Kingdom Hearts Missing Link has been cancelled. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise - it was delayed five months ago, and we didn’t hear another peep until said cancellation announcement earlier this week.
While I’m disappointedMissing Link will never see the light of day, I’m hoping that Square Enix will learn something from this and finally free the series from its mobile shackles.
Mobile Games Are Terrible For A Series With An Ongoing Narrative
Kingdom Hearts is so special because of its ambition to tell an ongoing story across myriad different games and its ability to keep players engaged for several decades now. Sadly, its inconsistent mobile releases have long been tarnishing that legacy.
The series already had its fair share of mobile titles prior to Missing Link, and, predictably, you can’t play any of them these days. But you still need to watch their cutscenes and be aware of individual events to keep up with the narrative, which naturally makes fans wary of any future titles.
Going into Kingdom Hearts 3 without playing X or Union X? Good luck knowing who the heck Ephemer is. Strelitzia appears in the Kingdom Hearts 4 reveal trailer, and is seemingly stepping into a bigger role this time around. However, the reason why she’s in Quadratum, i.e. the major narrative beat that explains why her role will be so much larger, is locked behind the dead mobile game Union X.
This would have been the future of Missing Link, so part of me is glad we won’t be further subjected to this style of storytelling.
We did receive a cutscene movie about Kingdom Hearts X, but why waste so many resources making a mobile game, waiting for it to die, and then remaking the cutscenes again to catch casual viewers up? It’s not sustainable.
Kingdom Hearts Needs To Go Back To Double-A Games
Before turning to mobile games, Kingdom Hearts made use of handheld consoles. The series’ very first sequel, Chain of Memories, launched on Game Boy Advance, and this trend continued with 358/2 Days on Nintendo DS, Birth by Sleep on PSP, and Dream Drop Distance on 3DS.
While opinions on these games are… mixed, they’re readily available now thanks to remasters and don’t rely on an ongoing service to keep them so. you’re able to actually play them. You know, the bare minimum for a video game.
The Nintendo Switch is right there - it’s Nintendo’s most popular console ever - so why hasn’t the Kingdom Hearts team taken advantage of it? I imagine the success of Square Enix’s other gacha titles, like Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis, are likely to blame, but why turn back on what made Kingdom Hearts so successful in the first place?
Missing Link’s cancellation should be a wake-up call. The time and resources spent on developing a mobile game, for a playbase that prefers console/PC gamesandfor a series that requiresyou to be at least familiar with its past games, is never going to be worth it. Hopefully, this is the last time Square Enix makes this mistake.
