Thoughts so far?

I just beat it, so I'll keep my summary of the game spoiler free.


Story:
The story and writing is terrible. I can't elaborate on it without spoilers, but just be prepared for the entire story to continue to spiral out of control. People are saying "wow, they've had this planned the whole time and its so amazing" but really they haven't, and the writing is impressively poor, especially by KH standards.

Gamplay:
The gameplay isn't too bad, but its a lot of fluff. The command deck feels refined compared to how it ran in BBS, except for the major problem of having your command deck scroll button and movement button on the same side. If you intend to scroll through your command deck while running, better learn how to manage it while dodge rolling or using flowmotion. Which brings me to the topic of flowmotion, It wasn't broken, but it was fluff. It was totally unnecessary and didn't really mean anything to the overall gameplay. Sure, there were portions that needed flow-motion to get through, but it still felt like they could've ignored it entirely and the game wouldn't be cheapened at all, it even got in the way sometimes. Reality Shifting is just reaction commands from KH2 but less varied and interesting (aka, most are obnoxious). Spirit Allies seem to be even worse than the standard partner AI, but the link attacks you do with them are incredibly good. Also having to play Eye-Pet with them to get abilities faster got annoying fast. The keyblades felt kind of lazy, with only two being unique to each character, one of those two being their default keyblade. The camera was, at times, so bad you couldn't react to anything on screen. They zoomed the levels out (to allow for larger areas, due to flowmotion) but they didn't fix the way that the character appears on the screen. Riku/Sora are still fairly large in the center of the screen, but there is more room around them for enemies/attacks to come from and its much harder to deal with given how finicky the camera is.

Thats all bad stuff, the good stuff: It felt very much like a KH game. The atmosphere and level design were great, and the music was phoenominal. I might like this soundtrack over any of the others. Riku's spirit links harkened back to the form change system in BBS, which was something I really liked, while Sora's harkened back to actual limits from KH2. The kinds of spirits you can get are pretty diverse, and you can make some cool combinations. There are a lot of commands, and a lot of ways to play. The command deck grows pretty well as you play, so you never really feel held back. The final bosses are incredibly hard compared to the final bosses of older games, taking a lot more health per hit and being a lot harder to reliably damage. They felt more like very watered down secret bosses in the way they played.

All in all I liked it, they just made some strange design decisions that held it back from being really great. It's definitely not the worst KH game ever, but its not even close to the best either.

 

I haven't beaten it yet, but I have to say that the Story is interesting way better than KH2, KH Re Coded, and BBS. Just don't understand the story until the very end of the game.

Gameplay it was fast paced but I felt like there could of been much cooler Commands to unlock. The whole dream eaters at your side thing is a awesome idea, and it gives you new abilities.

I'm sorry mine is short, but I haven't beaten it yet, expect me to write a full of what I thought after I beat it. I'm 17 hours in and I haven't beaten it yet, but I am close. The game is beautiful and the music in the game is AMAZING! I just wish we got more time with Donald and Goofy.

 

Personally I think this is the definitive Kingdom Hearts game. It has one of the best stories, the best gameplay, the best music, and all in all it's the most fun. I think this is what a Kingdom Hearts game should look like and it was a necessary addition to the series to set up Kingdom Hearts 3.

 

The Spellican is so hard to beat

 

I thought so too, but I beat this game within 3 days! And while I agree that while it wasn't the best KH game, it was very amazing! I think that the music is even better than the rest of the series' music! Also, I actually liked the Flowmotion Attacks; they were quite useful. I disliked having to use the Wonder Comic Reality Shift, but the others were awesome!

 

Game is fun, flow motion seems weird at first, it also seems like it isn't really needed, but it works out alright.

I did it in two tries. Using spells is pretty much a necessity in this fight, if you hit him with a spell, it'll stop his casting.

 

I haven't beaten it yet... and don't intend to for the following reasons:

1. I hate the "deck system" that they brought back from BBS. I loved the improved controls in KH2, they were perfect to me, so why do they have to go with this?? It's much more clumsy and inconvenient to maneuvre than KH2 was.

2. Why oh why do we get accompanied by "Dream Eaters", are we playing "Kingdom Hearts x My Littlest Petshop" or what?!? I know that it would make sense for Donald and Goofy to be there, but then why not go back to the KH1 principe where you got accompanied by specific key Disney characters from the various worlds?? I never evolve or see to my Dream Eaters, cuz honestly I don't care about them.

3. Just like in Chain of Memories I love getting to play as both Sora and Riku, but I hate being forced to constantly shift between them!! I know that you have to beat a world with both characters, but then why couldn't they just give you the option as to which character you wanted to beat the world first with, and when you then completed the world as him, you got to shift to the other, like in Sonic Generations. Imagine in that game if every half minute Sonic stopped dead in his track, then a loading screen, and then you were continuing as the other Sonic.

4. In all the other KH game we got the story straight forward, but in this game we are immediately thrown directly into action with no explaination but how you attack, and then at specific key points through the game you get the option to view flashbacks about what happened in Yen Sid's tower. Why the hell couldn't we just get those cutscenes in the beginning of the game?!

The positive?........the story and voice acting is solid as ever....however I will most likely never get the whole story of DDD as I, like I said, don't intend to continue due to the horrendous gameplay.

 

Why is it that I hate the game everyone else loves, and everyone else hates the one I love? :/

 

I'm still working on the game, but so far, I'll give you my pros, and cons.

Pros:
1; I like how you can play as either Sora or Riku
2; I also like that you can have Dream Eaters to fight with you, their so cute too!
3: I'm not 100% sure what's actually "new" since I never really played Chain of Memories or Birth By Sleep or 358/2 days sadly,mbut so far I like the new The Hunchback of Notre Dame place and Pinocchio.
4; The graphics are extremely amazing, after seeing the guy in Tron's World "The Grid" I started thinking "PS3"
5; The gameplay is tons of fun, I love playing this game so much.

Cons:
1; Drop, it's kind of cool but if you don't use a Drop Me Not, it's EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING when it drops you whenever it wants.
2; I miss Goofy and Donald, Donald's annoying hard to hear voice, (I needed to turn subtitles on because of him) and his healing, hopefully they'll come back later in the game though...
3; I have nothing against Dream Eaters, but I honestly miss Heartless, I really, really do...
4; I don't get it, in Kingdom Hearts, Sora was young, in Kingdom Hearts 2, he matured and shows to be older, now in Dream Drop Distance, he looks younger, maybe even freaking younger than in the first one, what the heck?

 

The gameplay was awesome, but the plot pissed me off like you wouldn't believe. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say there were certain retcons about MX, TAV, and BBS.