Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance review

[Dogg Thang]

Kingdom Hearts 3DS. With all the power of a whole extra D. So how is it? Well the truth is I have only played the first KH game (which I enjoyed) and some of GBA CoM (which I really didn't like) so I can't compare it to the more recent KH games. So far though, we have the same main characters in Sora and Riku and Traverse Town, so it already feels quite familiar to me.

The game looks pretty lovely on 3DS and sounds lovely too. As for the gameplay, well, so far it seems to have plenty of potential. It's very rich in that there seem to be loads of features and abilities in the play system, with some interesting things like flowmotion (basically shooting around the environments by spinning and jumping on things) and like the ability to shift to the lower screen to launch items into the air and the addition of an almost pokemon like creature collecting feature. But so far it's all potential as I haven't yet found much of a use for most of these features. Hopefully all that will develop.

I'm quite early in the game and it is still throwing tutorials at me - there are a lot of these and I imagine I haven't paid anywhere near as much attention as I should have. Still, the game seems to play well except for a godawful camera. The game does support the circle pad pro but I haven't yet tried it.

So that's it so far, except to say that it has a gorgeous intro sequence, still using a versions of Simple and Clean from the original.

[Rep]

Be interesting to hear how you get on with this, with you having only played KH1. As someone who's played six KH games, I still struggle to follow what's going on, the overall story has so many complex layers, that I wonder how they can be introduced to new players.

The tutorial in Kingdom Hearts 2 is a whooping three hours long too

Birth by Sleep is going to be hard to top though, the previous DS entries were pretty pants.

[Dogg Thang]

Well I'm into the meat of the game now and really enjoying it. Admittedly I found Traverse Town a bit of a chore and I was wondering if I'd get into it but it clicked once I got out into the other worlds. The first world is

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from Disney's Hunchback

and I groaned a little thinking that the 3DS game got the dregs but it actually turned out to be pretty good. I really enjoyed playing through it and the location is pretty varied and interesting.

As far as the story goes, so far it has been pretty simple in that there is a bad guy and his bad friend, who I take it was in other KH games. The thing is, even if I'm missing the layers there (likely), the main stories in the worlds carry me through and are interesting.

Currently in

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Tron Legacy's Grid

and loving it, having loved the movie. It looks great and they did a really good job representing the characters. My only gripe there is no

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Daft Punk

soundtrack. I would have hoped for at least KH versions but no, nothing I recognise. A shame given how much the music really made the movie.

So yes, generally really liking this. Combat is a but relentless but they've made it interesting enough not to become frustrating. Kind of wishing I had played the others now.

[Rep]

Also enjoying it so far, even up to the end of

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La Cite

there's alot going on. Liked the scene with

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Axel/Lea and company waking up, can't wait to see where that's going to go. Since I don't think we ever found out what Lea and Isa were doing in Radiant Garden originally.

Didn't realise that each pet has it's own skill tree and separate set of points to upgrade skills, that was a nice surprise.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah I had no idea who those people were. It did give me text summaries of Birth By Sleep and one of the DS ones but it was a real case of tldr.

[Rep]

The drop system is starting to irritate me now, how the hell they thought it was a good idea I'll never know. It breaks the flow of the game up too much. Apart from that I'm really enjoying it though.

[Dogg Thang]

I don't know. I kind of like the drop system. While I don't know most of the other games to compare, I kind of like that time limit and trying to get as much from the bonus time as possible. I have made it through the first batch of worlds now and looking forward to what's next. So far, I'm enjoying it massively. The worlds have been excellent, with the exception of Traverse Town which I find really dead and dull.

Really wishing I had played the others now, especially KH2 knowing it had a more classic Tron world. Hoping they do a HD collection that makes it to Vita or something.

[Rep]

Oh Man,

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Symphony of Sorcery

best Kingdom Hearts world since "that one" in KH2, also a nice twist on

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Mickey's Keyblade Training

.

Kingdom Hearts 1 is definitely in need of a remake, the game itself isn't that great, it's not until 2 it becomes something special. Playing KH 1 > 2 > Birth by Sleep and 358 days should bring you upto speed, 2 and BBS are amazing, 358 not so much.

[Dogg Thang]

Yes, that world is gorgeous and has loads of variety. It's really nice. I'm in what I take to be the last world now and, because it's now about story elements from other games, it's losing me a little. Probably just because I haven't played those others but the non-Disney elements come across as a huge weakness because we go from these fun and varied worlds to all these black-coated guys all looking like a minor variation of each other and all spouting long speeches. Sora and Riku themselves seem much more fun and interesting and even the World Ends With You Characters were fun so it's weird to me that these Cloudalikes drag it down so much and yet they're apparently the main meat of the Kingdom Hearts story. Doesn't seem to be playing to the strengths of the concept, as far as I can see.

Still, I'm totally loving this game. Are we the only ones playing it?

[Rep]

Completed Sora now, getting destroyed by

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Third Form Ansem

with Riku though. There's a serious amount of Kingdom Hearts lore going on in

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The World that Never Was

It's also dropped more bombshells than I can count, which Is a shame because there's some really good stuff going on here.

abigsmurf was heavily into Kingdom Hearts, but he's not posted in ages. Here's hoping they keep Flowmotion for Kingdom Hearts 3 too.

[Rep]

You're definitely going to want to equip two Curaga for Riku towards the end, was the only way I could do it. Amazing ending though, you might want to stop, go back and play the entire series before finishing this one. The last hour will make zero sense to the uninitiated, to everyone else it's jaw dropping. Also

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Axel/Lea Keyblade wielder

[Dogg Thang]

Finished this tonight, although the 3DS clapped out during one of the post-credit sequences. Damn Nintendo for making a system with such a poor battery life and no auto sleep mode and damn Square for making a game with so few saves and such a ridiculously long credit sequence (three ridiculously long credit sequences). Can't imagine I'll be bothered to go through the final boss again to see what got cut off at the end. Speaking of which the

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amount of boss fights at the end was just too much. I was groaning by the time I got to about the fifth or sixth boss battle and just wanted the game to end.

That aside, I loved the game. It was really good fun and had some great worlds in it. As for the story, well, I got most of it at the end except where they just threw in the odd character pretty much out of nowhere who must have been important in other games. There was enough here to get a sense of and not feel baffled though, which is good. But the main Kingdom Hearts story bits did seem somewhat silly (not in a good way) taking into account that this is a game with Goofy and Donald in it. The in-world stories were fine but the whole black coat dude story seemed just too serious for what was going on around it. Even Sora and Riku themselves seem to have much more cartoony origins than many of the newer elements since KH1. What happened the girl? Kairi was it?

It was a nice big meaty game too, which I felt the 3DS needed. Very enjoyable.

[mekanor]

Amazing ending though, you might want to stop, go back and play the entire series before finishing this one. The last hour will make zero sense to the uninitiated, to everyone else it's jaw dropping.

This annoys me greatly. I think I've said it before, but despite being interested in this game, I'm not going to pick it up, as even though I can play the previous 2 DS ones and the GBA game, I'd need to buy a PS2 and a PSP to actually know what is going on in the whole series. If ever there was a series that needed a HD collection, it's Kingdom Hearts.

[Dogg Thang]

Well I braved the final bosses again to have the completed save file. I had missed next to nothing when it cut out on me last night. Just the scene that showed that

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Roxas guy. Does that mean all this was in his dreams? Am I picking it up wrong or is there two Roxas guys who look identical?

Anyway, I really enjoyed this. Really hope they do a HD handheld collection so I can catch up on some of the main stuff I missed. Are the DS games any good?

[Rep]

Roxas is

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Sora's nobody, and a member of organisation XIII, all it's members are given an anagram of their original name with an X added, so sora/roXas, lea/aXel, isa/saiX, braig/Xigbar ansem/Xemnas etc. He shouldn't really exist having returned to Sora in KHII.

The look-a-like is

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Ventus, and is around 10 years older than the current Keyblade generation and a completely different person, he's been sleeping for well over 10 years now where only Aqua can reach him.

Regarding Kairi

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She's able to summon a Keyblade at the end of Kingdom Hearts, so it's assumed she'll be one of the 7 lights, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Aqua, Ven, Terra, although they've added Lea now so who knows.

The section at the end on

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Destiny Islands is happening inside Sora's heart, there's also a secret ending for answering the questions in a certain order.

The DS games are crap unfortunately, 358/2 Days is pure Organisation XIII, and perhaps the grimmest game in existence. Birth by Sleep is amazing though, and not a million miles off DDD gameplay wise, I'd say it was the most important title as far as storyline goes too.