Kingdom Hearts Union X is rated 4+ and is family-friendly. Seriously, meet your favorite Disney characters all over again. Let the nostalgia reel you in!
There is animated cartoon violence in combat no worse than any elementary school children’s cartoon. Your avatar will swing a Keyblade and your Spirit companion will jump around to attack. The heartless just disappear when vanquished.
Review:
Kingdom Hearts Union X is a well-made stroll through the franchise. The mechanics are fast and simple. My only complaint is that it can get repetitive once you unlock good Medals. Combat consists of using your Medals for normal attacks, area attacks, and specials. Using your special attacks draw on your Special gauges and decrease it. Meaning you’ll need to manage your Special gauge wisely and time special attacks well, or you won’t have any gas left for the boss!
Time: You can play Kingdom Hearts Union X until your energy limit is reached. In story mode levels can cost 0 AP. Usually, they’ll increase in cost as you progress. However, leveling up your avatar refreshes your energy. You can extend your energy (and Medal cost limit) through Avatar Boards unlocked by completing mission goals. Once you complete the main story the developers have added extra missions and resources to farm for improving your power.
Pros and Cons: Kingdom Hearts Union X has a large story (over 700 story levels!), and it’s told in a fun, cartoony style. There are also cut-scenes, good music, and a variety of unlockables to keep you playing. You get a lot of value from Kingdom Hearts Union X. Like other free-to-play games, you do have to be patient or pay money for the best Medals. You’ll obtain Jewels just by daily logins. My main complaint is the somewhat repetitive combat in the early game. Still, I’ve put in hours, reached level 14, beaten map 41, and am still happy to play the game. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t explain leveling Medals and ‘guilting’, or evolving, them well. Thankfully, it automatically sorts the best leveling Medals when you select “Optimize” in the Level Up screen. Like other free games, there is a power limit with the cost of Medals preventing you from just buying infinite power. You have to earn some of it. This kind of irks me, yet, unlike Puzzle and Dragons, it doesn’t appear to artificially inhibit your ability to clear story levels. My biggest issue with Puzzle and Dragons when I first picked it up was how much weaker the cost limit made you compared with the levels you had to face. You were stuck with monsters too weak to defeat important missions until you ground for levels. Thankfully PAD didn’t keep this trend and Kingdom Hearts provides you enough firepower within the cost limit to do well.
Overall Impression: If you love Kingdom Hearts, gacha games, turn-based combat, exploring maps for items, anime, Disney characters, free games, and RPG level progression; then Kingdom Hearts Union X is in the App Store and on Android waiting for you! If you don’t enjoy free-to-play games requiring patience and collecting, then Kingdom Hearts Union X may not be for you.
Tips:
- Save your Jewels for the Falling Price 3000 Jewel deals – Kingdom Hearts Union X encourages you in the shop to pay for the beginner’s deal. Don’t. You get more and higher quality Medals with the 3k deals. Falling Price events mean after paying 3k, the next pull you do will cost fewer Jewels (I think it was around 250 less each pull). When starting the game, you’ll probably be fine with pulling any one of the 3k deals (once!) to give you a good boost in power for the story missions. I’ve been able to One-Turn Triumph pretty much everything if I’m paying attention.
- Equip powerful Medals to your Spirit – Once you’re ready to fight, choose a powerful Medal to equip your Spirit. Now, make sure you click ‘Swap Gear’ below your Spirit’s Medal to join your team. Doing so will make your Spirit significantly more powerful than you! It doesn’t care about Medal cost.
- Explore behind you – Make sure whenever you start a new map to run behind your starting position. There can be hidden items behind you! Stairs and exits can be misleading and hold extra lux or items.
I hope the review and tips help you out, dear reader!
Links: The App Store link is at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom-hearts-union-%CF%87-cross/id1086859120?mt=8 and the home website is at https://kingdomhearts.com/unionx/us/. The best video guide for new players I found is by MonsterDFace at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzA5BJpPvmA and I don’t remember any bad language off the top of my head.
Disclaimer: I’m not being paid by Square Enix Inc. or anyone else to write these tips. The only money I could make would be through advertising on this site or on YouTube at this point in time. I don't take responsibility for the content on sites linked to from this article.
by Brian Petrilli AKA Jalinon