I hate to pull a radical “Zero Punctuation” on our readers (formally known as Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw), but Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance is asking for it. Now granted, I love the series just as much as any other radical, (living with their mother) fan would, but I have to stand against this pathetic attempt at raking in the dollars. If this is the path that Disney likes to take with all their products, God help us with “Star Wars.”
Now, there has to be something said about the style and complexity of graphics used in the game, but I must quote an invaluable sayin’ – just because it is good on the eyes, doesn’t mean it’s worth a dime – or in my translation: it’s like trying to polish a turd.
It pains me to say that (not really, I’m vicious – ask any of my exes), but the game is just a $35.99 plastic saucer. The beauty of this game is outdone by the lack of imagination and effort. It feels like Disney and Square Enix are looking for a way to pay their bills this month, and their last resort was to cram in all the unloved characters of Disney into some ridiculous crappy title, which quite frankly, is a spin off of the “nobodies” from KH2. I felt like I was choking on my own vomit playing this game. For the sake of our blog readers, I pushed on so that I may be able to properly destroy this game in a timely manner.
The lack of characters, story, wholesome worlds and the pathetic attempt to make the dream eaters far more complex than the heartless and nobodies, pretty much makes the first five hours of game play murderous. There was two hours of tutorials alone and a essay written in 10-point font explaining the Kingdom Hearts ½ (and all other six titles) storyline. Rather than reading miniature font on a tiny three-inch screen to understand the game, may I suggest going to Wikipedia – I feel they have a better, well-developed quality in comparison than reading this pathetic attempt of explanations in the game. It was worse than reading my college psychology books. At least with those, there were pretty pictures of brains and little lightning bolts.
I don’t know what upset me more: the lack of luster from Square Enix taking control of this once classic title and bringing it back to its original glory, or the worthless attempt to reincarnate KH1 and KH2 into a crapload of coding failures.
I will give them some kudos. I did enjoy “flowmotion.” It was somewhat glitchy at times – possibly due to user error – but that’s all I’ll give them. It did make combat easier with various foes in the game. I consider myself a Kingdom Hearts purist. I believe that unless it causes you to cry like a little baby with its difficulty, it isn’t worth the title of Kingdom Hearts.
Kingdom Hearts used to be known for the insane amount of difficulty and time it took to beat a single world, which mind you, still takes the same amount of time dropping between Sora and Riku. After 15 to 30 minutes of gameplay, whether you are playing a boss or a brain puzzler, your character will fall asleep, and you’re inevitably forced to pick up wherever you were at with the other character. It makes the story farfetched and hard to follow. You can obtain potions to give you more time with each character, but it becomes more of a nuisance than an asset to the plot.
Overall, the game sticks to it’s original roots with the main characters Riku, Sora and a couple of C-list Disney characters. But so far, the presence of Donald, Goofy aren’t known in this game. They are replaced with dream eaters, which apparently you have to train those little buggers throughout the game – can anyone say future Pokémon endorsement?
The game also has many flashbacks between Sora and Riku, which complicates the story. It reminds me of Hollywood’s infamous formula of a “remake of a remake.” They want the revenue of Kingdom Hearts one and two, but can only pull off a “Wand of Gamelon” profit.
The gameplay was fairly simple to control. Y and A are your main attack buttons. Holding Y for blocking and A for attack, and both buttons to shoot or draw paths in different worlds (this varies by world). B controls jumping, and your pad controls your stock and attacks which are activated by X. You can also merge your character with a dream eater to get stronger by touching the touchscreen button. Depending on the dream eater, it reacts differently to each character. This would help significantly when fighting bosses, but would only last two minutes and did not inflict a ton of damage. The only thing that kept me from throwing the 3DS against the wall within the first 10 hours of gameplay, was the ability to unlock new dream eaters with each level you beat.
The camera is controlled with your left and right triggers, double tapping them to reset. Flowmotion is activated by either approaching a wall, or pole and hitting B and Y together or while in combat, flowmotion will automatically start. It will also activate when you jump on a rail or certain environmental objects.
Overall the worlds are smaller than the norm. They lack the detail it once had in preceding games. I would recommend the game to any diehard fan-based followers, but I feel my review would bring more pride to Yahtzee than a diehard fan. The only thing that helps me sleep at night is the knowledge that if Yahtzee and I ever had little baby minions together, they would be rulers of the world… with my dashingly good looks and his er, um, great personality. Such cute minions.
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Drop Drop Distance was released on July 31 for Nintendo 3DS. Rated E10+
GAME ON SCORE: 1 star
4 stars = Get On It!
3 stars = Nice Job
2 stars = Meh
1 star = Avoid It
0 stars = Nooooo!!!
Source:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/videogames/2012/11/02/kingdom-hearts-dream-drop-distance-review/5065/