and you get three of your cards in random order. If the card type matches the position, then the damage is increased by the multiplier. On the earlier screen, you see that Makine’s third blow was a critical hit. As you level up your keyblades with materials, you’ll increase the number of bonus slots and the value of those bonuses as well.



The cards are customizable as well. Not only can you increase their level, but you can also limit cut them to increase their max level and attach skills to them to provide a variety of abilities. For example, my gullwings card has a strength up modifier as wel as a skill that makes it so defeating enemies has a card of dropping a rare card. There’s another set of five support cards that increase your max HP and the amount of Lux you get from defeating enemies.







When you first start playing Kingdom Hearts χ[chi], you’ll get some backstory about the time of fairytales and them be dropped into character customization. Outside of your gender, none of the choices you make here matter as they can all be changed later on. Then you’ll be ask to pick which union you want to join. The availible unions (and their leaders) are:



Anguis





Leopardos





Unicornis (this is my union)





Ursus





and Vulpeus (this is the union where the most English players are)





Immediately after you pick and confirm your union, you’ll get your first keyblade and be dropped into the world. Specifically, you be dropped into Daybreak town.







Where you’ll immediately be attacked by a Darkside







And will need your Union Foreteller to come in and save your ass. S/He will exchange a few blows with the Darkside and follow it into the Corridors of Darkness. After they’ve left a Moogle and a mysterious creature named Chirithy will give you your first combat tutorial as well as explain your mission: to defend the worlds from darkness and to collect the light, which is known as Lux.



This is a Lux



This is Chirithy





(Side note: Moogles are greedy assholes in this game. In one cutscene, Chirithy clearly drops a card and a Moogle picks it up, says it’s his and offers to sell it back. This is a card you happen toneed by the way.)



After you take down a shadow, the Darkside reappears and you must face it again. But this time you’re not alone.







After your Raid Boss tutorial, your Foreteller comes back and explains about the emerging darkness in other world that you will need to defeat and prepares to send you on your way. Before leaving again, the Foreteller also warns the player of those who hoard the light for their own greed, seekers of darkness disguised as guardians of light. This is where it gets interesting IMO.







I believe the implication is to not trust the other unions as they are seeking the light for a disingenuous purpose. But if that’s the case, why should we trust the people in our own faction? I’d like to direct your attention to the five Foretellers shown up there. Note that you can’t see what color their eyes are. I’ve a suspicion that that’s because their eyes are gold. Granted that’s just specualtion, but there’s another thing I need to point out. Let’s take a look at the Foreteller’s Keyblades.



Anguis





Leopardos





Unicornis





Ursus





and Vulpeus





Did you see it? No? Well, let me give you a few hints.







Still no? Look at the Union leaders’ keychains. Now look at Master Xehanort’s and Vanitas’s Keyblades. All of them have the blue Evil Eye, a mark of darkness. Now this could be a coincedence, but the KH team is absurdly deliberate with everything in the series, right down to the protagonists’ names. Furthermore, Kingdom Hearts 2 and Dream Drop Distance show that the protagonist is not above being completely manipulated for nefarious ends. Nomura announced that KHX will tie directly into canon (specifically into KH3) in an upcoming update and I believe that soon we’ll be getting the start of the beginnings of the Keyblade war. In fact, just as the Land of Departures became Castle Oblivion and Radiant Garden became Hollow Bastion, I believe the eventual form of Daybreak Town will be the Keyblade Graveyard.



One last thing worth noting is going back to the Foreteller’s Keyblade and how similar it is to Master Xehanort’s. In fact his Keyblade looks to be from a sixth faction, one with a goat mascot. Following the Chi naming convention, it would be the Capras faction, barring any artistic license to be employed. Leopardus, Ursus, and Vulpes are all genera of the animals the Unions represent: leopard, bear and fox, respectively. Interestingly, Anguis is not the genus of the snake, but rather of a slow moving legless lizard. Granted, it could be that Serpentes was too on the nose, but considering the absurd amount of thought given to names, I can’t write it off as anything other than intentional. [/shameless self promotion]



That’s about all I have to say on Chi. If you have any questions or anything you want elaborated feel free. Or if you want to hear my concept for RE: χ[chi]…