Feel the Flow
According to Tetsuya Nomura, Kingdom Hearts started as Square Enix wishing to make a game similar to Super Mario 64.
Super Mario 64 is one of the finest examples of movement and platforming in three dimensions, a joyous physics simulation utilizing a bouncy hero with so many moves that future iterations of 3D Mario titles barely needed to change a thing.
By that metric, most of Kingdom Hearts is an abject failure. Of the four games I played before Dream Drop Distance, only Kingdom Hearts II felt remotely like a well done 3D platformer, and that still hid half of its moveset behind tedious grinding.
So imagine my surprise and delight when I booted up Dream Drop Distance for the first time and started moving.
Once more, let’s get something out of the way before I gush. Dream Drop Distance is a better iteration of the Command Deck than Birth By Sleep, but locking abilities behind monster raising isn’t a great idea. The monster raising feels unnecessary, and Sora and Riku’s differing utilization of the spirits isn’t engaging enough to justify it.
The story is also weaker than the previous entries in the series, though mostly because it adds nothing new to the table in terms of characters. Still, this is the first time since Chain of Memories that Riku gets to be in the spotlight rather than just a guest star, and his development in the game, while not necessarily as strong as the side characters in other titles, is still commendable. He’s the real star of this game, and absolutely deserves the ending he gets for what he goes through.
Meanwhile, Sora in this title feels more like a playable macguffin after all is said and done. Once the story reaches the final chapter, Sora is thrown through the wringer and needs to be rescued through convoluted lore dumps resulting in setup for Kingdom Hearts III, and while I don’t hate it, I can understand why most fans seem to find this game incredibly frustrating.
But I kinda don’t care.
Because Dream Drop Distance introduced Flowmotion, and now Kingdom Hearts finally just feels good to move in.
Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance attempts to refine the playstyle of Birth By Sleep, and the introduction of one mechanic, Flowmotion, improves my least favorite aspect of that title to such a degree that I still am shocked that the same team that made such small levels and clunky platforming came up with the massive playgrounds in this title.
Flowmotion is pretty simple. By dodge rolling at relevant surfaces, Sora or Riku can start moving around at high speeds as a pink aura fires up around them. With some simple practice, Flowmotion can do anything from launching ones self from one side of the stage to another, to bouncing up walls to reach hidden secrets way out of reach.
There’s a heuristic we learn in game design: You get what you publicly track. If you want a player to take a desired behavior, track something that motivates it. Starting in Kingdom Hearts II, treasures found have been tracked by the game’s Journal system. The games encourage exploration of levels in doing so, and it feels fine.
But in Dream Drop Distance, the levels are larger, and the treasures more hidden, because the game wants you to learn how to use Flowmotion and bounce around these levels like a hyperactive child that just binged Dragon Ball Z while pounding Red Bulls. So treasures and challenges are tucked away in obscure locations and the levels are expanded to size and density multitudes larger than previous entries.
Flowmotion even factors in to combat, and sure enough, the series ties one of its trophies, which earning a set number are required to unlock the ubiquitous secret endings in this series, to use of Flowmotion in combat.
The result is a game that encourages this crazy movement style that still isn’t quite Super Mario 64 but is most DEFINITELY what feels like what Kingdom Hearts wants to be. I had more fun navigating the labyrinthine worlds of Dream Drop Distance than any other title thus far.
I was disappointed that 0.2 Birth By Sleep A Fragmentary Passage (wow what a name) didn’t include flowmotion in its suite of “good ideas pulled from KH II and handheld games.” It refined shotlocks and powered up finishers from Birth By Sleep and added them to the much more substantial combat system of Kingdom Hearts II, but something felt missing when I couldn’t wall jump all over the place.
So cue my joy when it appears that some form of Flowmotion has been adopted in Kingdom Hearts III, even if it doesn’t appear as extensive as in DDD.
Burning through these titles in a month has prepared me for Kingdom Hearts III in all forms, and if it can stick the landing set up by these titles while delivering the dream form of a game promised by combining the best aspects of them, then in my view Kingdom Hearts III will be something special indeed.
❤ Touhi
Touhi Touko's Blog 