#hi i'm liz and i analyze mobile games way too much for my own good

[bluerosesburnblue]

Pffffffffffffff alright. I’ll fully admit that KHUx is a flawed product, gameplay wise but it’s not... unsalvageable? Like I think I’ve pinpointed what its exact problems are while I was buying a LOT of medals thanks to the Re:Mind special draw deal

Gonna be drawing a lot of comparisons to Pokémon Masters, which does its gacha element surprisingly well (though the mercy pulls are... arguably just as bad or worse). And honestly, the Masters devs are some of the best mobile devs I’ve ever seen? They are so responsive to feedback and just <3 thanks, DeNA

Medals

The medals are... by far the biggest flaw in KHUx (an issue when it’s the core of your gameplay), though most of that is the power creep setting in now that the game’s been running for almost four years. That being said, the medal system would be improved exponentially if it cut down on one element: randomness

Now, it’s theoretically possible to cut down on randomness already; traits are offered for sale in the Moogle Shop. For 5000 Gems Each (1000 for VIP Exclusive). For the record, a 3000 Gem pack is worth $14.99 USD. That would net you all of 3 VIP exclusive traits. For $15. That’s fucking robbery like what??? Getting actual use out of duplicate draws should not be behind a paywall that steep

So, some possible ways that I came up with to cut down on the frustrating aspects of traits are:

When rolling for traits, make it so that you are unable to roll a trait that is already on the medal, since effects don’t stack (RIP my KH3 Phil that only had Poison Resists on him for a long time)

When rolling for Spirit Traits, make it so that you are unable to roll a trait of a lower value than what is already on the medal (If I roll Poison Resist 60% I should not be able to roll a Poison Resist 10% or, say, any Paralysis or Sleep Resist any lower than 60% either)

Even eliminating a few traits from the possible pool would lower the frustration greatly, while also increasing the value of drawing duplicate medals. Speaking of drawing duplicates...

There is rarely linear progression of medal power. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at Pokémon Masters. Every time you draw from the gacha, there is no real “waste” to it. Once you scout a member to your team (the gacha draw)... that’s it! You’ve got ‘em! Some team members are better than others, but there’s no “here’s a character who’s identical to this other one but better.” Drawing a duplicate character will increase the level of their special Sync Move by a stage, up to five levels. Once you get five levels, drawing a duplicate gets you a Power-Up Item of whatever tier the duplicate you drew was. These can be applied to any character of that tier to boost their stats, and 20 applied to a character raises their tier. Basically drawing duplicates only makes the characters you already have stronger, no downsides

And they’re also really good about the free characters! People said “hey, we really like these guys but we’re kinda bummed that we can’t level up their Sync Moves because they aren’t in the gacha” and DeNA went “oh, okay! How about we revamp the type-specific training events so that they hand out tickets that you can use to buy those level-ups? And, since the event offers extra experience to characters of that type, you can level them up while getting the powerup! And we’ll even throw in a lot of really cheap items for those tickets in the shop so that if they don’t have their level cap unlocked, you can do that, too!”

It’s... beautiful~

Meanwhile, in KHUx... I’ve been screwed over by duplicate draws countless times. They’re really only good for traits, and as discussed above, those are so random as to be near useless 80% of the time. And woe to the poor soul who finally gets perfect traits on a medal only to draw a Boosted version of that same medal, with no way to get that boosted medal to the same trait level and no way to get that medal with the perfect traits the boosted status

Progression of power is important in games. Like, really important. Some genres can get away with it (most roguelikes, I’d wager) but I dare say most gamers aren’t into that. Therefore, I propose the following:

Either give us the ability to carry traits over from one medal to another (ex. if you use a medal with traits on it to level up another medal of the same type, you can select any or all of those traits and have them applied to the medal you’re leveling up) OR allow boosted medals to transfer their boosted status when used to level up a medal of the same type (so using a Boosted KH3 Lea with no traits to level up a normal KH3 Lea with full traits will give you a Boosted KH3 Lea with those full traits)

If you really won’t let us do either of the above, then at least let 7 Star medals act as Guilt/Special Attack Boost dots on 6 Star medals. Seriously, they count for traits but not Guilt Dots? Why? Why is the more powerful version worse than the lower level one? I have so many 6 Star boosted medals that I can’t really get to 7 Star because for some reason drawing the 7 Star version is more common and Mickey & Brooms are a limited resource

Similarly, nothing sucks more than finally applying enough Chip & Dales to hit the cap only to draw a boosted version of the medal, so let us transfer over attack and defense boosts and cost decreases when using a medal with those stats to level up a different one

Skills being transferred from one medal to another with no preset skill should have a 100% success rate. Also, any maxed out skill should have a 100% success rate to overwrite so that you don’t lose those precious attack boosts with GA reducers or Lux boosts

Trait Medals should just be eliminated like... god. What a waste. If you have to keep them, make them Moogle Shop exclusive or something but they were really the start of KHUx’s unplayability for me

Boost the power of the Nova Attack. Why does it do so little? It should be on par with a medal

Just... Just bring back guaranteed mercy pulls, please. If I’m pulling on a Rage Form banner, I want Rage Form. Not “any of the following 20 medals, all of which have the same draw chance and Rage Form is in the list, I guess.” If you’re handing out Trait Medals with every draw, at least give me the medal they can be used on!

The new Draw Point deal is, really, a decent start to salvaging medals and I like it a lot. I’ve never gotten a bad deal from it (bless my boosted KH3 Nami <3). But as you’ll see below, there’s ways to make racking up those draw points less tedious

Finally, as it is now, managing medals takes way too long. Some UI and functionality tweaks could go a long way to cutting down the tedium of the management

Just let us roll multiple traits at once I don’t even know why I have to ask for this why won’t you just let us roll multiple traits at once???

Pulling up a medal’s summary should have a Sell button, probably right around where the “Share” and “Remove” buttons are, to eliminate constant jumping between menus to get rid of a single medal when you literally have it right there but they won’t let you sell it unless you find it in the separate sell menu

Medal Summaries should also have an icon, like in the Album, that indicates if you’ve ever acquired the Nova or Full Nova bonus with a medal from that line. I have so many really low-tier medals in my inventory because I don’t know if I have their Full Nova bonus unlocked yet and flipping between the inventory and the Album is a huge pain

And below are just a few scattered tweaks that I’d like to see and would make the medals more bearable but like... aren’t super necessary?

Who do I have to fight to reorganize the Album so that 7 Star medals are listed next to their lower level versions or at least add the option to have them listed in that order?

Magic Mirrors are way too rare just... if merging duplicate medals will only take the one up to a certain percentage until it gets stuck (like stuck at 117% out of 125%) instead of maxing it out (which it SHOULD do) then at least make Magic Mirrors more common

Can we uhh... stop giving out 2/3 types of Cids? Three levels of Cids is excessive and wouldn’t even be an issue if they’d put medal stacking in earlier. Now they’re just redundant. I get so many Cid 10s that anything lower is a waste of inventory space. And even if normal Cids are theoretically useful to new players, if we stop handing them out and only hand out Cid 10s then they can get into the events easier

At the very least, put them next to each other when sorting. Like... sort the utility medals by function and not “date we added them in.” Cid 10s Should be next to Cids and Cid 5s. Huey & Dewey & Louies should be listed with the other type-specific level medals. Same with Chip & Dales. Blue Fairies should be listed with the Star Increase medals like Yen Sid and the Fairies, followed by the Dual Meow Wows that boost things into Supernova or Supernova+. The Valentine’s Chocolates should be next to the Magic Mirrors... the subslot medals should be with the other utilities and not at the top of the fucking list like??? Their sorting system regarding the utility medals SUCKS

The good news though, is that now that the subslot medals are stackable and easier to obtain, there’s less having to rearrange subslots every time you sell an old medal. That’s nice. Small victories

Difficulty

I’m not convinced that anyone at BitGroove playtests this fucking game (and... reminder that KHUx is outsourced to BitGroove and isn’t a Square-Enix internally developed and managed game. Square just does writing, music, and PR mostly)

Proud Mode’s a damn disaster. I’m gonna fight whoever decided to make the objectives “complete all at once” with one objective always being a time limit, some so excessively strict that you can only do it with insanely specific medal combinations. Some of the restrictions are nigh-impossible with the game setup. I will also fight whoever keeps putting the restriction to Random-Target only while they simultaneously refuse to give us good Random-Target medals. There’s no good buffs. There’s no good attacks. If that’s the restriction, you’re just kinda fucked. Same with “10+ Hits Only” and similar. And nearly all of the time you’re locked into a horrible Keyblade for the stage (use Bad Guy Breaker, which has multipliers for all medal types, on a stage where every enemy reflects Power medals! And it’s Random-target only! And restricts you to 5 medals!)

The final section of The Keyblade War is almost completely unplayable. I get it, the Foretellers are supposed to be super-strong, but this is a major story event. It should be beatable for free-to-play users! Even the whales were struggling! Like, holy shit!

I get why it’s like this. They want to try and convince people to pay real money for good medals. Thing is, that kind of greed does the opposite. People are more willing to give money to products that they were already enjoying for free. When people feel like they’re forced to pay, like say, to beat a story event, they’re going to be more likely to hold onto that money because they’ll feel like you don’t deserve it

Again, let’s compare to Pokémon Masters. When people complained that the EX Challenges (necessary to get gear to boost your stats) were too hard, DeNA went in and lowered the difficulty. Now the fanbase is happier and more people can enjoy the challenges, while also unlocking items that benefit higher-level play. People complained that the Mewtwo Legendary Event was too difficult at harder stages and too grindy to max Mewtwo out. Both of the legendary events since then have had lower difficulty and requirements, and they’ve announced that the Mewtwo event is already getting a rerun with similar tweaks. Now more people can enjoy a strong character that they can get completely for free!

DeNA really spoils us

But they’re also a study in how making the game more accessible both increases playerbase and player spending. Go on the Subreddit for a bit and see how many people said “I bought Gems for this Scout deal because I feel like DeNA’s doing a good job and I wanna show some support!”

So, really, KHUx needs to rework their difficulty

I think the biggest thing that needs reworking is the defense mechanic (if a medal’s strength is lower than an enemy’s defense, then it only does 1 damage). Even if it was changed so that your strength being lower than the enemy’s defense only halves the damage you deal, that’s still a vast improvement

Proud Mode needs to be refocused so that Keyblades and Medals allowed are beneficial to the challenge. That increases strategy based around what a player has instead of requiring them to have very specific medals, possibly even with specific traits

Just... get rid of the “complete all at once” mechanic in Proud. I’d rather run the level three times doing a different objective each time than run it 20 times because I keep somehow missing one (usually the time limit)

Enemies absorbing certain types of attacks or reflecting certain types of attacks is fine so long as we’re warned beforehand. In the mission select screen, just put in a section like “Enemies may have the following: etc.” with the icons that indicate the effect in it

Given the amount of gems needed to upgrade Keyblades, they should be much more common to get for free. Monthly Gem Missions are actually way too hard so lower the difficulty and increase the gem rewards

Relatedly, let’s lower the grinding needed in Union Cross, thanks. I really loved being able to knock out all rewards in 1-2 bonus time sessions. Now? Even if I was there for every bonus time I still wouldn’t be able to clear all the rewards. That’s... absurd. This is a mobile game, not a full-time job. Like, they increased the grinding when they added in the speed-up function for Union Cross, but they increased the needed grinding way too much

I do appreciate they they’re adding things like gems and subslot medals as rewards for Union Cross, though, but it’s pointless if no one can actually get a decent amount of them

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Anyway, that’s just my list of tweaks that KHUx could do to make itself better. I originally wasn’t going to post this since it really feels like KHUx is on life support, but now that Dark Road is being added as part of the package I feel like its lifespan got extended enough that it’s worth saying this stuff, even if I highly doubt anyone at BitGroove’s gonna see or care. And that’s sad, because I really want this game to be good. I want it to be fun again. We all know we’re just here for the story, and I think once they recognize that this game is just a vehicle to tell that story, then quality might improve.

DeNA knows their fanbase is just here for more interactions with old, beloved characters so they focus on that. Some get whole story events to themselves, everyone you recruit gets a spotlight episode, the story is literally just an excuse to get characters from all across the franchise interacting with each other with the occasional OC to facilitate things

I feel like the KHUx devs over at BitGroove just... don’t actually understand the appeal of the game they’re working on, and it’s a real shame

Let’s hope Dark Road doesn’t end up the same (Though given that BitGroove’s only two games are KHUx and Final Fantasy All the Bravest I uh... I’m not getting my expectations up because they clearly don’t learn)

(Also, bring the seasonal events back every year? Why wasn’t there a rerun of the Halloween quest this year? Please stop locking medals and accessories behind the VIP “for paying players only” missions that’s so fucking rude and coercive. Give the Sewer Squad names so that I know who’s talking in any given event! And please just give me a rerun of the Chirithy accessories please I want head Chirithy so bad)