Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 4)

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

The last few chapters! And we’re starting with the kingdom based on Fantasia!

Symphony of Sorcery – Sora

To think that the "sorcerer" from this short ended up being
one of the most important characters in the entire KH
franchise. That name, though... Yen Sid... Subtle.

Fantasia is a collection of shorts animated over classical music; the way this gets combined into a KH world is by having The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as its core, from which other shorts can be magically accessed. We even get scenes from Mickey’s short remade in 3D! Sora lands in Mickey’s dream of being a great sorcerer manipulating comets; however, he gets kicked out of it by the Spellican, the Nightmare we’ve been chasing. Sora comes out of the dream in Yen Sid’s office… or so it seems. Mickey in the sorcerer’s chair, wearing the sorcerer’s magical hat, and waving around as if casting an endless spell under a trance, says otherwise.

These worlds have dragons now. Or is it T-rexes?

Mickey has been trapped into this predicament by the Spellican. The mouse can only be saved by Sora going into a musical world and picking up a Sound Idea. The place he lands on is based on the short scored with Beethoven’s The Pastoral Symphony. The Reality Shift in these musical worlds triggers a mini-game in which you play along to the music using the touch screen, dragging notes across the screen or tapping them at specific moments.

At this point, enemies are getting annoying. So much of this game is walk forward, beat up a crowd of enemies, repeat. Said enemies have far more HP than before, on top of using more spells and status effects. Nothing quite like being affected by a debuff that prevents special moves right as you’re low on health. Or getting sniped from afar while you’re waiting on said debuff to go away so you can heal.

I can't wait to beat this guy to a pulp. There is just an aura
around this guy, something I know I won't like.

Not much happens on the path to the Sound Idea. However, when Sora reaches it, he encounters the mysterious figure (MF) again. The opponent takes a moment to appreciate the beautiful world they’re in, before adding that he isn’t part of the dreams that are part of the Mark of Mastery. But, that if Sora remains asleep, then their paths will cross soon… After getting the Idea, Sora reappears in the Tower, where his trinket alone isn’t enough to rescue Mickey; but he knows he can trust Riku to do his part. Sure enough, the second Sound Idea appears and undoes the spell. With that achieved, Sora is ready to enter the final cursed spellbook.

Oh, Hell NO! You are NOT running away again!

In there, he catches up with the Spellican and the fights the damn thing. God, this fight was so annoying. The little shit kept running away, and it had spells that were hard to avoid. At least we are finally done with this damn enemy. After his victory, Sora returns to see Mickey out of his trance. Good! Keyhole = sealed.

Symphony of Sorcery – Riku

No longer scared of my Keyblade? Here is my next
argument: Snowball.

Riku lands in Yen Sid’s tower, which is flooding. He climbs up the stairs to find Mickey in the chair, casting the spell in a trance. This time, he has lost control. The flashback shows the creation of his first bucket-carrying broom, and how things went overboard. The Spellican is again to blame; and the solution is the same. Spellbook, Sound Idea, etc.

Having the higher ground doesn't matter much around here.

Riku enters the spellbook and lands in the magical forest of the Nutcracker Suite segment. Beautiful place. Too many enemies, though. Riku gets to the end of this land and collects the Sound Idea, but the place turns dark before he can. He winds up near a volcano, with the MF nearby. The guy talks about how Riku was the one meant to get a Keyblade, but the teen’s inner darkness caused it to go to Sora first. Riku managed to seal said darkness in his heart, which means he’s of no use to Organization XIII anymore. When the silver-haired guy vanishes, out of the erupting volcano comes Chernabog. Oh, we moved to Night on Bald Mountain? Boss time already, I guess?

That health bar is just for show. You'll deal exactly one
bar of health each time you hit him.

Remember the Drop segments between chapters? This is how this battle plays out. How else could we take down a demon several floors tall? It’s not too tough of a battle if you avoid the fireballs and the fire columns, and  shake off the cloaked demons that latch on to Riku. Chernabog only takes three hits to go down, so he’s not so bad. The bigger they are, the quicker they fall.

This "past" dream Mickey seems to already have a good
hunch about his future.

Riku reappears outside of the magical spellbooks. He uses the Sound Idea to make musical instruments appear. Instruments and books make the water go away and free Mickey from his trance. Beautiful scene. And Riku immediately knows that this worked because Sora did his own part. Mickey is glad to see such strong friendship between the two, based on the glowing praise Riku makes of Sora. The Keyhole is revealed and sealed. We should be close to done with the Mark of Mastery exam now, right?

Always a good sign when the most powerful, benevolent
characters in a series say this.

In the waking world, Yen Sid explains that Lea has been sent to a time vacuum where he can train quickly and, maybe, grow to the point of wielding a Keyblade. The Disney heroes try to figure out how Xehanort could be meddling with the Exam, since some of its stops were places where the old Keyblade Master could not have been. After Goofy suggests that Xehanort could have time-travelled, we learn that the rule of time travel in the KH-verse is that you can only go to a place and time where a past version of you exists, and you must give up your body to do so. Well, there are MANY pieces of Xehanort running around… And that limit doesn’t say you have to be there “physically”, so Heartless are a-OK… Like the first Heartless that Sora encountered on Destiny Islands…

Mickey knows where the Keyblade wielders might reappear and he decides to go there, alone. If things go wrong for him, Donald and Goofy must stay to protect the worlds.

The World That Never Was – Sora

Nasty Nightmare, beegone!

Dude, I dunno if it's the Org XIII deal, or just being a
Nobody, or just being evil, but, uh, you've been graying
an awful lot since the last time I saw ya! Look at that hair!

Sora fights a queen bee Nightmare on his Dive to the final world. He arrives in The World That Never Was, the “city” of Organization XIII. The exam should be over; he already sealed seven sleeping keyholes. He is attacked by a swiftly-arriving Xigbar, who says that the Org hijacked his dream travels before they even began thanks to the hooded figure at their first stop, Destiny Islands. In fact, they are still in a dream; the hero is still looking younger and wearing the new clothes he had on at Traverse Town. Sora landing here was engineered from the beginning.

For Xehanort, it was planned all along. (Heh.)
For Nomura, it has always been an attempt at tying every
plot point together so the whole made sense. Somehow.

Sora gets surrounded by cloaked figures. One is the silver-haired MF, who invites Sora to a trip. The teen gets dizzy and taken along. They first go to Destiny Islands, where Sora sees a past version of the Mysterious Figure being approached by a hooded thing. The MF reveals that this was another version of himself, one that was “just a heart” (I’m not even going to bother explaining that one). Yup, the Mysterious Figure is a young version of Xehanort, pulled from his time to aid in his older self’s master plan. There's a reason I've been calling him an MF this entire time!

Actually, let's keep that two-letter convention and call him YX now.

Naminé's hair self-dyed!

YX takes Sora to other significant moments of his early heroic life; the steps the boy took in an attempt to save Destiny Islands, as an example. Those scenes will mean more to those who have played that game. They stop by Traverse Town, where they see numerous Soras running around, as if experiencing all of the hero’s stops there concurrently.

Aside from the Drop, this loop was an entire cutscene, nothing else – when we return to Sora after a Drop spent as Riku, it’s a (shorter) cutscene again. He thinks he sees Naminé in the city. When he grabs her hand, she’s turned into Xion. You know, the “clone” from KH 358/2 Days that I mentioned back in part 2?

At this point in the game, with expanded command decks and
skills, both Sora and Riku are packing serious firepower.
Still, you've got to use it well!

Finally playable (for like 5 minutes), Sora ventures through the large city, packed with tough enemies. Reaching a street, Sora runs into Roxas, a Nobody version of him that was created during events back in KH I. The research helps, but my only memory of this guy is that a data version of him was the final boss of KH Re:coded. In short: He’s important. Since he’s a part of Sora run amok, an attempt was made by people with good intentions at combining them back. But Sora noticed that Roxas was growing into a full person (grew a heart, I guess? That’s the running theme). Roxas has the hair of Ventus because when he was accidentally created, his appearance ended up being based more on the Wayfinder Trio hero (seen in KH Birth by Sleep), who somehow ended up with his heart within Sora. Something similar happened to Xion; no one except Sora has any memories of her, hence why she appeared to him.

If it feels like all I'm showing is pictures from cutscenes,
well, you really have to see just how many of those there are
at this point to believe it. Based on compilations I have
seen on YouTube, there's like 4.5 hours of cutscenes in KH3D.

Look, I don’t want the crux of my jokes about this game to be “I don’t understand”! I try, people! I do the research! I must have put more hours into figuring out this damn plot and its five-dimensional web of characters than I’ve spent playing the friggin’ game! If I explained everything, we’d still be here two months from now!

He meets Roxas here is because this is happening in a dream. After they talk, Roxas takes Sora’s hands and transfers his memories (from 358/2 Days and KH II) to the hero. So many moments, several of which are traumatic, that Sora looks like he’s having a seizure receiving them. After which, a smiling Roxas disappears. O…kay?

Better keep smashing into enemies while I still can.
I have a hunch we're close to the end...

Aqua, whom we haven't seen much in KH3D, and Terra, who
we'll be fighting, since he is now Terra-Xehanort.

Sora progresses further and sees Riku and Kairi. He calls to them, but when they turn, they’ve turned into Aqua and Terra, while Sora has turned into Ventus. He hears Riku’s voice, as if it was coming through from a different level of reality. When this moment ends and Sora is back to himself, his dream-friends are walking away. He gets a flashback to when he and Riku were kids, and met Aqua on Destiny Islands. Though he also spots Ansem on the beach…

The last confrontation..........?

Following the flashback, Sora is sent flying and lands at Xigbar’s feet. The Org XIII member laughs about what he considers the uselessness of hearts. Sora calls him out on that; he’s seen emotions from several Nobodies, so they must have been regrowing hearts! As if on cue, Xemnas shows up from a dark portal to confirm that, yes, bodies without hearts will attempt to regrow them. He and Xigbar reveal that the goal of Organization XIII was to get several empty husks and fill them with the same heart and mind – Xehanort’s plan is to turn everyone else in the Org into Xehanorts.

I was hoping to make a joke about narcissism here, but I don't know if it would be accurate to KH lore for Xehanort. Besides, it kept going into “too real” territory, and sincerely, I am not in the fucking mood­.

OF COURSE this guy's weapon of choice is basically
red lightsabers.

Xigbar reveals he’s halfway there, with his greying hair and his iris turning gold. Sora stays defiant against them and proclaims the strength of his heart, created by the bonds with his friends. Xigbar leaves Xemnas to deal with the wielder. This is a tough boss fight; which is normal, so close to the end. Took me a couple of tries, but I managed by carefully monitoring Sora’s health, keeping an eye on Megapotions and on my Cure spell, and using Dream Eater fusion moves whenever possible.

The defeated Xemnas vanishes, but an exhausted Sora falls to the ground, succumbing to the darkness. YX returns to infodump: Their plan, the whole time, has been to trap Sora here, where he will be unable to escape. Remember how Sora’s clothes changed when he landed in Traverse Town? Did you notice that his new shirt had an X on it? That’s a Recusant’s Sigil, allowing the Org XIII to keep an eye on those that bear it. The Sigil marks Sora as another vessel, Xehanort’s thirteenth.

I want to imagine that several KH fans trying to make sense
of the lore and plot of the series just threw up their hands and
went "screw it!" once time travel was officially added.

This is where YX’s knowledge ends. Once he’ll return to his time, his memories will be wiped of everything he has seen… but not what he has felt, and that will put him on the road to becoming the threat the Keyblade heroes are battling. All the helpless Sora can do is call to Riku for help. Sora’s sleeping body is taken to the lowest throne of the Org’s meeting room, while the representation of his mind lands on the stained glass art at the beginning of KH I, getting covered in a dark armor…

The World That Never Was – Riku

Stronger together!

After an easy Drop, Riku arrives in the city of Org XIII. He’s still in his younger body and in new clothes, so he knows he’s still in a dream. In this world, the Reality Shift allows Riku to call for his friend’s Keyblade for a combo attack, making them powerful enough to destroy enemies and other things blocking progression. The teen progresses through the dungeon. This section is probably the worst time I’ve had fighting enemies. The biggest, strongest, and most annoying of them team up to block you at every step of the way – and progression is divided into large areas. If you die, you respawn at the save point and/or at the very beginning of the room, and have to do the battles all over again.

I think I'm about ready to smash every enemy on the ground
with extreme prejudice. They're just Nightmares anyway.

It’s a lengthy dungeon, too. Sora’s side was damn near all plot; Riku has no story beats to follow for much of it. Riku climbs the tower and, at the very top, finds Sora trapped in an energy sphere, asleep and captured by darkness. By the way, if you’ve finished Sora’s side, Riku will no longer have the Drop timer that would force a switch after some time has passed. You have all the time you’d like.

And that’s good, because the final part of this story is a bunch of bosses. How about I finish this in Part 5? (Seriously. I can’t wait to be done with this.)