Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

The game, which largely follows the action RPG and hack and slash gameplay of previous games in the series, sees players alternate between the roles of Sora and Riku. Alternating between characters is done via the 'Drop' system. During gameplay, a Drop Gauge gradually depletes over time, though it can be replenished with items. When the gauge completely empties, control will switch to the other character, though players may also opt to drop manually at any time. Drop Points, which are earned by defeating enemies and completing optional objectives, can be spent on bonuses that can be used until the next time the character drops, such as a slower Drop Gauge or increased attack or defense.[1] The game reuses the Command Deck system from Birth by Sleep, in which players can customize a deck filled with various actions, spells, and items that can be quickly selected. There are also several new elements added to the gameplay. Flowmotion allows players to move quickly about by performing actions such as bouncing off walls, grinding on rails and spinning around poles.[2] Reality Shift is a system the player can use on certain objects or weakened opponents involving a touch-screen activated minigame unique to each world. These include dragging the screen to fling a target like a catapult, touching hidden words to take control of enemies, and playing a small rhythm-based game to cause fireworks to appear.[3][4]

A battle in the game, featuring the Command Deck commands on the left side of the screen, and the two selected Spirits and the Drop meter on the right side. Sora is the character in use, with his health meter and character portrait at the bottom right.

One of the key elements of Dream Drop Distance is the inclusion of the Dream Eaters. Whilst they generally serve as the main enemies of the game, up to three good Dream Eaters, known as Spirits, can be recruited per character to assist them in battle. Spirits can be created by combining Dream Fragments together with an item or spell, either via experimenting with combinations or using recipes found throughout the game. Characters can also link with Spirits to perform unique attacks. Along the way, the player can care for these Spirits by petting them, feeding them items, or playing mini-games with them, which can unlock new abilities for the Spirits.[5]

The game takes place across multiple worlds based on Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tron: Legacy, Fantasia and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, each having two different plots from the perspectives of Sora and Riku. These worlds need to be completed by both Sora and Riku in order to unlock new worlds and progress through the game. Upon visiting each world for the first time, each character must go through a Dive section, in which characters freefall down a tube and must clear a certain objective, such as obtaining a certain number of points, defeating a certain number of enemies in a time limit, or defeating a boss character. In this mode, Sora and Riku can attack opponents, slow down their descent, or dodge attacks. They can also pick up magic spells which give them a limited supply of magical attacks to use against enemies.[6]

Outside of the main game, players can play an additional mode called Flick Rush, which can be played alone or with another player via wireless multiplayer. In this mode, players battle with a team of three Spirits and pit them against each other. Players fight against their opponent by flicking up cards from the touchscreen. Each card has a number value determining its attack strength, with multiple cards combining to increase the overall value. The player whose attack value is greater than their opponent's gets to attack with their Spirit. A slowly replenishing meter determines how many cards the player can send out at a time, and each Spirit has a limited number of cards that can be replenished by swapping them out with another Spirit. The first player to eliminate all of their opponent's Spirits wins the game.

The game was created by the same development team that worked on Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep,[10] then part of Square Enix's 1st Production Department.[11] Since it contained members who worked for The World Ends with You, the group decided to use characters from said game in replacement of Final Fantasy characters. The decision to make a Kingdom Hearts game for the Nintendo 3DS was due to the positive impression the Square Enix staff had when viewing the console's quality.[12] The console inspired Nomura to make the Dive Mode function where the character moves to different worlds without the use of a vehicle, while the Flowmotion was thought prior to deciding which console use.[13] The game's title was used to reference its various themes, with "Dream" referencing the storyline, "Drop" for the gameplay style, and "Distance" referring to the main characters' interaction, and, while unintentionally, the system's autostereoscopic 3D effect. Although Tetsuya Nomura admitted the English used was not grammatically correct, the team still decided to use it based on the way it sounded.[1] Development was notably shorter than the ones from previous Kingdom Hearts games.[14] However, co-director Tai Yasue emphasized how the finished product resembled Kingdom Hearts II and Birth by Sleep but improved.[15]

The team wished for the game to have more action than the previous games. Nomura noted the similarities with Final Fantasy Versus XIII as a result of their similar styles. The new maneuvers employed in Dream Drop Distance are also meant to give a glimpse about how the next game in the series, Kingdom Hearts III, would look like. New worlds were included in the game as a result of multiple requests by fans.[1] The switches between player characters Sora and Riku across the game are meant to contrast the style from Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, which allowed the player to use three characters in their own campaigns, as well as explain the word "Distance" in the title because the two characters never interact across their stories.[16] The Free Flow system was made using data from Birth by Sleep, which took nearly two weeks to obtain a form similar to the one from the game.[17] The game originally intended to use returning Heartless and Nobodies as generic enemies. However, the setting gave the staff the idea of introducing new creatures, Dream Eaters, who would also join the player in fights.[12] They were also inspired in part by Nintendogs + Cats—Nomura wished that his virtual dog could battle with other pets met through Streetpass and created the Dream Eaters based on this concept.[18] They are used in the mini-game Flick Rush which originally intended to allow players to use a picture. Nomura did not approve of this idea.[17]

With Kingdom Hearts Re:coded, the staff revealed that Dream Drop Distance would revolve around Sora's and Riku's "Mark of Mastery" exam, but were worried about how to set it. The idea of Sora going through a dream was inspired by the subtitle of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and served as a basis for the game.[19] Sora and Riku were chosen as the playable characters in anticipation for the franchise's ending of the "Xehanort arc" as well as to represent the theme of "the light and the dark sides of hearts" which the two characters represent.[12] The former's inclusion was also done due to the character's popularity in Japan.[13] Nomura has stated that the themes of the game are trust and friendship, and that like Birth by Sleep, the story is on par with that of a numbered title. As a result of the game's plot, both Sora and Riku appear in their younger forms from the first Kingdom Hearts game. However, to avoid misconceptions that Dream Drop Distance was a remake of the original game, Nomura decided to change Sora's and Riku's outfits for most of the game.[20] Despite using two protagonists, the game primarily focuses on Riku's growth across the series. When starting production, the staff had decided to make the story as complex as possible, leading to the inclusion of several cutscenes which can be viewed by the player anytime they want. In order to make it more accessible, scenario writer Masaru Oka was in charge of the Chronicles feature, which explains events from previous games.[13] The game's story is also meant to connect directly with Kingdom Hearts III,[21] although its original ending was not approved by the staff and was scrapped. Like previous titles, Dream Drop Distance has a secret ending that connects to Kingdom Hearts III although the staff found it unconventional in comparison to previous ones.[22]

The Tokyo Game Show featured a playable demo which earned the game top honors as "Best 3DS RPG" in RPG Land's Tokyo Game Show Awards,[52] following a hands-on report that praised the boss fights.[53] RPG Site also praised the game upon its first impression, calling the demo "refreshing".[54] Reception to the game's released trailers, demos and general information was generally positive, and the game ranked among Famitsu's 25 "most wanted" list in October 2011.[55] The Official Nintendo Magazine listed it eighth in their "Games of 2012" feature.[56] In an IGN poll, it ranked as the most expected Nintendo 3DS game for 2012's summer.[57] It also won the "Most Valuable Game Award" from the Nintendo Power magazine.[58]

In its first review, Famitsu gave Dream Drop Distance a rating of 10/9/10/9, or a total of 38/40, in their March 22, 2012 issue, which made Dream Drop Distance the second highest rated game in the series for them, after Kingdom Hearts II.[42] The game debuted at the top of Media Create's sales charts, selling 213,579 copies during its first week. The release was also noted to have helped boost the sales of the Nintendo 3DS console.[59] Although the number of pre-orders surpassed that of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the Nintendo DS, the first week's sales were lower. Nevertheless, Media Create noted that this was due to the comparison between the number of units sold between the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo 3DS during the time the games were released, with the former having sold more copies than the latter.[60] The game continued to appear in Media Create's polls for the next several weeks, selling a total of 311,688 units as of May 2012.[61][62] In North America, the game sold 200,000 units during August 2012, with 180,000 regular editions and 20,000 Mark of Mastery editions.[63]

English publications have given Kingdom Hearts 3D moderately positive reviews, with lower scores than Japanese review outlets, generally praising the gameplay while criticizing the plot. It received an aggregated score of 75/100 on Metacritic.[40] Game Informer writer Bryan Vore praised the new gameplay elements and, unlike other reviewers, how well the story handles the franchise's plot, especially as it was set after that of Kingdom Hearts II, unlike many of the other newer titles in the series.[44] Audrey Drake from IGN echoed similar comments about the gameplay, but felt that the story was sometimes not very interesting.[48] Mark Walton from GameSpot praised the combat systems and environment design, though he wished that the game didn't force the player through the levels linearly and dismissed the plot as "labyrinth-like" with poor dialogue and confusing motivations.[45] Bob Mackey of 1UP.com was harsher on the game than other reviewers; while he too found the plot incomprehensible, he also felt that the numerous game mechanics combined to form a confusing and frustrating system.[41] The reviewer for GameTrailers had a different take, finding the combination of mechanics to form "the best battle system in the series to date" and was not as dismissive of the plot, though they did note that it required a lot of knowledge of previous games in the series to follow.[47] Leah Jackson of G4 had one of the highest reviews for the game out of the major English review outlets; though she had similar praises and criticisms as other reviewers, she felt that the gameplay and graphics more than made up for the sometimes confusing plot.[43]

In the credits of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix, clips of Dream Drop Distance were shown as well as the inclusion of a secret ending related to the game, hinting at a possible additional collection.[64] In September 2015, Square Enix announced Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue. The collection features an HD remaster of Dream Drop Distance as well as Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, a cinematic retelling of Kingdom Hearts χ that reveals new parts of the series' history, and Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage, a new game taking place after the events of the original Birth by Sleep, told from the perspective of Aqua.[65] It was released on January 12, 2017, in Japan and January 24, 2017, for other countries.[66]

• Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance Japan official website
• Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance International official website
• Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance at IMDb