"The smaller the world is, the easier it is to control. So next, in order to tell the story of the world bit by bit, why don't we expand the world bit by bit? And then if we write book after book, the world will continually expand, forever."

Just a quick note: this is purely a review of the Union Cross "season" rather than the original X, on which my feelings are broadly positive, at least in terms of story. Gameplay-wise, this is all dogshit.

Anyway! This is probably the worst Kingdom Hearts game. In my reviews of prior titles, I've noted that I'm not especially interested in the wider Plot of the series, preferring more what each individual game does with it's own themes and characters. From that lens, there's at least one thing I truly love in every Kingdom Hearts. Yes, even Coded. Yes, even 3. The games have an affecting emotional truth at the core of their stories that shine through the tangled thorns of Lore that the series increasingly insists upon itself.

Union Cross is the apotheosis of everything about Kingdom Hearts I have grown to dislike. For such an arduously long game that demands so much time even to just watch the cutscenes on youtube, it is a vacuous, empty space, with nothing to say or impart. It is pure, unconstrained, Lore, hours upon hours of teeth-grindingly slow setup and teasing and exposition that exists to set up future games and explain things no one cared to have explained. So much of Union Cross is devoted to explaining the return of Maleficent, an increasingly vestigial character the series hasn't known what the fuck to do with since the very first game. And the rest of it is an agonisingly slow trailer for future Kingdom Hearts Content, doled out at a miserly pace over six years.

It feels particularly insidious to lock these story details behind a miserable grind that is constantly dangling the opportunity to pay money to make the road ahead a little easier. People like Everglow on youtube are heroes for trudging through this mire so we don't have to. Even if Union Cross told the best story in the world, this kind of horrifically manipulative preying upon fan investment would damn it. But it doesn't. It's hard to even say it has a story at all.

Yes, it has a plot and characters, even some potentially interesting characters or cool scenes. But they are absolutely swallowed by the black hole of endless exposition and explanation. Nothing really happens, nothing really means anything, and nothing says anything. It's just...stuff. Hours and hours of stuff.

This isn't what stories are. Stories say something, do something. They don't - shouldn't - exist simply to feed more future Plot. I'd call this the damage the Marvel Cinematic Universe did, but people were wikibrained before then. This impulse, to pile plot upon plot upon plot, nothing but Plot in this barren land, to forgo substance or nuance or theme or feeling, is a virus that is eating away at the heart of this series, and many others. It can be fun to speculate about what's going to happen next, sure. But you need something more. You can't fall in love with a Wikipedia plot summary, you just can't.

Believe it or not, I am interested in where this series goes next. But none of that excitement comes from the lore dumps in Union Cross, or Melody of Memory, for that matter. It comes from how the secret ending of KH3 and its Re:Mind DLC made me feel. Because Union Cross made me feel almost nothing.

KINGDOM HEARTS SEXISM WATCH: Strelitzia exists entirely to be Fridged. You can play as a girl the whole way through, at long last, and even change your gender and gender presentation on the fly! Hooray!

(having just watched the ending) Ron Howard Voice.