No, this isn’t Kingdom Hearts 3, which Square Enix had no comment on. But, in regards to the franchise’s timeline, this is the sequel to Kingdom Hearts 2. Featuring seven new Disney worlds and new characters in said worlds, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance is shaping up to be a breakout 3DS hit.
Our demo of the title takes place in the Tron: Legacy world and has us control Sora, one of two playable characters in the game.
Riku is also playable, as the two characters are doing their own missions given by Yen Sid to prepare them for the return of Master Xehanort. In essence, Kingdom Hearts 3D is two stories in one. while Sora and Riku will occasionally interact, for the most part they have their own seperate stories that you’ll get to play through, thanks in part to a gameplay element known as the Dream Drop. Each character has a meter that, when it runs out, the character will fall asleep and you’ll take control of the other character, regardless of wherever they last were. If you were in mid battle in the middle of a forest, you’ll resume control exactly there. It was noted that it’s best to let the meter run through, but if you’re able to start a boss battle, you probably should manually let your character fall asleep.
As you progress through the game, you’ll earn Dream Points, which can be spent once the meter runs out, to help boost up your characters stats and skills, adding a nice RPG element to a combat system that caters more towards button mashing and auto attacks. You’ll eventually learn the ins and outs of maxing your time with each character, but even when you do, there’ll be enemies are able to drain your Dream Meter. Sufficed to say, this is an integral part of your gameplay that will add a sense of urgency as you play through the title.
The demo was in Japanese, which was a little disappointing since the title launches this Summer, but we were told that a fully functional English demo would of been available a week later. Still, this is being far too nitpicky; there was a lot to like from my hands on time with Kingdom Hearts 3D and I can’t wait for its release July 31st. Based on what we were told and shown, this is the traditional Kingdom Hearts experience fans have been waiting for.