Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance Has Great Worlds (But Its Central Mechanic Ruins Them)

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance was a rather special game for me. A large part of that was because in 2012 when the game was released, I was very invested in the Kingdom Hearts series, having adored 358/2 Days and Birth by Sleep, but that wasn’t the only reason. No, the biggest reason I was ready to love Dream Drop Distance with all of my heart was Micky, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers. That was a direct-to-DVD film featuring classic Disney characters somewhat re-enacting the classic Alexandre Dumas novel of the same name — well, the The Three Musketeers part of the title, anyways. I’d loved the film as I was growing up, always doing my best to try and sing along to the “Bad Guy Song,” and in 2012, I was absolutely excited to get the chance to play through that same world I’d loved in videogame form.

Dream Drop Distance delivered almost exactly the sort of world I was hoping for. Of course, as a greedy gal, I would’ve enjoyed even more moments faithfully recreated from the classic film. However, the movie’s world, Country of the Musketeers, did a fantastic job of adapting one of my favourite films. The storylines involved were engaging in their own right and the world even did a surprisingly decent job of fitting in with the Kingdom Hearts mythos. I wasn’t expecting that, to be honest!

The game, truthfully, did a marvellous job with its seven worlds, each of which either being wholly new to Kingdom Hearts or featuring a brand new aspect that had never been seen before. This was a rare feat for the series! Even my beloved 358/2 Days spent the majority of its time in worlds that the series had already tread through — though it did at least offer several new areas within those old worlds. But in Dream Drop Distance, I was able to see a wide variety of worlds that I’d never thought I would get to see in Kingdom Hearts, both areas that I had already wanted, like those based on The Three Musketeers and Tron: Legacy, and settings that I hadn’t thought would work so well, like those based on Fantasia or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Even Traverse Town, a mainstay of the series, was given a brilliant reinvention with the inclusion of the cast of The World Ends With You taking part.

Even on the 3DS’ small screen, I loved nearly every second of screentime that these worlds had, both in their designs and in their storylines. It truly felt like I was getting a great deal of detail in each world, like the designers were proving to me, second after second, that these settings were the right choices. There was no telling whether we would see most of these worlds ever again, so Dream Drop Distance had to go all out to make each and every world a slam dunk.

And then Sora fell asleep.

And then Riku fell asleep too.

Let me explain. Dream Drop Distance follows the adventures of Sora and Riku, two prospective Keyblade Masters, on their Mark of Mastery exam. For that sake, they must visit several sleeping worlds that have been lost to darkness and restore them to the World of Light. However, they are separated soon after they begin their test and realise that only one of them can move around at a time. When one is awake, the other is asleep, and the only way for Sora and Riku to get anything done is for them to occasionally ‘Drop’ into slumber so the other hero can do his business.

In the gameplay itself, this feature is called the Drop System. At most points in the game, the player can manually opt to Drop one character into sleep to, in essence, swap to the other. However, there is also a Drop Gauge that is constantly going down over time and, once that Gauge reaches zero, the active character will Drop automatically. This is an interesting — and occasionally great — tool that all but forces the player to experience Sora and Riku’s storylines concurrently. Generally speaking, that allows Dream Drop Distance to keep a lot of the gameplay fairly balanced between the twin storylines as opposed to providing players with two drastically different difficulty experiences between the characters. It also helps to carve out a strong identity for the game and acts as a unique mechanic to have to work around.

It can certainly be annoying if the player just so happens to be in the middle of a gruelling boss fight that surprised them out of nowhere and right at the very end of their opponent’s health bar after struggling for so long, only to see their precious hero take a nap, thereby resetting the entire fight and refilling the boss’s health bar when the hero wakes up. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience! But even so, the good of this gimmick mostly outweighs the bad.

However, that goodwill I am extending the Drop System ends there, because the worst part about it is how it disincentivises exploration. The player is always on the clock with this in place, never being given a proper chance to stop and smell the roses. That’s not inherently a bad design choice, but it is one that prioritises speed and efficiency. Whenever I had nothing in particular to do and would normally explore the area and admire the work put into it, I felt nothing but the weight of the Drop Gauge on my shoulders. Whenever I did actually put the time into experiencing the game how I wanted to, I would inevitably find myself in the other character’s shoes for a time. And, at that point, I had to deal with whatever stuff they were getting into, moving their story forward while the previous character was stuck in exploration mode. Then, once I finally got back to that character, I would be thrust into a new battle in that previously safe area, which took up even more time!

It got to the point where, without even trying, I had well and truly desynched Sora and Riku’s progression because I kept exploring as Sora. Once that happened, I had to play catch-up as Sora and eventually had to give up on something that I love about Kingdom Hearts just to be able to enjoy half of the game. Perhaps I personally just work through games at a much slower pace than Dream Drop Distance was designed around, but it always felt like I was fighting against the game.

To use a metaphor, Dream Drop Distance is a beautiful museum with a wide variety of exhibits that closes ten minutes after it opens.