Kingdom Hearts
3D: Dream Drop Distance
R E V I E W
Kingdom Hearts! As many of
you know this is my favorite video game series of all time. The latest entry,
Dream Drop Distance (AKA 3D), is one of the most crucial games of the series!
The story is MIND BLOWING; I won’t give any of it away of course. Unlike the
other main Kingdom Hearts games, you are not accompanied by Donald and Goofy.
This is nothing like your other adventures. This time you are taking part in
the “Mark of Mastery Exam” in which Sora and Riku must awaken 6 sleeping worlds
from their slumber and seal their keyholes. But it’s not that easy. In these
sleeping worlds are Dream Eaters. There are two types of Dream Eaters. Spirits
and Nightmares. As you would guess, the Nightmares are evil and try to defeat
you and keep you from sealing the world’s keyhole. Spirits on the other hand
are friendly, and help you out along the way. You can get different Spirits if
you acquire the recipe and materials necessary to create it. You can also bond
with and train your Spirits. There is also an ability link menu for your
Spirits. The system for what you can do
with your Spirits is large, but not confusing. During the game you play as Sora
and Riku at separate intervals via
the Drop Gauge system. But I won’t ruin all the surprises for you! Let’s get
into some gameplay!
G A M E P L A Y --- The gameplay is
top-notch for 3DS games at the moment. It supports the CirclePad Pro attachment
for the 3DS, but I have not played with it so I can’t cover that in this review.
If you have played Kingdom Hearts RE: Coded, you will be familiar with the
gameplay mechanics of 3D. They are very similar. You use attack the same way,
use commands the same way, everything except you rotate the camera with the L
and R buttons, like in the original Kingdom Hearts. The touch screen is a more
minor part of the game. You use it to look at your map, use Reality Shift, open
link portals; stuff like that. Now, you might be thinking to yourself
“Wait…what in the world is Reality Shift?” Patience is virtue my friend!
Reality Shift is a new addition to Kingdom Hearts and will probably only exist
in 3D because it wouldn’t be able to be incorporated in any other games, unless
you went back and freed some more sleeping worlds. You activate Reality Shift
by walking up to a Reality Shiftable item or enemy and sliding the stylus down
the touch screen. This leads to a short segment using the touch screen in many
different ways, depending on the world you are in. These can be very useful and
using it is required in most boss fights. Ok, its time to talk Flow Motion. Now
I know you’re all itching to know what Flow Motion is like. Is it as good as
they say? Is it disappointing? Well I can tell you it IS as good as they say! By using Flow Motion you can get around the
map easier, climb insanely high walls, and do major damage to enemies! There
are many different types of Flow Motion attacks you can perform. There’s Blow
Off, Kick Dive, Buzz Saw, and more! I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to
perform them, and just how awesome they are though! The graphics, oh the
graphics. The graphics far exceed expectations for the 3DS. First let me say,
all the cutscenes, are actual cutscenes! No more reading dialog boxes as in the
previous games. All of the dialog is spoken! The graphics I would say are as
good as Kingdom Hearts 2. Especially with the 3D! The 3D graphics do add more
to the graphics then you would expect! There is a lot of depth in the screen it
seems, when the 3D is on. The sound is perfect. All of the effects, voice
acting, everything is fantastic!
O F F E N S I V E M A T E R I A L --- If you’ve played the
other games, or read my other reviews, you’ll know that there is little to no
offensive material in any of the Kingdom Hearts games. I believe this is mainly
because of Disney being co-developer and they don’t want Mickey going around
screaming expletives. The only three things in the game that would be offensive
is your allies are called Spirits which may offend some people as well as the
use of Magic in the game, although it is not heavily emphasized or viewed as
occult. The main thing would be though, when you are in the world “The Grid”
which is the Tron: Legacy world you can watch a flashback which is basically a
whole movie scene even with word-for-word dialog. But in one of these
flashbacks in The Grid, Sam tells his father “Well that’s a h*** of a way to
live.” When they are discussing leaving the grid. I think the only reason
Disney let this in is because it was in the Tron: Legacy movie. You do not have
to watch this flashback though, and if you have seen the movie, you don’t
really have much need to watch the flashback anyway.
O V E R AL L --- Overall, of course I
recommend this game as one of the best of all time! I give it an A++ on the JMRS.
As are all Kingdom Hearts games, it is just plain amazing. This game is pretty
unique among the other Kingdom Hearts games though in many senses. One being
that you obtain glossary entries throughout the game, which tell the story of
the other games in the series. That way, newcomers to the series won’t get
lost…as easily as they would without having read those glossary entries. I
would recommend this game to anyone 10+. The story is very complex, and if
you’re child doesn’t like reading, I would recommend you get him or her the
original Kingdom Hearts to play and work your way up from there. Since it has
just come out at the time of my writing this review it is around $40. But this
is well worth what you get in the game! Also it won’t get much cheaper. None of
the other games have gone far below $20. So if you want it, are curious about
the Kingdom Hearts series, or even have a 3DS, I highly recommend you pick up
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance!
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