Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 5)

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

Finishing this today. Bring out the swear jar, I’m gonna need it.

The World That Never Was – Riku (Continued)

Uh oh.

Pretty much every boss in this part of the game has a move
that takes us down to 1 HP. Fuckers.

Riku has found Sora trapped in an energy sphere, sleeping, and being consumed by darkness. Out of Sora’s body forms a cloaked figure with red eyes. This thing, called the Anti Black Coat Nightmare, is a tough boss, and it’s a sign of what I should expect for the rest of the game. We’re almost at the end. That said, my first fight against this guy, and realizing just how difficult it was, encouraged me to go back and train some more. Not a fan of grinding, but I will if I must. I overcame this first challenge, the first of four final bosses.

I hope you haven’t forgotten to level up Riku; it’s only him for all four battles. Who cares about Sora, whom you’ve been playing for literally his own half of the game so far?

How long have these cutscenes been going on? I just want
to mash my Keyblade in his smug face already!

Anti Black Coat disappears, and Riku tries to get through to Sora, the same words heard in the dream. To no avail. Riku hears Terra-Xehanort’s Heartless, Ansem, saying that Sora’s heart belongs to the darkness now. When the villain asks why Riku hasn’t returned to the real world, the teen understands: He’s been in Sora’s dreams the whole time. His shirt bears the mark of a Dream Eater, because he has basically become one. When he saw the hooded figure at the start of the Exam, he subconsciously landed into Sora’s dreams to protect him. Darkness appears under Riku’s feet and he is sucked in.

I watch the playthroughs from other people and realize, if
I was struggling that bad... was it just because I was
underleveled and didn't know? Could be, considering how
often I went back to level-grind between attempts against
all these bosses...

He reappears floating in a void, facing Ansem. The villain tries to get Riku to accept the darkness again, but the teen’s resolve is to fight it and its users. Stage 1 starts in the void, with Riku attacking the boss whenever possible, just waiting on a chance to do a Reality Shift. That move transfers the fight to solid ground, where Dream Eaters can help; Ansem fights using his Guardian, which can shield him from frontal damage (but leaves his back open).

His second phase is worse. Ansem merges with his Guardian, and that’s what we fight. This asshole loves to push you to the far end of the arena, and then load up lasers that hit fast and mini-black holes that you can get sucked into when going in for an attack, leaving you at 1 HP. This guy was, up to that point, the most unpleasant fight I’ve had in that damn game.

Those goddamned lasers. If you aren't already moving fast,
you are getting hit. The only way around is Flowmotion.

The meeting of the Goobers.

When the Heartless is defeated, Riku finds himself in The World That Never Was. He’s back in the real world, despite having kept his Dream Eater powers; which means that wherever Sora is, he is still sleeping. Looking for him, Riku finds a crevice in the city, with the UFO-like Castle That Never Was floating above. Looking for a way to reach it, Riku spots Sora’s first Dream Eater, a Bow Wow, over there. Riku’s own first Dream Eater, a Komory Bat, comes to help. The teen uses a Reality Shift to connect the two, and Flowmotions across that bridge and into the Castle.

Of course you realize, this means war!
...Wait. Wrong entertainment company entirely.

Riku finds the throne room, where he finds the comatose Sora on a throne. However, Young Xehanort (YX) appears and knocks Riku back. The time-displaced villain states that Sora is to be his new vessel. he admits that Riku was the original target, until the teen developed a resistance to darkness. Finally, YX spells out that Org XIII’s purpose is to divide Xehanort’s heart among 13 vessels; but the first 13 selected were not all suitable, so the few Xehanorts already running around are creating a new Org, which will be all proper vessels. And Sora will be the 13th.

Other Xehanorts appear on the remaining thrones, with the recompleted version taking longer to appear. However, this is interrupted by a blast of light and Mickey arriving on the scene, casting the time-stopping Stopza to stop the Org from fighting back. The heroes are about to leave with Sora, when YX, who is impervious to this spell SOMEHOW, kicks Mickey away and summons his own Keyblade to battle Riku.

The YX Fight

Laser whips, laser blades, time shenanigans.
This guy's got all the most annoying shit.

Young Xehanort is one of the most miserable boss battles I have ever forced myself to finish. If it’s not at the top, then it’s Top 5. This motherfucker keeps teleporting around, which becomes extremely disorienting when you’ve got your sights locked in on him. He hits fast and hard, and possesses a slew of nasty tricks. A special move that drains you down to 1 HP? Yep. The Wild Arcanum, an attack that combines whips and energy blasts, and which is so precise that I only managed to avoid it one time out of five? Yep. If you come close, he can just randomly do the Finish, a laser whip that hits a wide area of the screen, right where you are, for damage that you can block, if you can see it coming – but good fucking luck with that! He has a ton of health, too. I think it says a lot that I had to go back something like three times to level-grind in-between attempts at fighting this guy.

Will he reappear? Or not?

Some attacks can cause him to teleport above the arena and then come down. I ran into a glitch where, after being sent up, YX was just not reappearing. I was stuck in the arena, with no enemy, and no way to exit the battle other than turning off the game and coming back. This happened three times, and always while Riku was fused to one or both of his Dream Eaters. Good fucking thing that there’s that Save Point right before the fight!

Every strategy guide online recommends using specific moves against this boss, including one that is hard to obtain… The only reliable way is as an expensive reward from Flick Rush, a side-game in Traverse Town!

Most end-of-chapter bosses have required the stylus in some
way, so it shouldn't be a surprise that you need it again for
this "final" boss... it's still fucking annoying though.

It gets fucking worse. When he is brought down to 1 HP, YX teleports to the center of the arena, to hide within a large clock. You must run to the clock and do the Riku/Sora combo move Reality Shift next to it, before you can damage this new form; if you don’t get to the clock in time, do the Shift fast enough, or fail to do it, time is rewound and you get stuck fighting YX AGAIN, though he has fewer HP (only three bars, still a lot, but manageable). This repeats each time his HP is down to 1. It’s annoying because the arena is huge and YX loves to lure Riku to the edges, where you won’t have time to reach the clock in the center. And if you fail, there’s an unskippable cutscene, the same one from the start of the fight.

On the plus side, the YX time-clones will be focused on
Riku, so your Dream Eaters can keep attacking the clock!

If the Shift is successful, we move on to Phase 2. While YX is in there, he will summon copies of himself to attack Riku. These copies hit fucking hard. And they appear at such quick frequency that hitting the clock is difficult. This part is timed; if you cannot bring the clock’s HP down to zero within… well, sources say about 90 seconds, you go back to Phase 1 again. However, YX’s HP will be down to the amount the clock has left, to a maximum of three bars.

This guy. This MF-ing guy.

I did eventually manage to beat this fucking piece of shit of a boss; if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be reporting on it. But by the point I got there, my fingers were hurting from all the attempts I had made towards victory. Remember when I said that Reality Shift is done through the touch screen? Yep; in the short time you have to trigger Phase 2, you will have to run close, grab your stylus, activate the Shift, and then pull it off. This entire goddamned time, I had to keep my stylus nearby, at the ready, to pick it up and quickly slash on the touch screen. I tried, and failed, to do the Reality Shift something like four times in a row, which meant I had to fight YX, even if he had fewer HP, that many more times. Eat my fucking ass and balls.

So, yeah. I won. Took long enough but I did it. I spent 700 words describing that fight alone, with nothing else, because I hated it that fucking much. It isn’t technically the final boss; it’s just that the boss after YX is so much easier that it feels like an epilogue, a dessert rather than the true main course.

After this, aside from the last boss, almost the entire remainder of the game is cutscenes.

Dive to the Heart

After the YX fight, there is one final boss battle, and lots of
long cutscenes. The whole thing is roughly...
40 GODDARNED MINUTES????

YX goes back to his throne. Mickey is fine, but the battle lasted long enough to dissipate Stopza. Master Xehanort (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) appears, remade whole from the presence of all his selves. Xehanort goes into a discussion of this universe’s history, with the titular Kingdom Hearts being opposite to a weapon known as the χ-blade (χ being the Greek letter chi, pronounced key). Its forging requires the combination of thirteen fragments of darkness (his versions) and seven of light (which can refer to the seven Princesses of Heart across Disney kingdoms, or to seven Guardians of Light). This can happen just by having both sides battle each other… like, say, in a Keyblade War.

Of all characters to be major heroes during this climax,
I don't think I would have expected Axel Lea!

Mickey yells that Xehanort ruined the lives of his friends (Ventus, Aqua and Terra); the evil master responds that he just guided them to their fates, and that destiny is never left to chance. Besides, the Guardians are short of one, perhaps more if Sora becomes another Xehanort. Mickey and Riku get immobilized by cloaks while the evil master shoots at Sora to possess him… But the attempt is prevented by Lea deflecting the shot before it hits. The new Org XIII tries to attack the heroes, but Donald and Goofy show up to save the day. The Xehanort copies disappear for now, with Xehanort saying it is only a matter of time before the lights and darknesses clash.

Just let me grab 30 copies of my friends real quick.
Just normal stuff

This when you can actually SEE this boss, since most
of the fight is spent in complete darkness that it
blends in. Good thing our crosshairs can always see this guy!

The heroes return to the Mysterious Tower, with Sora still asleep. Since he is the only one to have properly sealed seven Sleeping Keyholes due to visiting those worlds in Sora’s dreams, Riku is told that he has the power to awaken Sora’s heart. Riku Dives in to save his friend, falling towards the stained glass that started it all, back in KH I. During his dive, Riku tags 30 dream copies of Sora, as if to strengthen the chance of awakening him. Instead of landing on the stained glass, however, he arrives in an area of darkness, with the “Sora” in armor appearing to fight him. This is Armored Ventus Nightmare. This is the true final boss, but after the fucking pain of Young Xehanort, this one is a goddamned cakewalk. It’s not “easy”, it is an endgame boss after all, but it’s nowhere near the difficulty of what precedes it. Took me two tries, when I think I needed over a hundred for YX.

Could be Ventus. They're easy to mix up.

When the boss is defeated, the armor shatters, freeing Sora. The boy’s body appears to engulf itself in darkness, while the stained glass returns to its normal luster. Riku seals a keyhole, and reappears… on Destiny Islands, at dusk? Somehow, he is in Sora’s heart. In sequence, he runs into Roxas, Ventus, and Xion, the three who inhabit Sora’s heart as memories. They each ask Riku a question, and if all three are answered correctly, you’ll unlock an extra postgame scene. Each one disappears afterwards.

I'm aware, it just happened. The news that you can just
use hearts to store "data" is new, though.

The fourth he meets is Ansem. Not the evil one; Ansem the Wise, another semi-major character. This version is a simile made of data; Ansem uploaded this version of himself and his research into Sora’s heart (those in KH are just computers, apparently) to preserve them. Data-Ansem hints that Sora’s love for others is very powerful, and as a result his heart has the ability to keep memories and existences of others – hence the three hearts met by Riku. Ansem reveals that with his Nightmare defeated and the other inhabitants of his heart spoken to, Sora has been awakened. Riku can leave.

Hey, one out of two ain't bad. At least it's not zero.
Considering how badly the exam got tampered with,
that well could have happened too.

That's a lot of colorful creatures!

When he returns to the waking world, he sees a happy Sora celebrating with friends. They get the final briefing from Yen Sid: They both performed admirably in spite of the changes in circumstances caused by Organization XIII. However, of the two, only one has fulfilled the requirement to be called a true Keyblade Master: Riku. Sora doesn’t take it too badly, though there’s a hint of disappointment on his part. That’s fine, he can go back to the sleeping Traverse Town to play with his Dream Eaters and forget about that for a while! Oh, and Lea can summon his own Keyblade now. So that’s cool. There’s an additional reveal in an unlockable extra: If you fulfilled the gameplay requirements and answered the last three questions correctly, you get a scene of Kairi, Sora and Riku’s friend from Destiny Islands, training to become a Keyblade Master of her own.

They need to prepare for the dark times ahead. This IS the final game before Kingdom Hearts III, the end of the Xehanort story arc. (Which has passed, and now we’re waiting on KH IV. Good thing we got that teaser trailer recently!) The End!

Using a picture from the 2.8 version. It shows the colorful
card battling that can be done. Although, I will admit, I was
too busy playing the base story to really try this in depth.

What else is there to do? There’s a bonus boss waiting in Traverse Town: Julius, the giant monster cat from the ‘90s Mickey short Runaway Brain. Also in Traverse Town, there’s a place to play Flick Rush, which are competitions between Dream Eaters where they use cards to fight. You can climb up the ranks and earn the place’s currency, allowing you to purchase items and some moves you cannot find anywhere else. Then, special Link Portals pop up across the sleeping worlds, with a variety of challenges to complete, including rematches against many bosses. Other than that, you can try to craft every single Dream Eater and find every treasure chest. That’s about it.

Final Thoughts

KH3D answers many questions, but brings a few more.

Sorry for all the yapping. Even with my best attempts at cutting this story down to the barest, it’s still a complicated mess. And yeah, I blame myself for going through it with so little knowledge of the franchise; when I bought KH3D, it was at a convention, and I didn’t think of the complexity of that franchise’s story ahead of time, nor did I know that this was the penultimate tale of its arc. Everybody and their gaming grandma has done a “the plot of Kingdom Hearts is needlessly complicated” joke already, but there’s nothing quite like finding out by yourself. I spent as much time researching the story, its events, its characters (and their copies!!), the timeline, and the most important themes, as I spent playing the darn thing. At the same time, this game was setting up the “grand finale” (air quotes because of KH IV). It ties up several loose ends without creating too many more, so I can understand why it goes extra complicated. The recaps are useful if you missed some games, but their torrent of names and events can only take you so far into understanding the stories you haven’t experienced by yourself.

This game really likes monologues about friendship. I swear, there’s damn near two at the end of every chapter. Just in case you didn’t get it the first 10 times. The way Sora and Riku talk about each other, it sound like way more than friendship after a point.

Command Deck, special moves, spells. Before long, your
Keyblade wielder becomes a machine of destruction. Sure
enough, the bosses have to become extra mean to keep up.

My only other KH experience was Re:coded, and it didn't work exactly the same as the rest of the franchise. I think I was much closer with Dream Drop Distance. Both characters have infinitely customizable command decks as well as the option to create additional decks to try various strategies. This system works great for action RPGs, I have nothing bad to say about it. (It does influence other aspects, such as bosses becoming particularly nasty to compensate for the player’s options – nearly every final boss has a move that takes Sora or Riku’s health down to 1…) Other than that, the system has characters increase their stats when they level up, and other, greater perks when a part of the story has been cleared (a new Keyblade, a new command slot, or anything else like that).

Not pictured: The T-rex Dream Eater the playthrough I
used for gameplay screenshots went with. Darn thing was
so large, it kept getting in the way of good pictures! 

The Dream Eaters are fun enough. The Pokémon inspiration is obvious, especially in the “Pokémon-Amie”-like petting/playing system to raise them. The similarities end there since this is an action RPG; these creatures instead join Sora or Riku into battle, with their own skill trees and perks to offer. Being able to combine with one (or both) of your active Dream Eaters for a temporary power boost is great, since every critter (or combo of critters) yields different results. You even have the possibility to rescue a Dream Eater whose HP has hit 0, a feature missing from other 'Mon action RPGs I played.

The aforementioned T-rex... or, well, the Nightmare version.
One of the most dangerous normal enemies in the game.

The Pass mechanic, where you are forced to switch characters after some time, comes with drawbacks. If a character “passes” while in a fight, they will have to start it over when we return to them. Even during bosses. Like those endgame fights were not annoying enough already! The screen between passes lets you pick boosts for the next character, but most of the time I played, I had too few points to spend on that screen to benefit from significant improvements. The mechanic makes the plot even harder to follow, and it’s so easy to forget what you were up to with a character before you Passed. I wasted so much time going the wrong way because I couldn’t recall where I was supposed to go.

The worlds are a little hard to explore when enemies appear
every twenty steps!

All this, made worse by the game’s use of archaic Save Points that I would rush to whenever the 3DS’ battery light started flashing orange! I get why the franchise does this; I am allowed to think it needs to get into the modern day on that aspect. I would also add that while Reality Shifts are an interesting idea, them being done through touch controls leads to issues since they frequently happen in the middle of battles, when your two hands are busy already.

My other gripe is that the game’s finale is too uneven; due to how Passes end, if both characters end up somewhat equal, Sora only has one final boss while Riku gets four. The system makes it so that the two characters grow at roughly the same rate, but one of them is clearly more important in the end. To say nothing of how fucking annoying and difficult Young Xehanort is. (Also, nitpick, but Riku’s concept of merging with his Dream Eaters to boost his own attacks isn’t as much fun as Sora teaming up with his for often hilarious moves.)

I will admit, the combination of gameplay elements (Drop,
Flowmotion, Dream Eaters) does make for interesting
situations and overall fun experiences, even if it is quite
difficult to master it all.

It is a good game, but I cannot recommend it unless you are already well-versed in the lore of Kingdom Hearts – in which case, you’ve probably already played this one anyway, since it came out 14 years ago. There isn’t much else to add, really. I don’t think I will revisit this franchise; I doubt I’d get my hands on any of the older games, and the newer ones would need me to catch up with more plot threads. Still, I AM glad I got to test out this game and (mostly) enjoy it, despite the hurdles. The YX boss fight is the worst part of it, but it’s too close to the end to sour beyond salavaging everything that came before it.

We’re coming close to the yearly anniversary review! Tune in, that's coming soon!