Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance review

Your main enemies in KH3D are Dream Eaters, quite possibly one of the weirder enemies in the series thus far. They're not as menacing as the Heartless, Unversed or Nobodies. In fact, they seem the most childish, with their rainbow color palette and animal representations. These Dream Eaters are also your allies. No Donald and Goofy this time around, instead you'll collect various materials to 'craft' Dream Eaters that will fight and level up alongside your character.

Outside of battle, you'll be able to take care of each Dream Eater in an almost Tamagotchi style. You can pet them, which raises some of their stats, give them food, hunt for treasure, train to increase skills, or unlock various skills on their Ability board. It's not as deep of a system as it sounds, but if you're into the monster collecting craze, you'll most likely love this addition to the series.

Lastly, Reality Shifting puts your touchscreen to use. Each Reality Shift is different based on the world you're in. In the Grid you'll be hacking the system, Traverse Town will have you flinging barells that do splash damage, and La Cité des Cloches (Hunchback's world) lets you connect enemies with your stylus which then makes you grind between them doing a great amount of damage. Reality Shifting actually adds yet another layer to the addictive real-time combat, which I had absolutely no problem with.

Like in Birth By Sleep, the Final Fantasy cameos are on an all time low, consisting only of Moogles. It's a shame, since like I've stated in my previous review, I enjoy the unconventional marriage of kid friendly Disney worlds with various Final Fantasy character appearances. However, The World Ends With You fans will be happy to know that Neku, Shiki, and other characters from the game do make an appearance (a pretty big one too) in KH3D, and are fully voiced for the first time. Pure awesomeness.

Fans will also be pleased to hear that most of the worlds are mostly new to Kingdom Hearts. You'll visit the Hunchback of Notre Dame, go back to the Grid, which is newly updated to resemble Tron: Legacy, and even cross swords in the Country of the Musketeers. It's all faithfully recreated, to the point where you'll just want to go and rewatch those timeless classics.

If one thing's for sure, the series can be quite complicated to follow, considering the games have taken place across multiple systems. Thankfully KH3D has an included Memento system which includes Flashbacks and Chronicles. Flashbacks give you more backstory on a given level in beautiful cutscene form, while Chronicles detail all of the events in past games, ensuring that you're caught up to speed. While it would have been nice to see Chronicles in cutscene form, the size limitation of the 3DS cart probably made that impossible. Still, it's definitely helpful.

One of my biggest complaints, which coincidentally doesn't have anything to do with the game itself, is that it's on the 3DS! While I definitely enjoyed the 3D effects, I can honestly say I'd much rather play this on a big screen TV. It's also not a short game by any means, so being on a portable that doesn't have the greatest battery life is somewhat of an odd choice.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance can easily stand on its own as one of the best handheld entries, and is a great precursor to Kingdom Hearts III. If anything, that alone should get any Kingdom Hearts fan excited.

Kingdom Hearts sure has come a long way. From its debut back on the PS2, it has seen releases on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PSP and now the 3DS. While I wasn't that much impressed with the earlier iterations of the handheld Kingdom Hearts games, namely Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and even Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, I really loved Birth By Sleep. From the various gameplay mechanics introduced, to the gorgeous graphics on the PSP, it was one of my favorite KH handheld iterations to date. I can now say that Dream Drop Distance sits alongside Birth By Sleep as one of the best handheld entries to date.

KH3D once again puts Sora and Riku into the hands of player as they are tasked with going through the Mark of Mastery exam, in order to prepare to take down the returned Xehanort. Unlike our protagonists in Birth By Sleep however, Sora and Riku must travel to and save seven different worlds that are in the state of deep sleep. Don't worry though, this is no snooze-fest.

While some mechanics make a return from Birth By Sleep, such as Link attacks, there are numerous changes to the formula here. Instead of playing out each character's storyline separately, you'll be constantly switching between parallel universes of Sora and Riku thanks to the new Drop system. Each character has a Drop gauge, which depletes over time. When completely out, your character will fall asleep and switch to the next. While it does sound somewhat tedious, the game does allow you, through items or bonuses, to extend your Drop time.

While playing as either Sora or Riku, you collect Drop Points, which at the end of each Drop will grant various bonuses to the next character, such as increased strength, increased magic, or a longer Drop gauge, though more bonuses unlock as you progress through the game.

In the end, the Drop gauge ends up being one of the best integrations, as it always keeps the gameplay fresh. And while you'll be exploring the same worlds as both Sora and Riku, in the same order as well, each character's world and storyline are different, ensuring the monotony is kept at an all time low.

One of the other new mechanics is Flowmotion, which unfortunately I wasn't a huge fan of. It's not that I didn't like the concept, I just thought it was hard to control on such a tiny system/screen. Flowmotion, as the name implies, allows your character to move around the map in high speed, dashing from one wall to another, grinding on rails and flipping off of lamp posts. Combine this with combat, and you'll be able to dash from wall to wall, ending in a spectacular and flashy finishing move that is not only awesome to look at, but does some great damage.

The problem I had however is that since you're playing on such a small screen, it wasn't always easy to gauge exactly where the next rail was to grind, or where I was dashing to when propelling myself from a wall. I always ended up messing up the flow of Flowmotion, which I'm sure wasn't the way it was intended. I can see Flowmotion being awesome on a console (possibly in Kingdom Hearts III?) or even possibly on the 3DS XL, but I just couldn't get comfortable with it on the 3DS' small screen.