Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance: Information From Demo

Mike · Sep 15, 2011

It's the Tokyo Game Show! Gear up for all the latest news revolving Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. We'll have all the latest information regarding the new playable demo and it's new trailer that will be available for the public.

More information from Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance and it's playable demo has surfaced from this year's Tokyo Game Show. As of this time; the trailer and playable demos have not leaked online as of this time yet. We'll keep you posted.

Neku appears as a guest character in Sora's side of the TGS demo -- though not a playable guest. Both Neku and his rival/friend/frienemy Riku team up with captured dream-monsters this time around rather than fighting alongside licensed characters. Neku's role is more that of the Disney-world guests from previous games. He shows up, reveals that he's caught in a "game," leaving him 43 minutes to win or die. Naturally, he asks Sora to be his partner but ultimately decides the tousle-haired protagonist is "a weird guy" and takes off. Sora follows, riding rails in pursuit of Neku, but quickly encounters a boss battle set in a cul-de-sac of Traverse Town.

Both sides of the demo (Sora and Riku) are essentially the same, really: A brief story set-up, a few set encounters, and a boss fight. Riku interacts with Quasimoto from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is admittedly less interesting than Neku; on the other hand, Riku has a double-jump, which is always great. The demo is just enough to give a feel for what KH3D adds to the series. While the camera is still a hyperactive mess that makes boss battles a pain (all the 3DS's buttons are used, so there's no lock-on system that I could find), everything else about the game feels significantly improved over previous Kingdom Hearts. The action is fluid and smooth, with much more refined combat. Fighting enemies feels less like combo-driven button mashing that locks your hero into canned animations than in previous installments, and your skill set has been improved considerably. Both demo characters possess a standard repertoire of magic skills such as Cura and Blizzaga, which are activated and cycled through as they were in Birth By Sleep, but they also can perform special Dual Link attacks with their partners by pressing Y.
Dual Link skills are context-sensitive and seem to vary according to your current partners, enemies, and positioning. You can pull off different skills while on the ground or in the air. A key part of these skills seems to be something called (inexplicably) Holy Rope, which are a series of nodes placed around battlefields. Pressing A and X while near one of these Holy Rope points freezes the action and allows you to use the touch screen to draw connections between points on the area map, which then sends Sora or Riku dashing through the air along the prescribed course. Using the Holy Rope paths to intersect foes allows you to pull off standard or special attacks while they're otherwise out of reach.

The TGS demo of Dream Drop Distance is fairly brief -- about 20 minutes to complete both portions -- but shows a game that looks and plays beautifully. Square hasn't formally announced a U.S. release date for KH3D, but the notion that they wouldn't localize such a sure hit is enough to get a man laughed out of the room. Honestly now.
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Source: 1UP

Vanitas555 · Sep 15, 2011

Wait so instead of having Neku in my party, I have to have lame pet monsters in my party?....*holds back an hour of swearing*

. : tale_wind · Sep 15, 2011

*Quasimodo

It's spelled with a "d". Not a "t". =__=

Mr. Van Whippy ♥ · Sep 15, 2011

Regarding the holy rope feature, it must be that light kind of rope/line we've sen before on which Sora/Riku glide while fighting. Very interesting!

Llave · Sep 15, 2011

ahh this sounds interesting and confusing at the same time... So BBS with the feature of dual linking with enemies... sounds like a mixture of BBS and CoM literally, since you play as Riku and Sora. Thanks for the update!

♥♦♣♠∟uxord♥♦♣♠ · Sep 15, 2011

No lock on? That's going to be more difficult and a pain at the same time. I hope there's a way to do it with the second analog stick or some other way.

Mixt · Sep 15, 2011

Ace Phoenix said: ↑

No lock on? That's going to be more difficult and a pain at the same time. I hope there's a way to do it with the second analog stick or some other way.
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I'm willing to bet there is a way. With it being a demo there isn't much time to learn control schemes and such.

Shift · Sep 15, 2011

mixt said: ↑

I'm willing to bet there is a way. With it being a demo there isn't much time to learn control schemes and such.
Click to expand...

Yeah, at least according to this image, L+R+Stylus or L or R is for the camera and L+R is lock-on.

Ienzo · Sep 15, 2011

Thank God that there is a lock on! I use it all the time, plus I have seen a lot of really fun gameplay in the first trailer which does look like a huge improvement. I am hoping that it will be as enjoyable as it looks. I didn't really completely follow the new fighting styles described but I'm sure it will become clearer once I play it. Can't wait to hear more.

fiasco126 · Sep 16, 2011

I defeated it a Wondernyan, a puppy like dream pet you can control, showed up and wagged its tail

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Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance: Information From Demo

Mike Chaser

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