Finished playing Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (2012, Square Enix, Nintendo 3DS) on 07/15/2014.
Gameplay Hours: ~50hrs - Proud Mode and 54hrs Critical Mode
Anticipating the return of Master Xehanort, Master Yen Sid tests Sora and Riku through the Mark of Mastery exam to prove themselves as true Keyblade Masters. The exam throws Sora and Riku to all sorts of familiar Disney worlds. But they find these worlds in their sleeping state ridden with creatures known as Dream Eaters. And to reawaken those worlds our heroes must partner up with the benevolent kind of Dream Eaters known as Spirits to fight back the not-so-nice kind known as Nightmares.
9/10 - I had been playing this game sporadically ever since it came out in July, 2012. I played it in Proud Mode to unlock Critical Mode to then finally unlock the Secret Movie. But let's get to the point, this is my second favorite Kingdom Hearts installment, my top favorite one being Birth by Sleep, also a handheld. I just love everything about it! Specially how the Flowmotion mechanic lets you move faster through stages and easily navigate over even town rooftops! It's even integrated into the character's battle moves! And then there's the Dream Eaters. This feature is screaming Pokémon, seriously! You turn wild Dream Eaters into tamed ones which you can train and then even battle through a card-game battle-system via local wireless with other KH3D players! There's one thing that this feature has that I wish Pokémon had, the ability to customize your Dream Eater's color. Can you imagine if you could change your Metapod's color to I don't know, let's think of a random color here, uhh, let's say, a flesh-colored Metapod! Huh! Right? No? Hahahah! Alright, alright, let's move on to the soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura. 'Nuff said. Amirite? Don't even have to tell you how great it is. I love all the tracks with my favorite one being the theme for La Cité des Cloches world. But this soundtrack is unique because the Symphony of Sorcery world features some of the original classical music used in Disney's Fantasia movie. And that's pretty interesting! I could really go on about how amazing this game is, but this review is getting too long so let me just leave you with one last thing I think is very important to mention and that's the realistic character faces in The Grid world. If there's one thing Square has always done right was faces. And they really did a great job considering this is a handheld console. The texture of the skin, even Jeff Bridges' beard looked amazingly detailed. Even the likeness of the characters were awesomely accurate! The facial expressions were amazingly done as well and expertly synchronized with the voice acting!
