Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance Review

It pains me to say this but Kingdom Hearts hasn't aged well as a series. But I don't fault the earlier games for that; Kingdom Hearts was a great game when it was released and Kingdom Hearts II took the formula and improved upon it. But what I do fault is where the series has gone since with each new release afterwards: nowhere. Pointless game play additions are not substitutes for refinement and evolution of what you have. So while Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance isn't a bad game by most standards, it isn't doing the series any favors either.

Dream Drop Distance has you play as both Sora and Riku through two different scenarios involving the same worlds, much like you did with three characters in Birth By Sleep, but this time the paths feel a bit more different, so you won't feel like you're just backtracking with a different character.

The story itself is poorly-written, poorly-explained and barely involves the main characters until the end when they try to pile on some explanation for all things. Most of the plot development actually happens outside the dream worlds where your players are currently going through a trial, so it feels like the plot is once again getting punted to the next game. And when I say its poorly-explained, I mean nothing makes sense. Every piece of dialog is some contrived thesis on light and darkness existing in people's hearts. They just regurgitate the same lines we've been hearing for 10 years now without explaining or adding to it.

Most of the Disney world subplots are left undeveloped and rushed. You'll have to be very familiar with the source material to get anything out of them because they introduce events and characters without explaining motivations or back story; this makes is very hard to be invested in the stories and outcomes.

Luckily the voice acting is well-done even if their lines make no sense. And instead of Final Fantasy characters, we have the cast from the DS classic The World Ends With You joining the series for a nice change of pace.

Each level you visit this time around are all unique to this game and well-designed for traveling, but all of them are very much absent of NPCs outside of your Moogle shop. Even during a scene in Notre Dame where you hear a crowd cheering, there is no crowd to be seen. Not only is it jarring, it makes the environments feel empty and lifeless. The level designs by contrast all match the look and feel of the source material and are fun to move through, especially the Fantasia level which did a good job of capturing both the feel of the classic movie, and adapting it into something playable.

Overall, I praise the graphics and art design of this game, but I do have to complain about one thing: the characters from Tron: Legacy. They have the same problem as the characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean did in Kingdom Hearts II where they look photo realistic, and everyone else in the game looks cartoon-ish. Now, given that these are different worlds, that may be passable, but if we are to believe that both Sora and the characters from Tron are both human without looking alike, then someone in-game should point that difference out. Instead, everyone excepts that there are two different human designs existing that the same time without question.

It's a shame the combat hasn't changed since Kingdom Hearts II, especially in the details. You still can't initiate another action until the current animation of your in-progress action finishes. This is in contrast to other action games that allow you to cancel the animation and the action in order to perform another action. Like when you're attacking but see an enemy readying an attack, so now you want to dodge out of the way.

But with Kingdom Hearts, you are locked into that animation for better or worse. So battles aren't about skill and reaction, they boil down to mindless button mashing and attack spamming until its time to heal. And then you start all over again with the mashing and the spamming. Even your abilities are marred with an annoyance. If you're in the middle of an attack or spell animation and you're hit, the ability is cancelled but the recast timer is still reset as if you had cast it. The frustration reaches a crescendo during the final level when you have multiple, tough enemies all spamming their attacks at the same time, leading to numerous cheap deaths. Dream Drop Distance isn't to blame for creating these mechanics, but it does fail to evolve them and refine them for the better.

The new ideas we CAN blame on Dream Drop Distance range from interesting to some of the most baffling ideas I've ever seen in a game. I'll start with dream eaters: cute pets that you can create, name, train in battle and interact with. Using them in battle means they get points you can use to unlock abilities and bonuses. Overall, I don't have an issue with this idea but I much rather prefer the crafting system in Birth By Sleep which felt more rewarding. You actually had to put thought into what you were making, and dream eaters don't stir up that same level of satisfaction. When assisting in battles with Sora, dream eaters are enough to break up a lot of the button mashing, but for Riku, they don't add much of anything. It's strange that when Sora links with a dream eater, you'll usually have something new to do in battle, but with Riku, you just get the same upgrades to your abilities each time.

While dream eaters don't take away from the game, the drop system does. The drop system is probably the most ill-conceived idea I've ever experienced in a game. Not only is it completely unnecessary, a continuing annoyance throughout the game, and interrupts the pacing of game play and story, it will be the single determining factor on whether or not you like this game. If you can tolerate this system, then go ahead and buy the game. If not, don't bother.

What is the drop system? It's a timer that sits below your health meter and starts counting down until it reaches 0 which takes about 20 minutes or so. Once the timer is up, you are automatically switched to the other scenario: either Riku or Sora. This includes moments when you are exploring, when you are in combat and when you are fighting a boss. And once you come back to what you were doing, you have to start everything over as if you had reached a game over. So if you're dropped out of a boss battle, you will have to start the boss fight from the beginning. This idea should have never even been considered for the game, much less written down, much much less spoken about, much much much less implemented and much much much MUCH less made it out of testing.

I can't express how frustrating it is to be dictated by an arbitrary game clock. There are items you can use to extend your time, or bonuses to help slow the timer down, but you're only delaying the inevitable fact that the game is telling you how to play and when. To add insult to injury, there are certain enemies in the game that can cast spells to speed up your drop meter. Bottom line is, this is inexcusable.

The last addition to the game is the flowmotion system. You can press the dodge button and propel yourself around a level, but if you interact with a set piece or a wall, you'll start to glow pink and have the ability to jet yourself around even faster and to new heights. You can continuously pull off this stunt as long as you keep running into set pieces and walls. For traveling, this is an interesting way to move about a level and is a nice change of pace from the standard platforming that we've seen in past Kingdom Hearts games.

But there's also a battle purpose for flowmotion as well. During battle, you can initiate this same ability, and use it to launch attacks to the point of it being overpowering throughout the entire game. Unfortunately, as you're moving around at break-neck speed, the camera does a poor job of keeping up with you. The camera will get tossed around and eventually force you to lose sight of anything relevant that's going on during the battle. Also, the lock-on target system will, more often then not, unlock from whatever enemy you had targeted, leaving you to dash around aimlessly. Flowmotion also while foil most attempts at you wanting to dodge away from enemies in order to heal in closed spaces. You'll end up dashing into walls or lamp posts and trigger flowmotion when all you want to do is escape danger and heal yourself.

While each element: flowmotion, the combat, lock-on targetting and the camera may all be manageable separately, when you combine them, there can be some intense moments of frustration. Like getting hit with a barrage of attacks because the camera was pointing at the ground or the wall, or not being able to dodge in time because the game didn't finish your attack animation cycle, or having your target be disengaged because the enemy ended up behind you or too far away. This makes the combat feel shallow and cheap; like your actions are less of a factor and it's more about circumstance. Boss battles are no exception either; there are some brawls that make it feel like you're fighting these mechanics more than the technicolor beasts you're trying to slay.

In conclusion, while the game does push forward the plot by a small increment, it doesn't feel necessary to play because you're probably not going to understand anything anyways. What is added doesn't change the series for the better and what the series already had was not improved upon. It's a very flawed game with some good moments, but there are some awful ones which get in the way. The series feels stale at this point and Dream Drop Distance wasn't the boost it needed. Again, if you feel like you can tolerate the drop system, then you should have no problem accepting the game for what it is. For everyone else, ignore it or go online and read a plot synopsis.