Kingdom Hearts Dark Road

Synopsis

Kingdom Hearts Dark Road takes place about 65 years before the story of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep. It follows the early life of Xehanort, the main villain of the series, showing how he became friends with another Keyblade wielder named Eraqus and started to become obsessed with darkness, which eventually sets the stage for the entire Dark Seeker Saga. Xehanort travels to several Disney-inspired worlds that first appeared in Kingdom Hearts χ, such as Agrabah from Aladdin, Wonderland from Alice in Wonderland, the Dwarf Woodlands from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Beast's Castle from Beauty and the Beast, and Olympus Coliseum from Hercules. The world Scala ad Caelum, which players first saw in Kingdom Hearts III, serves as the main base for the characters.

When Xehanort is a child, he lives on the Destiny Islands with an old mentor who used to be a Keyblade wielder but was reborn in a new body. This mentor thinks Xehanort is the "child of destiny," a prophesied hero who will save the world, and keeps him hidden there to protect him from thirteen beings of True Darkness until he is strong enough to fight them. After the mentor dies, a teenage Xehanort is met by Ansem—his own Heartless from the future—who takes him to Scala ad Caelum, a place where people train to become Keyblade wielders. Two years later, Xehanort and his classmates Eraqus, Hermod, Bragi, Urd, and Vor are told by their teacher Odin that seven older students have disappeared just before their Mark of Mastery exam. Another classmate, Baldr, has gone off to find his sister Hoder, who is one of the missing students. Odin sends the group to search different worlds for the lost students, warning them not to get involved in the affairs of those worlds.

Development and release

Prior to Kingdom Hearts Dark Road, series producer Tetsuya Nomura had expressed interest in making a game about Xehanort's past, but shelved the idea due to it not fitting in with the Kingdom Hearts development team's desires. Nomura later decided to revisit the concept when he was approached by the Union χ team about creating another game with a new protagonist. Several of the new characters introduced in Dark Road were given names based on Norse mythology. The game was first announced in January 2020, initially under the working title Project Xehanort, being developed by the same team working on Union χ. It was later clarified that Dark Road would be a standalone game accessed within Union χ and that the app would be rebranded as Kingdom Hearts Union χ Dark Road upon Dark Road's release. Players could access Dark Road without needing to meet certain criteria within Union χ and could link the two games, earning free currency based on their progress in Union χ. While initially planned to launch in early 2020, the game was later delayed for unspecified reasons, with some outlets speculating it to be the result of development complications from the COVID-19 pandemic. Dark Road was released worldwide on June 22, 2020 as part of Union χ version 4.0.0 update. On February 25, 2021, Square Enix announced that the app would be reaching its end of service in April for the Japan server and May for the global servers; this end of service was later delayed until June 17. While Dark Road was rendered unplayable after that date, Square Enix confirmed a subsequent version 5.0.0 update in September 2021 would add the remaining story chapters and allow the game to be played offline, removing microtransactions and carrying over existing users' progress. Following several delays due to the amount of story content being added, the 5.0.0 update was released on August 26, 2022. In August 2024, the app was delisted from all digital storefronts.

Reception

Reviews of Dark Road praised the game's story, but criticized the simplicity of the gameplay. Satoshi Kondo of 4Gamer found the rate of progression to be reasonable, though he acknowledged some players may find it lacking. Famitsu appreciated the game's simple nature, noting that fans would not have difficulty keeping up with playing both Union χ and Dark Road. Stacey Henley of NME felt there was no incentive to actually play the game, rather than activate the auto battle function and let the game play itself. Reviewing the offline version, Sorrel Kerr-Nung of Destructoid felt Dark Road had one of the best stories in the series, but claimed that due to the auto battle system and removal of microtransactions, the game "used to be a game about one thing (spending money) and now it is a game about nothing."