Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Will my headache continue? We’ll find out soon enough!

The Grid – Sora

New armor? But I don't feel any more protected.

It’s still bizarre to me that KH has worlds inspired by live-action properties like Pirates of the Caribbean… or TRON. I’ve always been wondering: Does it or its sequel, TRON: Legacy, count as video game movies? Or just “computing” movies in general? (Either way, don’t count on me to review TRON: Ares!)

Apparently, the "dream" version is the real Grid. Just an
excuse to justify the actors of TRON: Legacy being here
and not met the first time Sora visited Space Paranoids.

Sora appears in the Grid wearing the armor of a Program. He spots a Recognizer (a large ship) and gives chase. The programs that come out ask him to identify himself, but when they don’t recognize his name, they treat him as a threat and attack. After Sora dispatches them, he runs into a masked program that flees after gathering data about the boy and his Keyblade. Three characters were watching this encounter: Kevin Flynn, his son Sam, and friendly program Quorra. All are depicted with far less cartoony CGI than any others, which is… so weird, next to the spiky-haired, anime-faced Sora. But, for true KH fans, this is nothing new.

The three explain that the program Sora was fighting is named Rinzler; but it is actually Tron, who has been corrupted by CLU, Flynn’s hacking program, who has become the Grid’s dictator. Kevin and Sam are trying to escape to the real world, but Sora believes he must save Tron. Kevin indicates that the only way to do so would be to recover Tron’s source code, which is protected by CLU. Quorra decides to help Sora. We won’t see the Flynns again on this side.

Programs CAN develop hearts, but I doubt CLU could.
Not with his intentions. No Keyblade for you, mister!

Meanwhile, Rinzler warns CLU about Sora’s presence; the dictator is intrigued by the Keyblade…

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Three new worlds to explore! We’d better pick wisely.

I’ll be covering each world all at once, because it’s simpler – but with the option of three different worlds to explore, you can indeed have each character explore a different world, and not see both sides of the plot in one world in one go. As an example, you could have Sora visit The Grid while Riku is on Prankster’s Island. But first…

La Cité des Cloches – Sora

Quasi, this elephant isn't friendly!

I can’t wait to see how Kingdom Hearts is gonna dance around anything tangentially related to Christianity in this world inspired by The Hunchback of Notre-Dame! I have a hunch they’ll play safe and not have Frollo be anywhere as creepy. That moment in the film of him sniffing Esmeralda’s hair makes my skin crawl. As it should!

I didn't know the Feast of Fools involved rhinos!

Sora meets Judge Claude Frollo, who immediately believes the boy to be a “g---y” due to his odd clothing for the area. I know this word has become a slur in recent times, hence the censoring – I’m hinting to it this one time because the word is important to the story of Hunchback, but I’ll avoid it from this point on. Before Frollo can attempt to inflict justice, he is informed by Phoebus that monsters have invaded the square. Sora rushes there to find Quasimodo on the back of a Nightmare elephant, celebrating as if he had been crowned King of the Feast of Fools. Here? Without a crowd? Huh. Esmeralda comes to help Quasi and they flee into the cathedral while Sora deals with the monsters.

Oh, there’s something about Frollo being consumed by his own rage and racism, and getting covered by an aura of darkness, too.

Geez, they've even infiltrated the cathedral!

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

For the record, I have been working on this review for a month and a half, so it is entirely coincidental that I am publishing this on the exact week where the proper teaser trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV was released. Hey, timing did its thing again!

It's funny how quickly you get accustomed to the mix of
American animated animal characters with humans that
have a clear anime feel to their designs.

You’ve seen that title, so you know what’s coming. If there’s one thing the Kingdom Hearts franchise is known for, it is its interconnected story told over… oh, with the number of remakes and new games retelling events of past games, I’ve sincerely lost count. This story is harder to untangle than a Gordian knot. Especially if you haven’t been following the franchise closely, or missed an episode or five, which is bound to happen due to its entries being scattered across several consoles! And they’re usually action RPGs, so they tend to be story-heavy.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, developed and published by Square Enix, was released for the Nintendo 3DS on July 31st, 2012 in North America. Before this one, the only other KH game I’ve played (and reviewed) is Re:coded on the Nintendo DS. Well, I was glad to see that today’s game is a direct continuation of that one! It is also, according to sources, the last game in the chronology before KH III. Thus, it ties up a few loose ends in preparation. Then again, I’d bet that KH3D creates more unanswered questions on its own; that’s how it goes.

Again: I’m jumping in with very little frame of reference. Everything I know is from Re:coded, and the biggest plot point that game showed was that even non-living entities, like characters made of code, were still capable of becoming real Keyblade wielders, all it took was displaying heart and heroism. That game on the Nintendo DS also went over some of the events of the first Kingdom Hearts game, which helps but still leaves me with large gaps in knowledge. Bear with me, especially if you’re far better acquainted with this franchise than I am.

The Exam

Full disclaimer: Since you might not want low-quality images
for the cutscenes (and there are many of those), I will be
picking these off a playthrough of the 2.8 Final Chapter
Prologue version of the game. Big thanks to
SevuhnElevuhn for the longplay video. Check it out here!

The first scene takes place at a villainous lair, ten years prior. Some guy (named… Braid, I think?) is asking the POV character, whom he calls Xehanort, whether he recovered his memories, or never ever lost them. The POV character summons a dark blade, stabs Braid with it, and says his name is Ansem.

I don't even know if that will make sense after playing this game. For the record, Ansem here is Terra-Xehanort, which is Xehanort, possessing the body of a guy named Terra. This is the first minute and I already had to explain some lore, for Pete’s sake!

New Pokémon Snap (Part 2)

In Part 1, I covered a part of the plot and went over many of the game’s features. Well, there’s more to say today!

Fantastic Photo Features

Yes, Corsola! Get to the apple!

This new Snap game takes full advantage of the abilities of the current consoles, and takes cues from all the ways people have gained to edit their own pictures on smartphones. The photo edit feature is accessible from the Photodex in the Lab.

Cel-shaded is great. I would play a cel-shaded Pokémon game.

First is filters; at time of writing, I had found 15 out of 20, from classic black-and-white and sepia to greater changes like cel-shaded, a comic style, a fish-eye lens, or pixelated. Second is stickers, which can be added to the picture: Symbols, facial expressions, effects and speech bubbles. Finally, special frames can be added for extra flair. Filters, stickers and frames are unlocked through gameplay, by earning research titles and by completing pages of the Photodex.

Still not enough? You can use this menu to add your own caption to the picture, upload it online to your New Pokémon Snap page, or download it to your console’s photo album, if you like it enough for that.

Most of these settings make changes so minute that only a
photographer with real experience would be able to tell.
The biggest exception is the brightness, of course.

Another feature added is the Re-Snap, which you can access after your run through a course has been scored by Mirror. You can take any of your pictures (doesn’t need to be one that the Professor scored this round), re-frame it, and change the brightness, blur, focus size, or focal point; you can even put new filters or change the caption! However, since this can only happen after the scoring’s been done, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a pleasant extra that allows you to do the perfect shot out of a photo that wasn’t perfect to start with. It’s not pointless, but if you’re playing for scores and exploration and not for the creativity aspect, it won’t be what you’ll gravitate to.

New Pokémon Snap (Part 1)

Through the years, I’ve seen a lot of franchises attempt ideas outside of their usual perimeters – as a result, I’ve seen both crashes and burns, and massive, unexpected successes. I don’t think it’s any surprise to say that Pokémon Snap is in the latter category. Released on July 26th, 1999, the Nintendo 64 game featured Todd Snap, a young photographer tasked by Professor Oak with taking pictures of all 63 Pokémon species found on an island.

For a franchise still in its early days, this came out of left field! The game, while short, had everything going for itself. It tickled that desire for gamers to hunt for better scores. It had unlockable tools and mechanics to get different reactions from the photography subjects. And there were plenty of secrets that could be found by just trying things and seeing what happens.

Catching the three 'puff on film is fun. Pissing
them off by playing the flute is even better.

This idea took a long time to return, which always felt odd to me; just make one at every Generation, add new Pokémon and locations, and that should be it, right? Imagine the possibilities! And yet, despite many attempts, several plans for a second Snap game didn’t make it far. Photography didn’t truly return to the franchise till Pokémon Sun/Moon; that side-quest felt like Game Freak testing the grounds. Even though their fans had been asking for this for 17 years by that point! Finally, our prayers were answered, with New Pokémon Snap releasing on April 30th, 2021, on the Nintendo Switch.

With all this time between installments, surely the system has been massively updated, right? Let’s take a look.

Welcome to the Lentil Region

This time, our character is an avatar representing a child. He is greeted on the first island of the Lentil Region by Professor Mirror and his assistant Rita. They direct the Laboratory of Ecological and Natural Sciences, or L.E.N.S., on Florio Island.

A Prof in Pokémon without a tree name? That's rare!
Also, neat pun for the name of the laboratory!
P.S. These screenshots come from the playthrough by
MunchingOrange. Go check it out!