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Chuman

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Today marks 5 years since this game hit North America! One of my personal favorites, despite all of its flaws and faults, it remains one of the most influential Kingdom Hearts titles, shaking up the series by introducing new characters, plot elements, gameplay mechanics and a whole lotta SoRiku fuel. Love it or hate it, you can't deny it's influence- especially after it saw re-release as part of the 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue with a myriad of improvements.

I want to hear what you think about the game! It may have divides the fanbase, but remember: it gave us Young Xehanort. And Ben Diskin is always watching.​
 

Muke

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I want to hear what you think about the game! It may have divides the fanbase, but remember: it gave us Young Xehanort. And Ben Diskin is always watching.​
DDD has so much wasted potential. It could have been so much more.

But here's what I hated about the game:
- Dream Eaters and Nightmares (mostly because of the designs…)
- DDD!Sora
- The gameplay
- The story
- Commandos only being obtainable through DEs
- The Keyblade designs

Here's what I liked:
- Riku
- Hunchback being a world (though it kinda sucked)
- The worlds being huge (though they were empty and boring)
 

catcake

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Well, it has a good soundtrack. Not my fave in the series but lots of good tracks still. Riku was great. Fantasia world was neat. Personally not happy that the game with one of the worst combats in the series is "influential" but I guess since KH3 will have flowmotion that can be said. The concept had potential, but just like all the handhelds (except for Coded) it turned out very mehh for me. DDD also has my least favorite final world, especially Sora's side. It's just Tron 2.0.

Still, I didn't mind the dream eater mechanic. They were terrible enemies, but as party members it was okay.
 

Muke

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Well, it has a good soundtrack. Not my fave in the series but lots of good tracks still. Riku was great. Fantasia world was neat. Personally not happy that the game with one of the worst combats in the series is "influential" but I guess since KH3 will have flowmotion that can be said. The concept had potential, but just like all the handhelds (except for Coded) it turned out very mehh for me. DDD also has my least favorite final world, especially Sora's side. It's just Tron 2.0.

Still, I didn't mind the dream eater mechanic. They were terrible enemies, but as party members it was okay.
I did like them as party members, especially with things like their abilities slowly regenerating your health and all those things. But I really didn't like how Commands and most of the Abilities were 'tied' to them

Agreed with the final world, though imo BBS' was a little bit worse, just because of how monotone and… boring it is
 

VoidGear.

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It had a second of Vanitas and playable Riku so I guess I'm not entirely against lighting five candles for this otherwise atrocious game.
 

Recon

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I've played the game once lmao. I mean, the game was fun, had some memorable parts (kinda), but uhhh I feel no motivation to play it again.
 

Elysium

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I love almost everything about the game, personally. I thought Sora was cute here, the tea party scene was hilarious, and even the time travel plot/Xehanort didn't bother me. The Org. throne room scenes were dramatically satisfying anyway. Loved Dream Eaters, Riku's outfit, the return to KH1 models, flowmotion, Pinocchio/Fantasia, TWEWY characters, Young Xehanort, and Riku being Sora's Dream Eater. The World That Never Was world was even better in this game than in KH2, which is surprising considering how KH1's main ending world (HB) has only been degraded over time.

The only things on my hate list would be Drops and the Command Deck. The characters/story in the Hunchback and Grid worlds were incredibly stilted, but their world designs were great at least. So, yeah, I love DDD.
 
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Alpha Baymax

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I love Dream Drop Distance. It was the first Kingdom Hearts game that I ever played. It's the most visually stylish Kingdom Hearts game that uses the conventional Kingdom Hearts graphical engine. I'm a sucker for animals so I loved the Dream Eaters, I loved how crazy and out of control the combat was, and the Disney worlds chosen were really creative. And props to Square Enix for making Julius relevant again.

The game has its flaws and I am not denying that, but I still love this game for the genuine fun that it provided me. I enjoyed it just as much in HD.
 

DarkosOverlord

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A bad game, in all honesty.
I enjoy every KH title and this one is not even that low on my list as my words might suggest, but being objective it has very little going for it.
A lot of bad ideas, or poorly implemented: and most cool facts were so hidden they might as well not being there (seriously, how were we supposed to guess Master Xehanort possessing Young, Nomura? And that he was using No Name with a different keyholder? It's cool and I love it, but it almost only truly exist in the pages of your interview)
Dream Eaters and Sora are constantly competing in my mind for what I hated the most.

Let's throw a bunch of good points, why not.

I'll say, while I disliked almost every Keyblade design, Unbound was conceptually neat, and End of Pain legit good (then again it wasn't made in the style of the other ones).
Also I like how they're implemented: having one for completing Dives, Flick Rush, Portals and such was a neat concept. You finally felt rewarded for something other than a high level or mashing X or Triangle.
And, albeit only at the end, you could modify how your weapon looked and even "roleplay" a bit (Sora with End of Pain? Riku with Divewing? And what's the headcanon for these choices?)

What else... Ansem's new transformation LOOKED cool, I guess?

Oh, right. Simphony of Sorcery. Easily one of the best worlds ever, that managed to win over even the game's most implacable detractors.
Or, like my brother named it, "finally a world without hearing those stupid grunts".

Personally, I liked the flashbacks and chronicles, mainly because I just love the feeling of getting something new and going through it (I spend a lot of time checking off the "NEW!" signs in the Journals).
For similar reasons, I liked getting a cutscene after finishing every world.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance is a mixed bag... with a 1:8 ratio of good and bad. The true embodiment of the life lesson that you can totally enjoy bad things as well.
 

The Dark Mamba

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I actually finished a playthrough of the game again this past Saturday since I wanted to follow up on my 1.5 +2.5 playthrough.

I think 3D is the most unfairly maligned KH game. No it didn't reach the levels of KH1 or KH2. But a fair comparison is to BBS and 3D's gameplay, dialogue, story, worlds, level design and boss fights were way better than BBS. I gotta say that the dream eaters and spirits really grew on me. I've got a god damn T-Rex and Dragon as my party members.

3D was just a fun Sora & Riku adventure that served the purpose well of setting up KH3. I used to have complaints about the story but it was two years ago that realized the story was fine, I just didn't like the time travel plot point. And also I don't care about NPCs anymore. None of the KH games have them so I'm not gonna single out 3D. Anyways, 3D good game.

kingdom_hearts__dream_drop_distance_dream_worlds_by_the_dark_mamba_995-db2pqbz.jpg
 

The Dark Mamba

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What? A good chunk of KH games have npcs.

The only KH game that competent when it came to NPCs was KH2. In that game worlds did a decent job of having a few designated areas to have a some townsfolk.

KH1 really only had that in Traverse Town. BBS, nope. And as has been said before, 3D has the excuse of the worlds being dreams so only the important characters are being remembered/dreamed. IDK, I just don't care about NPCS anymore. Used to but not anymore.
 

DarkosOverlord

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The only KH game that competent when it came to NPCs was KH2. In that game worlds did a decent job of having a few designated areas to have a some townsfolk.

KH1 really only had that in Traverse Town. BBS, nope. And as has been said before, 3D has the excuse of the worlds being dreams so only the important characters are being remembered/dreamed. IDK, I just don't care about NPCS anymore. Used to but not anymore.

There were npcs in many worlds of KH1, like Agrabah, Halloween Town, and I think the Queen's court in Wonderland had one of the craziest amount, if we counted all the cards.
BbS has a couple here and there.
Could've swore Days had some, but I might be wrong.

Still, they're there.
I don't really think DDD has an excuse in that regard, when Sora is dreaming characters he actually never met logic kinda goes out of the window.
 

The Dark Mamba

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There were npcs in many worlds of KH1, like Agrabah, Halloween Town, and I think the Queen's court in Wonderland had one of the craziest amount, if we counted all the cards.
BbS has a couple here and there.
Could've swore Days had some, but I might be wrong.

Still, they're there.
I don't really think DDD has an excuse in that regard, when Sora is dreaming characters he actually never met logic kinda goes out of the window.

But in 3D it's the world that's dreaming the characters which is why Jiminy and Mickey are in the dream worlds even though they weren't trapped in the realm of sleep. So that NPC excuse does work.
 

Face My Fears

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Honestly I didn't really like the gameplay of KH3D, probably because I don't like playing games like KH on a handheld system (I have yet to try 3D on PS4). I will say that I loved the story of KH3D. It kept me intrigued throughout to try and understand what was going, a feeling that I didn't have since KH 358/2 Days. I may not have liked Sora's devolution of character, but Riku more than made up for it. I also really liked that Riku became the keyblade master and that they referenced (and used against Sora) the fact that Sora's keyblade was meant for Riku.

I think the only thing in the story that I didn't like was Lea getting a keyblade (let alone an ugly one).
 

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Honestly I didn't really like the gameplay of KH3D, probably because I don't like playing games like KH on a handheld system (I have yet to try 3D on PS4). I will say that I loved the story of KH3D. It kept me intrigued throughout to try and understand what was going, a feeling that I didn't have since KH 358/2 Days. I may not have liked Sora's devolution of character, but Riku more than made up for it. I also really liked that Riku became the keyblade master and that they referenced (and used against Sora) the fact that Sora's keyblade was meant for Riku.

I think the only thing in the story that I didn't like was Lea getting a keyblade (let alone an ugly one).

The transition over to the PS4 has helped a lot, IMO. There's some weirdness with the Dream Eaters side stuff, but overall I find it much easier to work with.

I really loved this game when it came out 5 years ago (goodness, that makes me feel old!), but I have since kind of fallen out of love with it in many regards. As well as having his technique nerfed by the plot, this game also took away most of Sora's already-limited cognitive thinking and made him into a right fool. I get that the Norts were screwing with him, but it just felt like any progress he made in KH2 re:maturity flew out the window. The Dream Eaters are also a hassle, especially for getting the good commands, and I really missed Donald and Goofy. I actually love them as party members and have missed them desperately, and to see them put to such poor use yet again was sad.

That said, there are some good points to this game. It had some great humor at times (see my signature), I LOVE Symphony of Sorcery, the soundtrack is really good (which is why SoS is one of my favorite worlds in the series), and this allowed the games to step up a notch in the darkness department that I hadn't seen (since I hadn't yet played BBS). As everyone else has already mentioned, Riku was also a joy in this game.
 

Elysium

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I love D&G, too, but none of the side games have them as party members (except for a brief moment in Coded). Dream Eaters are much better than being completely solo like in those other games, jmo.
 

Recon

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Ya know, this is supposed to be a celebratory moment, but we're all ragging (including me) on the game. Obviously, the most memorable thing about this game is Chef Kyroo. I mean, it's a frog with a frying pan. How can you forget that?!?
 

Chuman

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Ya know, this is supposed to be a celebratory moment, but we're all ragging (including me) on the game. Obviously, the most memorable thing about this game is Chef Kyroo. I mean, it's a frog with a frying pan. How can you forget that?!?
king kyroo was the man. THE. MAN.
 

Hirokey123

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I see very little in DDD as being actually bad, but it's easy to say many of its decisions are going to be inherently polarizing. Dream Eaters are good example if you don't like that kind of element then you're going to have a bad time because it's a big focus in DDD. But if you're like me and you enjoy a monster creation and raising element, you enjoy a monster caretaking element, and you enjoy things that are incredibly goofy and colorful then you'll probably love dream eaters. Which I do, I really love dream eaters I always wanted Sora to get a pet and now Sora has an army of super pets that are quite literally straight from his dreams. Likewise Dream Eaters fixed a LOT of issues I had with the way BBS handled things.

BBS command melding was just way too broken and while broken isn't inherently bad it is when it becomes clear that because you had the ability get nearly ever attack early on the staff had no way to design challenges, enemies, and boss that accounted for that. What you get in BBS is the most wishy washy difficulty curve with random spikes and bosses either being incredibly frustrating or total jokes. There is no middle ground in that game. Having every single support ability available does not help the game doesn't really account for that on even the highest difficulty level. The lack of any type of equipment system was also rather jarring I always enjoyed completing challenges, finding chests, and synthing materials to get new equipment and managing equipment as well. So it was weird to me that BBS decided to be the only game without it, CoM's enemy cards served the same purpose. And as said BBS's total lack of a party member system and limit attacks only being used in very select battles was also jarring.

Really it's odd BBS and DDD did the same thing which is tie nearly everything to one system, but DDD simply had more to it and was better balanced. Because you need to synth and raise dream eaters the staff had a way to gate the player and gauge what skills they'd have available. And it shows there is an overall better difficulty curve in place in DDD that steadily grows instead of having jaring spikes. They even thought ahead for people who carry over their dream eaters to a new game by adding level gates so the really powerful stuff is still locked away at least for a bit. Once you got your commands dream eaters also then functioned as the missing equipment system and felt like a more advanced version because now you're equipping dream eaters for a whole host of abilities. One dream eater is the equivalent to like 5 pieces of equipment but no single dream eater can ever offer enough to be broken, it takes a carefully thought out entire party of dream eaters to do that. Of course it goes without saying they also brought with them a constant party member system and the return of a limits system for Sora, for Riku they gave us the ability to activate command styles at will which is something BBS's style system was desperately lacking.

There were no shotlock to which might contribute to the balancing being better. As much as I love the idea of a crowd control option that is able to be easily used on the fly my goodness were they poorly balanced, crossing my fingers for KH3. Flowmotion attacks offered the same option but less broken and more dangerous if badly timed. You also had reality shifts to for some crowd control. In fact just want to take a moment and say how much I love reality shifts. Having a mechanic where you get to use the personal qualities of that world to fight really adds a lot of depth and life to the world. It makes them feel more distinct and it means every world always offers a little something new. It was cool how a lot of them weren't strictly battle usage either but most were used out of combat at well as part of platforming/exploring. Honestly I could go on and on but what it boils down is I love DDD and DDD is pretty much in my top 3 KH games in terms of gameplay especially the HD version that improved on most of the flaws its gameplay had.

Seriously my only true complaint with DDD is Kairi but Kairi's role is a universal complaint and her mistreatment is a series universal constant so I'm not even sure it's worth mentioning...
 
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