Announced for Japan last month, Square Enix revealed during its E3 press conference that it will bring Kingdom Hearts: Unchained to North American shores.
Immediately apparent is the chibi art style of Unchained, which is quite the departure from previous entries in the Kingdom Hearts series. You play as a custom Keyblade wielder during the Great Keyblade War, with Square Enix saying parts of the game will weave the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III.
Mechanically, Unchained looks to be a touch-based mobile RPG with an emphasis on one-button combat. You can call in support from several Square Enix and Disney characters, such as Sora, Donald, Goofy, Riku, and Cloud. We assume more characters can be called in for support, though it wasn’t revealed exactly how players can earn those support characters.
Up until now, Unchained was exclusive to Japan, where the game was announced as a riff off of the similarly-titled browser game. However, Unchained isn’t the first Kingdom Hearts game to make its way to phones, since Kingdom Hearts Coded was released in Japan back in 2008. Coded made its way to North America as Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded for the Nintendo DS in 2011, as well as being included in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix, which was released in December of last year for North America.
Kingdom Hearts: Unchained will be released for smartphones in North America, though Square Enix didn’t reveal when the game would be released. Even so, the game was given a “now in development” tagline, and since the game will be released in Japan sometime this year, we can expect Unchained to be released either late this year or early next year.
