You haven't met Emphemera, Skuld and Ava yet, you haven't fought the black figures, you haven't seen "the speech", and everyone is still getting along. Nothing has happened, but your mistake was expecting a console game type story instead of the MMO storytelling this game has. Personally, I like the story of [chi] and Unchained, but I've never said that everyone else would. All I've said and what I maintain is that this story is important. Nomura directly name dropped no less than four other titles that this directly ties to. And yes, it takes a while to get going; I wasn't super invested until Ephemera showed up and that was some 18 months in. Fortunately, Unchained moves much faster.
It wouldn't have killed the game creators to introduce the important characters earlier. Have Ephemera's introduction in quest 25 and then make the player bump into him every now & then. First an innocent introduction, then maybe doing some quests together, then maybe show him starting to get curious about
and build up the drama from there. Overall the story wouldn't have to move all that much faster, but it would at least give players a bit more to chew on and give us more time to know these other characters better & given the game more time to flesh them out.
You're right that KHs often lack in execution, but never this horribly. Days is Oscar-worthy stuff in comparison to this game. Even if Days is slow to start and a few dozen sea salt ice-cream eating cutscenes aren't the most enthralling storytelling ever, there's at least some kind of idea behind a lot of the scenes that develop Roxas, Xion, Axel and/or the relationship between them. If Days moved at the pace of Chi, it would be called 358/2 YEARS. Chi might have some intrigue and the characters aren't wholly unlikable, but from what I've spoiled myself about the story/cutscenes of this game throughout its run as a browser game & a mobile game, I didn't get the impression that the storytelling is going to get all that much better. Each time there was a story update in the past I was like... "That's it? Bleh" The other characters will not get all that much screentime & development, at least not enough for it to be enough to start claiming them "best KH characters EVAH!" You bump into him a couple of times, have a chat for 30 seconds before continuing on and suddenly you're best pals who'd do anything for each other. It just doesn't feel earned and most of it just feels so cock-teasyish. I mean, the fact that Chirithy is
is interesting, but how the revelation is handled from a storytelling POV (other than the "shock" of it) is piss poor, which kind of ruins it.
Still. The amount of complaints this free game gets is amazing.
Just because it's free it doesn't mean it's free from criticism. It tries to tell a story. It does a horrible job at it, even by MMO standards. Even if we look at just the Disney stuff. You really think they couldn't have come up with some more interesting stories for the Disney worlds than "Find Alice's handkerchief" or "kill heartless here, and now in this room, and now again in this room and the next room -> yay, the heartless are gone, but actually, we need you to go through these same rooms one by one again, just bcuz"?
I'm fairly certain I did the same in the exact same quest.
