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It's been over a year since KINGDOM HEARTS χ[chi] was revealed for the first time. Debuting at Tokyo Game Show 2012, χ[chi] was greeted by response of general understanding and annoyance. For such a successful franchise like Kingdom Hearts, a social application should only be expected. Kingdom Hearts Mobile had originally served the purpose to an extent, but with its termination on April 30, a new title would need to rise to the occasion. In comes KINGDOM HEARTS χ[chi] - bright and unassuming, eager to take its place within this beloved series.
It's a social game based on the Keyblade War, or more specifically, of the all-too-familiar fairytale told on various occasions by Kairi's grandmother.
"Far, far away, in a fairy-tale realm...
The realm was filled with light.
That light gave birth to many worlds, enveloping them.
The source of the light, Kingdom Hearts, and the key that protected it, the χblade...
As long as they existed, it was believed that the realm would be in eternal light.
However, just as strong light will form a shadow, darkness was born.
The darkness called up fear, unease and craving.
Darkness, hidden deep in hearts, began to spread throughout the realm as chaos.
In order to drive back the spreading darkness, those who wished for light created Keyblades in imitation of the χblade, and embarked on adventures that spanned the realm."
That seemed simple enough. The Keyblade War was an event that many have dreamt of experiencing for themselves, and while there are those who feel this event would be better suited if it weren't through PC browsers, it was a story that was available to tell. Despite that, a small community began to grow specifically for this title.
For those who had restricted means of gaming and difficulties experiencing the other titles, being set on browsers offered a grand opportunity before them. Players could play this at their leisure without a care in the world with others scattered across the globe. The art style is appealing and faithful to the original source material, gameplay is simple and easy to jump into, and updates were made to greet players as often as every other week. At the time of posting, the game has been live for almost 5 months, and the quality has remained consistent to this day. It seemed to be as good as social games could get, except for one problem:
It is still only in Japanese.
While players worldwide could join the game at any given moment, the language barrier was a major factor in turning many right back around. You didn't need to know the language in order to play it, but not knowing led to troubled and disjointed experiences, whether you had difficulty locating specific items or understanding what exactly you had to do to progress in the story, although many guides have been and are being created in order to ease the process.
Speaking of the story - it's worth mentioning that three months ago on August 28, 2013, Series Director Tetsuya Nomura spoke briefly about KINGDOM HEARTS χ[chi], revealing that a story that leads into the main series will be implemented in the near future. But if χ[chi] were to become relevant to the main story, then even more fans would want to play the game for themselves in order to discover this connection. What could be done in order to make this as community-friendly as possible without making sacrifices?
The answer would be to localize the game. There were many discussions about how this could be done, as Square Enix's browser-based social games that were originally exclusive to Japan rarely make it overseas. Some fans even started a petition in order to raise awareness for the title in the hopes that it'd someday be available to them. The game's localization is a topic that has never been officially addressed, but perhaps that may be changing.
As stated previously, the game typically receives updates every other week or so, and one took place yesterday to remove remaining assets left over from the Halloween event and add new content for the Trident Anchor event. As curious as we are, it's simple work to load up the game and see what new files and codes can be detected. 2 pages of code caught our eye by content and name, featuring one key word: "localization".
Click to enlarge!
Although the code is still incompete, could it be that preparations have begun for an upcoming English release? Are the development staff just getting things prepared should a localization go through? Only time will tell.
