Alright, so now that I finally managed to sort out whatever was wrong with the mail order and actually have the game sent to me, I’ve begun playing Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, otherwise known as the game with one of the worst titles of the series. A full review will come later, as will my first impressions video. For now, I will be blogging my run through the game.

So I booted up the game and immediately dawww’d at the Fantasia-inspired Mickey Mouse intro (it had a silhouette of Mickey doing his magic thang), and then watched the rest of the intro. It’s set to the intro song of the original Kingdom Hearts — the instrumental version, which I prefer — and runs over mostly the most important, iconic scenes from every game of the series. I actually really liked the popup book design of Destiny Islands during this scene, but otherwise it’s what we’ve seen before.

New Game, away!

Actually, I’ll confess I immediately quit and set it as my favorite game for my 3DS profile.

NOW New Game, away!

Was surprised to see Ursula right away. What about Yen Sid? I has a sad. But apparently the events that set up the game are told through flashback, which thus far is setting up an interesting tone and making the game actually seem a lot more mysterious than you’d think it would for such a straightforward opening premise. It’s also feeding a lot of glossaries and whatnot to look over for the uninitiated with Kingdom Hearts lore.

Anyway the Ursula battle was neat. Very easy, but I liked how animated it was. Ursula tries to grab you, misses, and she’s just like “What?” It was a hoot. But, easily dispatched. More cool scenes, Keyhole found, and away to Traverse Town.

As I noted in the demo, Sora’s voice-actor doesn’t know how to pronounce the word “traverse” at all.

And finally, off to acquire my Dream Eaters… wait, whoa. I wasn’t expecting this. Yeah apparently you can use more synthesis materials than needed to make them stronger, throwing in your attacks and moves as well, and name them. Then you prod and pet them to earn bonuses and spend points to learn new commands and abilities one them… and if I’ve got this right, their abilities (stat boosts) are um, pretty much a replacement for your equipment items.

So this game is basically extremely Dream Eater-centric? I was not aware of this. This is surprisingly fleshed out, and it’s kind of awesome. Of course I’m not exactly unbiased as I love, love, love anything to do with monsters.

Was introduced to the Drop mechanic, and acquired more Dream Eaters and met more characters. The Dream Eater mechanics, I’m liking. Hoping the Drop stuff doesn’t get too annoying. We’ll see how this unfolds. I’m also noticing that I’ve been at this for a while and I still haven’t completed the world. I’m still looking for people and exploring the map, finding chests and just flowmotioning everywhere. Good fun. Taking a break to wrap my head around all these mechanics. This is the most complicated Kingdom Hearts game to date.

I’ll keep you posted. Oh, and I guess I should apologize for the subtitle of this post…