Notes on Kingdom Hearts Missing Link Closed Beta so far.
I am one of the lucky few who managed to get closed beta access. I've been playing for the past 2 days, and so far these are all of the issues and worries i have for the game.
Before I start, I will say this; I have played and beaten every single Kingdom Hearts, from 1 all the way through to RE:Mind & Melody, and all of the mobile games as well. I enjoy this franchise, but the constant "we don't know what's happening" and lack of any real closure is starting to wear me on it.
I love the game for its combat and general story and fun moments. But enough about that, Missing Link time.
Overall: It's a Gacha, and it makes no attempt to hide it. Even 2 days in with closed beta bonuses, I am already seeing the wall fast approaching (just like Ever Crisis) but the real time combat (if you don't use autoplay as its the easiest way to play) is quite fun and feels pretty polished. (think BBS but less floaty) Story so far has NO Disney involvement (All 20 minutes of it), and aide from being Japanese VC and no English dub, is good. Don't know what the future holds for it though. Pokemon GO elements are fun, work, and aside from using some tweaks, could very well be a smash hit if marketed/promo'd well. So far give it a solid 7.5/10, from my very short time with it.
It's kinda messy, but here's my notes on issues with the game (so far) ill be sending in my survey for the beta.
KINGDOM HEARTS MISSING LINK CLOSED BETA NOTES
- Main city hub could do with some minigames or just general distractions to fill out the RPG like experience, as it currently feels lifeless/like little more than a glorified (but very pretty) menu with nothing to explore/do.
- NPC dialouge text speed is currently very slow, and option to speed up the text dialogue (with multiple settings) would be a good change.
- The cluster posts are either bugged for me or could do with further in game explanation, as they did not appear to function correctly.
- The 'Lock Mode' could have some improvements to increase battery life, such as lowering in-game fps, automatically reducing audio output of in-game volume, automatically turning off vibrations, just general backend QOL improvements.
- Astral Dimension pop-in/jittering even on low/med settings is very prevalent, running on a Poco X5 Pro.
- More advanced options for graphical settings would a welcome improvement (Resolution, Draw distance, Model/Texture Qual, FPS, etc) instead of the presets only.
- More musical selections for the Astral Dimension exploration & fights would be nice, even if they are just more of the OG games tracks (because Yoko never misses with her OST's)
- The ability to fly/glide whilst exploring would be a welcome addition for people using touch mode, even if it is not changing the actual gameplay, it would look slick imo.
- Area Bosses/World enemy level (including pieces, doesn't mean improving piece loot/quality) should scale up with enemy field level settings, rather than being much lower (e.g enemy level is 3 on a piece battle, on enemy level setting 15)
- 1 local enemy boss should not immediately allow for location of the area boss to be given, consider increasing to 2/3 for added player satisfaction.
- AP for piece battles in users immediate vicinity of GPS mode (within a range of 10-20m outside of current range) should be lowered slightly, allowing for a better 'at-home' gameplay experience.
- Set world boss encounters for major world landmarks and allowing for cheap AP world wide exploration using teleport system from said bosses would be a cool inclusion, but should be a considerable challenge as well.
- The ability to completely turn off Astral enemy encounters would be a feature i would recommend to add purely for performance/lag related reasons, as during large exploration trips the constant jittering when enemies load in is quite annoying.
- This is a big one, whilst I am driving around I have the game set to hands free lock mode, the amount of pieces/exp and items I can accumulate is staggeringly high, giving players who drive with the game open a MASSIVE advantage, greatly upsetting balancing.
I am unsure of what can be done to fix this, however it is an issue that MUST be addressed, as it quite literally breaks the game in terms of the pace of progression between players who are not driving/riding with the game idle, and would be one of the main PR issues that would surrond the game immediately at launch for more dedicated players.
- A bestiary of enemies defeated (a enemy galley of sorts) would add some extra content to the game without requiring much effort, and allows for more people who are new to the franchise to learn about them somewhat.
- Literally any idle rewards like walking distance (not idle with app open, i mean with the app just running as a background process) would be incredibly welcome, as lets face it, Pokemon Go has been doing it for years, and it would be a direct downgrade for people playing this title for it to not also include it.
- Autoplay whilst being the most efficient and "easiest" way to play, actively discourages player involvement with real time combat mechanics. Consider either incentivizing active combat (slightly better rewards/mission ratings etc) or providing disincentives for abusing autoplay (lesser rewards for using autoplay during battle for e.g/affecting rating) as the combat system in this game is honestly very fun and clearly had alot of effort put into it.
- The current draw opening animations do not include a "skip all" button, which would be a nice addition for those doing a large amount of rolls.
- Please make a Zack Fair piece, I wrote all these notes for the Closed Beta just for you I beg you pls ;-;
- Whilst stable, I have experienced quite long load times upon app start-up and 1 crash during a transition from the Astral world to the Hub City.