Note: This review text was written in September 2014.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, I’ve
been a huge fan of the Kingdom Hearts franchise since around the time the
original game released in America. If there’s one thing from the franchise I
haven’t been a fan of however, it would be the fact that, beginning from Chain
of Memories, you have to own multiple systems in order to keep track of the
ever-growing kudzu plot the story is infamous for. It was because of this that,
after Birth by Sleep, my excitement went somewhat dormant until last year when
my review playthrough of the original game rekindled that spark that had nearly
gone out. What helped immensely was the release of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix,
which not only brought a modified Kingdom Hearts Final Mix over to the west, as
well as Re:Chain of Memories with better graphics, but also included the
cutscenes from 358/2 Days. That last one was a pretty big deal for me, since I
never owned a DS to be able to play it, so I missed out on an important bit of
the overall story. With the release of HD 2.5 Remix, we not only got Kingdom
Hearts II Final Mix and a modified Birth by Sleep Final Mix, but also the
cutscenes for Re:coded, which gave me another important link in the franchises’
chain of events (because, like Metal Gear, Kingdom Hearts is not a franchise
where you can skip a game and be safe). With the Final Mixes released on PS3,
I’ve finally been able to experience the entire story on a single system,
something I had been hoping for since the Nintendo handheld installments.
However, there is one entry I didn’t
include up there: Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance for the Nintendo 3DS
handheld. When this game first came out, and especially after the formal
announcement of Kingdom Hearts III at E3 2013, I became frustrated for a couple
reasons: 1) I do not own a 3DS handheld of my own, thus preventing me from
playing the game, and 2) Dream Drop Distance is supposed to serve as the
seventh main installment, as well as connect every game before it together so
that it may flow directly into Kingdom Hearts III. Since these two points
presented such a large obstacle with being able to understand the highly
anticipated Kingdom Hearts III (by now I’ve been waiting about ten long years),
I was fortunately able to borrow a 3DS and copy of Dream Drop Distance from a
friend, Tyler Uslan. So during the five days (29:50 in “man hours”) I had
borrowed both the game and system, I decided to play on Proud Mode to more
easily unlock the secret ending, though the other rationale was that I had
already beaten Kingdom Hearts II and Birth by Sleep on that same difficulty
level.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into
the world of Dream Drop Distance and see whether or not the journey was worth
it.
Sometime after the events of Re:coded,
Sora and Riku are summoned to Master Yen Sid’s tower for an important meeting.
The threat of Master Xehanort’s return is looming near, so the two of them are
to take the Mark of Mastery Exam to try and grow strong enough to counter him.
As part of the exam, Sora and Riku are sent off to awaken seven sleeping worlds
disconnected from the others. These worlds are inhabited by Dream Eaters,
creatures born from darkness that seek out the Keyholes of Sleep found there.
The duo is encouraged to work alongside the benevolent “Spirit” Dream Eaters
while extinguishing the malevolent “Nightmare” Dream Eaters. Should they
succeed in their task, they will gain new powers that signify them as true Keyblade
Masters. When Sora and Riku begin at Traverse Town, however, they are
immediately separated, existing within separate versions of the same world. As
they try to figure out what’s going on, a mysterious figure in a black coat
enters the equation, leading to revelations that will forever alter the course
of Sora and Riku’s lives.
Discussing the story is a little tricky,
considering its placement in canon and how mixed I feel about it. Since I have
gone the spoiler-free route in my other Kingdom Hearts reviews, I will attempt
my discussion along those same lines. However, I feel that I may need to
include minor spoilers, so there will be white text where necessary.
The story, at first, is pretty
straightforward, since Sora and Riku have to reawaken seven sleeping worlds to
complete their Mark of Mastery exam. However, the true mystery begins when the
man in the black coat is revealed to be Young Xehanort. As the plot advances,
we also see appearances by Xemnas and Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, mostly to provide
insight on what makes a heart a heart as well as the nature of dreams.
Interspersed with the main plot are scenes in Radiant Garden and the Mysterious
tower involving Axel, who has mysteriously been restored along with some of his
former cohorts from Organization XIII, but he can’t figure out where Braig
(Xigbar) and Isa (Saïx) are. As the mysteries pile on each other, we do
eventually receive the explanations we seek, though I’m having a hard time with
how I feel about it. To put it simply, the answers involve time travel and forward
planning that rivals, or even exceeds, Sōsuke Aizen from Bleach or The
Joker from The Dark Knight. The number of retcons involved in the full
explanation, which even go as far back in time as Birth by Sleep, creates a
rush of confusion since it seems impossible for Tetsuya Nomura to have planned
that far in advance for the series. On the other hand, possibly due to me
understanding Metal Gear Solid 2 after multiple playthroughs, I have to commend
Nomura for being able to come up with an explanation, and motivation for the
big bad, that manages to not negate previous games and actually works with the
entire timeline; after a while the whole thing begins to make a frightening
amount of sense. After the ending of course, as well as the secret ending
(Another Guardian of Light (which I highly recommend unlocking)), I’m waiting
very (im)patiently to see just what Kingdom Hearts III will do with all of the
new knowledge presented.
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| Put simply, this game's story is Xehanort's fault. |
Gameplay for Dream Drop Distance uses
some mechanics previously introduced in the series, though it also adds some
new things to the equation. For one thing, combat still heavily involves the
command deck from Birth by Sleep, though the ability to meld commands together
is now missing. This disappointed me, since trying to find good command
combinations or exploiting lists, whichever came first, provided a great source
of fun and discovery for me and the bore of grinding was mitigated by how
awesome my commands would be when they proved useful (though let’s face it,
even then it wasn’t always fun when leveling up lesser versions of commands).
Since this time you have to do literally every other possible thing to gain new
commands, and some commands are harder to obtain than others and/or require
playing as Sora or Riku, it became a
chore to try and figure out where the commands came from and I groaned every
time it had to come from a Dream Eater (more on them in a bit). The ability to
buy multiple copies of the awesome Balloon spell and raise their levels for
fusing into a better version, like Balloonra or Balloonga, would have made for
a less stressful experience when trying to have a specific deck combination for
difficult boss fights or just plain fights in general. Otherwise, the command deck
operates the same way as before, down to the most powerful commands taking up
more slots, although it’s annoying how even rearranging commands will reset all
of the timers for each command, forcing me to play the waiting game.
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| Balloonga in action. |
And that waiting game is something to
really worry about going through considering the game’s Drop mechanic, which is
somewhat based on your Distance (get it?). As you play through either Sora or
Riku’s story, a Drop Gauge will slowly go down no matter what you do, even if
you are just standing around. When the gauge is fully depleted, the action
immediately stops and you switch over to playing as the other character. From a
narrative standpoint, this makes sense, since it allows the player to
experience both stories simultaneously. When viewed from a gameplay perspective
however, it quickly becomes one of the most annoying mechanics ever. As soon as
that Drop Gauge hits zero, you are absolutely done with the current character,
even if you’re in the middle of a fight, including bosses. If you want to
continue the fight, you have to Drop back, which can be done manually, but as
soon as you get back to the fight, you have to start all over again with all
enemies, or the boss, at full health. It isn’t quite as bad when you’ve just
barely started the fight, but I’ve experienced a scenario plenty of times where
my foe is within an inch of their life and, just before the final blow is
struck, I Drop to the other character and float helplessly in space, which is
incredibly frustrating to watch.
Fortunately, there are some things which
can alleviate the problem, though only a little. As you kill “Nightmare” Dream
Eaters, you gain Drop Points (DP) that act as a sort of currency once you
perform a Drop, allowing you to purchase bonuses for the next character ranging
from deceleration of the Drop Gauge to Attack/Defense boosts and even extra
items. Naturally, I always went for Drop deceleration, since then I could play
as Sora or Riku longer and finish a task in order to trigger access to more worlds.
There’s also an item called a Drop-Me-Not, which can be consumed to increase
the length of the Drop Gauge while in the field. Unfortunately this is a
command that may not always see use, so trying to use it and then switch it out
creates the aforementioned hassle of resetting all command timers.
Though the Drop mechanic isn’t
completely satisfactory, there’s a new ability called Flowmotion that almost
totally makes up for it. When dashing or landing on certain surfaces, which
includes some Dream Eaters, Flowmotion is triggered, creating new opportunities
for rapid movement between other Flowmotion surfaces or getting off some
Flowmotion attacks, which are weaker than most other attacks but are pulled off
with incredible speed. The downside to Flowmotion is that you can still take
damage while using it, and you aren’t able to activate commands, but the quick
maneuverability it provides is the greatest benefit of the system and its use
quickly becomes essential during some of the more difficult boss fights.
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| A Flowmotion command, specifically Kick Dive, in action. |
Speaking of the boss fights, if you
thought Organization XIII from Kingdom Hearts II or the final boss of Birth by
Sleep was difficult, the bosses of Dream Drop Distance can make those guys seem
like pushovers by comparison. Sure they start out easy enough with Hockomonkey,
a Nightmare Dream Eater, but over time the bosses start going from mostly
annoying, like Holey Moley, to absurdly difficult. The worst of it for Sora was
the Spellican Dream Eater and the “Final Bosses” of his portion of the
campaign. By the time you reach the final world of the game though, the Dream
Eaters you fight as regular enemies can easily overpower you if you’re not
careful and the bosses seriously make any Sephiroth fight feel like a light
breeze. What compounds this is when Riku has a section near the end where he
has three boss fights in a row with no time to change the command deck, so
having the Dark Splicer ability really comes in handy to break their tactics,
unless of course there’s an attack that can break right through this technique.
But he’s not even done then, since he has two more consecutive boss fights
afterwards (fortunately with opportunities to switch commands). I’ll warn you
now that going in full throttle won’t work against them, so you’re going to
have to simplify everything down to the basics, with very liberal use of Dark
Barrier and Counter Aura combined with conservative use of the Balloon series
of spells and other long-range magic, as well as two or three Cure spells. I
don’t normally give much boss advice in my reviews, but since I beat the game on
Proud Mode while a little under-leveled, LV 36 Riku and LV 33 Sora, I figured
I’d make someone’s life easier with this knowledge.
Of course, I still need to discuss the
primary feature of the game: Dream Eaters of the “Spirit” variety. In combat,
these replace Donald and Goofy, and prospective Disney characters, as party
members, operating as a purely offensive force combining physical attacks and
magic (though thankfully no item usage). You can have up to three Dream Eaters
on you at once, though only two are on the field with you at a time, so you can
switch between your active Dream Eaters and the one in reserve with the touch
screen. As Dream Eaters fight with you, they earn Link Points to fill up a Link
Meter. When the meter is full, you can tap their icon to gain new abilities
based on which character you are playing as; when playing as Sora, he briefly
gains a new attack in tandem with the Dream Eater until the meter empties, but
when playing with Riku, his attack style changes based on the Dream Eater(s)
he’s linked with. When both active Dream Eaters have full meters, an icon
appears between both portraits to allow Dual Linking, combining their strengths
to form stronger and often more unique links.
But there’s more to Dream Eaters than
just their combat prowess. In order to add more to your party, or just have
more options, you’ll need to create them in one of a couple ways. The first,
and most common, method is to combine Dream Pieces obtained from defeated
Nightmares and follow a recipe or experiment from scratch. Right off the bat
the game will give you the resources for a Meow Wow (as Sora) or Komory Bat (as
Riku), but it’s good to experiment to find out which Dream Eaters suit your
play style (and you don’t know it yet, but you want to have a Tyranto Rex as
soon as possible). The other method is to scan AR Cards with the 3DS’ rear
cameras, which is useful for obtaining specific rare Dream Eaters. Three AR
Cards can be found with the main game, but an additional two can be found in
the Mark of Mastery Edition for a total of five of these special cards. While
borrowing the game, I was unable to use any physical cards, but I was able to
trick the 3DS into accepting my Smartphone as an AR card by finding scanned
pictures online and blowing them up on the screen; alternatively you can use
full-color print-outs of the cards.
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| A Tyranto Rex Dream Eater. |
Dream Eaters provide more than one
gameplay twist though, in that they become your primary source for obtaining
new abilities and commands outside of chests or story events. To do so, you
spend Link Points earned by any given Dream Eater on their Link Board, with
each space on the board costing a different number of Link Points. It doesn’t
sound too bad at first, but a few annoyances with the system quickly pop up.
For one thing, all Nightmares that you defeat will only grant one Link Point no
matter how strong they were, so you end up having to devote your time to your
Dream Eaters if you hope to get anywhere fast. The game does provide a way to
do so, but in the form of a full-blown virtual pet simulator, where you can
stroke/pet your Dream Eaters for more EXP, Affection and Link Points, or you
can use a number of training toys, which usually cost Munny, to speed up the
process. Due to my time constraints with borrowing the game, I became
frustrated after a while from having to do this to get the most out of my Dream
Eaters, not helped by how the aforementioned petting/stroking with the stylus
for a while is the only way to change their disposition, and changing a Dream
Eater to all four of their dispositions is the only way to unlock more spaces
on the Link Board. When you’re strapped for time or simply don’t care about
virtual pet simulators, the process is a pretty tedious one to go through for
the chance at the most useful commands/abilities (Protip: use the Water Barrel
training toy). However, I’m aware that there are those who would buy this game
specifically because of the virtual pet elements, as well as those who would
enjoy this aspect regardless, so this is really more of a selling point if
you’re in that camp (and there’s nothing wrong with that).
Beyond the combat, there are a couple of
things which provide extra gameplay, those being the Link Portals and Flick
Rush mini-game. Link Portals are like a sort of challenge mode, where you
complete certain objectives with specific conditions for the chance to get
Dream Pieces. Due to my time constraints, I ended up not using any of these (my
apologies), although I know that people have used Link Portals to farm some
particularly hard to get Dream Pieces, as well as the fact that certain portals
are next to impossible to complete, so go at your own risk. Flick Rush is a bit
different though, kind of like the Mirage Arena from Birth by Sleep with some
major differences. In Flick Rush, you use cards like in Chain of Memories to
have your three Dream Eaters fight against other teams of Dream Eaters to
complete Flick Rush Cups. Each victory grants Medal Points, which you can spend
at the Medal Shop for new commands and items. Flick Rush is actually a little
fun, with a system that is easily addicting and is a good gateway to obtaining
more Balloon spells. Plus, you can play Flick Rush with other people via the
3DS’ StreetPass functionality. Also notable is that, as far as I’m aware, this
is the first Kingdom Hearts game with post-game play, meaning you can continue
even after the credits roll, so the game now has further replay value,
including a New Game+ feature where you can carry your Dream Eaters and
abilities over to the next playthrough; always a good inclusion.
Before I really move on, I’d like to
mention one great feature: Mementos. Due to the placement of Dream Drop
Distance within the chronology of the franchise, there’s quite a bit of
continuity lockout involved in the story (ie. starting with this game is like
starting Metal Gear with Guns of the Patriots or Ground Zeroes). Thankfully,
whenever something revolving around a previous plot point comes up, the game
will automatically unlock a Memento summarizing a previous game. This is a
really good idea for helping people that really are starting with this game,
although as a veteran I find that there’s a downside. Yes the summaries are
pretty comprehensive, but the way they are written is such that the information
given is most important to the part of the story where it was unlocked, so
you’re not really getting the full story or the entire context for certain
scenes. For the purposes of Dream Drop Distance it works reasonably well, but
to truly understand what’s going on, it’s best to experience the story through HD
1.5 and HD 2.5 Remix beforehand.
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| Or just get this. |
For a 3DS game, Dream Drop Distance has
some very impressive graphics. While obviously not quite as good as the HD
Remixes, it does rival or even exceed the capabilities of Birth by Sleep or the
PS2 entries (I’d chalk this up to more advanced technology). Everything is very
clear thanks to the bright color palette and I like the designs of the Dream
Eaters as well as Sora and Riku. The Disney-based worlds also maintain their
unique visual style very well, although The Grid, based on Tron: Legacy, has the
same problem as Port Royal from Kingdom Hearts II whenever the human characters
share the screen with Sora or Riku, creating an unsettling contrast in styles.
In know that characters from The World Ends With You are also included in the
game, but since I have no prior experience with the game, I can’t really say
how faithful they are represented visually or vocally.
Speaking of vocals, the voice acting is
great as usual, with all of the Disney characters sounding how you’d expect
them to sound, though I think Jiminy Cricket was a little different in his
voice this time around from what I remember (well, it is a different voice
actor after all). Haley Joel Osment and David Gallagher both continue to do a
great job respectively as Sora and Riku, although they are, for some reason, in
younger bodies through most of the game, so it sounds weird to hear the adult
voices coming out of them in this case. The original characters also continue
to have great voices, though it’s understandable if some players are getting
tired of Axel due to his increasing plot presence and screen time.
Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is a
rather interesting game. The combat remains fun, but the problem with command
timers and the need to take care of Dream Eaters to get the most out of them is
a bit of a drag (for me due to the conditions I was under). But despite its
flaws, the game is very fun to play and if I had my own 3DS and copy of the
game, I would totally play it again. The story, though confusing, makes a lot
of sense when you sit and think about it and there was a surprising thrill from
getting past the difficult bosses while a little under-leveled, with a huge
adrenaline rush after defeating them. All Kingdom Hearts fans should play this,
no matter how much of the legendary hype they got sucked into, and new fans
could theoretically start with this game, but as I said before, it’s really for
the best to go through the HD Remixes on PS3 first.
And with all of that said, just remember:
this leads to Kingdom Hearts III.
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| But first... |
