Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - demo impressions

by: Russell - posted: 6/25/2012 8:58:00 AM

A couple days ago I posted that a demo was available for Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance on the 3DS's eShop channel and that I planned to check it out.  Well, I did just that last night and figured I'd share my impressions.

The demo lets you go through a tutorial before trying the main part of the demo.  The tutorial goes over basic combat and evasion techniques, how the spell deck works (don't worry, it's not a card deck like in Chain of Memories), and more importantly, how flowmotion works.  Flowmotion took some getting used to at first.  Basically you run towards a wall, pole, or even some enemies and hit Y when approaching.  This should make you start flashing and spinning around the object, from which you can either jump off it, dash from it, or attack it if it's an enemy.  It takes some getting used to, but it's a nice way to deal damage.

The basic combat's not too hard, but they throw a "boss" at the end of the demo.  I say "boss" because I'm not sure if it's a main boss or just a mini-boss, but either way, this is where I had some trouble, but I think it was mostly my fault, as I forgot to activate the lock-on ability (hit L and R together), but it did showcase one issue that wasn't necessarily my fault.  To cycle through your spell deck, you have to hit Up and Down on the D-Pad.  Once you use a spell, you have to wait to use it again (and some spells can only be used so many times), plus the spell deck automatically switches to the next spell in the list.  Normally, that's not a problem, but that means if you want to switch spells in a hurry, for the most part you either have to stop moving so you can use the D-Pad, or run with your left hand and switch spells with your right, and for me, having both hands on the same side of the 3DS is kind of uncomfortable.  However, if I had remembered to lock-on to the boss, I might have been able to more easily see what was coming, but the boss was constantly on top of me so I was constantly running out of the way.

Overall, I enjoyed the demo and can't wait for the full game to come out.