Alright, so I continued with Traverse Town and met pretty much its entire cast. I really like these characters. I know that’s not really a credit to Dream Drop Distance specifically, because they come from The World Ends With You, nor can I really vouch for how faithfully they were implemented in this game, but regardless I found them to be very endearing and enjoyable.

Also, thanks to Shiki we’ve discovered that Riku is socially awkward, which makes a lot of sense, but I never really considered it before and it’s pretty funny. Then I found out about the secret underground mail delivery facility nefariously hidden under Traverse Town. Should I be worried?

It’s interesting that, as soon as you’re done meeting all of the characters, Traverse Town basically becomes a dungeon. I’m excited about it because it’s something I’ve been thinking the series has needed to do for a while… to have something resembling traditional area structure within each world individually… towns, overworld, and dungeons. This is pretty close to that, although it’s more reminiscent of Chain of Memories in that the entire world is a dungeon, with a handful of save points and shops scattered around.

…I also just realized that I’ve yet to see any characters other than Moogles (shops) that I can just talk to any time on the overworld. Huh.

The game seems to be pretty heavy on the platforming as well. Riku and Sora travel to different locations (edgy backstreets for Riku, and a ridiculous underground mail sorting facility for Sora), but both are large and require a lot of Flowmotion to find all the chests. Then they both go to the fountain area, and the 4th and 5th districts.

I played some Flick Rush. Crazy little minigame you do with your Dream Eaters. One part Pokemon battle, one part Chain of Memories-style card fight. Extremely simple but surprisingly strategic, fast-paced, and fun. I can see myself doing this a lot.

I thought that the Colosseum was going to be the same thing it’s been in previous Kingdom Hearts game, but so far I can’t do normal battles. So I guess it’s just for Flick Rush? Oh well, I just wish Flick Rush had online play because this is really fun stuff.

Onto the boss, Hockomonkey.

I beat him down with minimal trouble with Sora, though, like most of the normal enemies, he had more attacks than he did in the demo. But it was a cinch. Then I did it with Riku, which was surprisingly a huge pain. This version of Hockomonkey appears to float and do twirlies with his hands like some kind of wizard.

Some kind of monkey wizard.

Some kind of box-shaped monkey wizard.



God I love Kingdom Hearts.

Anyway, this time I fought the boss inside the building that Sora’s Hockomonkey eventually drops you down into, which surprised me. Then he obnoxiously grabbed stuff and chucked it at me until I finally got him to come out of hiding and killed him… unfortunately I didn’t have any spells in Riku’s Command Deck so it was hard hitting him in the air. Oh well.

Xehanort’s voice-actor surprised me, but it’s a good fit. Same guy as Szayel Aporro Granz from Bleach. Creepy voice for a creepy dude. I can dig it. Trippy ending scene for the world that I probably could only get if I’d played The World Ends With You (still need to do that), and away to the World Map.

…Whaaaat, I only got 70% of the treasures? Weak. Oh well at least this game has some good exploring and treasure hunting. I’ll leave my thoughts about the Drop mechanic for next time, but for now, I’ll tell you about my Dream Eaters. My Meow Wow is a sky blue color and I named it Poly. My Komory Bat has blackened wings and I named him Kiropty. And finally I have a green Pricklemane named Nettle. I have a lot of recipes, but it seems I can only find the necessary materials to make them in the later worlds. Until next time!