The Issues I have with DDD (Looong post)

[thatkingdomheartsguy 153]

Let me preface this before someone tries to attack me: if you don't like long rants, then you might not want to read this. This will be quite long. Also I'm gonna be directing some hate, but all of it will be supported with reasons. Once again, if you love Dream Drop Distance and will probably kill someone over hating the game, probably not your cup of tea. Aside from that though, I'd love to see if anyone agrees or disagrees with me. I'll try and keep this pleasant and not too "anger-filled"

 

ALso in case it wasn't obvious, yes there are spoilers for DDD.

 

Now onto the thing that I want to address: Dream Drop Distance. Another Kingdom Hearts game that isn't KH3, but hey it's something, and it can't be worse than Re:Coded....right?

 

Wrong.

 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, DDD is by far my least favorite KH game. From my point of view, there are little to none going for it. Its story is crap, its combat is crap, and overall game was crap. Yes, I know I am going a bit overboard. I don't hate this game by itself, but I do hate it for being part of such an amazing series.

 

Let's go on to story first shall we?

 

Most would agree that DDD is the most confusing KH game by far in terms of story. What bothers me most is the single element they added into it; the thing that makes everything unnecessarily complicated, creates a ton of plotholes, and is just confusing and unpleasant in general. Most of you probably know what I'm talking about.

 

Time travel.

 

Really Square? Unnecessary complexity if you ask me, and definitely going to confuse first time players, even if they have a solid understanding of the KH story before this.

 

First of all, let's address this ridiculous idea. Never before EVER mentioned in any other KH game, apparently you can time travel now. Square attempted to cover up plotholes by implementing these ridiculous rules of time travel (once again, never even hinted at before this game) of how you need to have a version of yourself at your destination, and how you can only go one direction in time, and how you can't keep your memories after returning to your original time...blahblahblah. All it is to me is a load of makeup BS that Square threw in randomly to prevent plotholes. Unfortunately, like all time travel stories, plotholes are aplenty. Not gonna go into details as that would take literally forever, but if you dont believe me, look some up. There are too many plotholes in DDD to claim otherwise.

 

In addition to the time travel idea, they have this annoying thing of how suddenly, everyone is a keyblade wielder now. The idea of a legendary thing, a chosen one...and now everyone is suddenly the "chosen one". This is like Dragon Ball Z all over again. Remember when Goku first turned into the legendary "Super Saiyan" that was only said to be in myths? And then suddenly, within 10 or so years, 7 year old kids can turn into Super Saiyans by having a small sparring match with their mothers. It degrades this "legendary" status, and makes it seem like its worth nothing.

 

To be fair though, BBS kind of did this too which bothered me, but it was really in DDD when Lea somehow manages to magically summon a Keyblade when I just stood up, and said "F*** this I'm done". Don't get me wrong; I like Axel/Lea as a character. In fact, he's debatably my favorite character in the series. But now, you're telling me that this legendary weapon that chooses its owner, this amazing thing that we got in the original KH1 that was supposed to make Sora, the protagonist, special, is nothing but a plaything that anyone can get? There NO reason Lea should be able to wield a keyblade. I don't care what BS explanation Square pulls on this one, like "oh he has a strong heart" or "he's somehow related to ____". It's all to cover up for the obvious mistakes they've made.

 

This makes me realize: the main character is not special for being able to wield a Keyblade. I've been playing as literally an ordinary person. He's not even a master (despite being called one several times in the original KH); simply a wielder. And that's not special because anyone can wield a keyblade nowadays.

 

You see what I'm getting at here? DDD took something amazing, this legendary "chosen one" status, and degraded it to just a normal person's toy. I LOVED playing as Sora as a kid in KH1 and KH2. He was a hero! He was the Chosen One that can wield a legendary weapon that will instantly vanquish darkness! ...but now, it's nothing at all. Anyone can have it. And that upsets me to no end. It's pathetic, and ruins my image of Sora forever. There is nothing intriguing about the protagonist anymore, so why should I even play as him?

 

What makes it worse is that Sora isn't even considered a master after all the feats that he's done, because apparently he's been trained in the wrong way. Let's see...Sora defeated Ansem, a powerful heartless that threatened the destruction of all worlds, defeated 13 members of powerful Nobodies that each had their own unique set of skills, and part of this included Xemnas, the most powerful nobody of all, that had literally ABSORBED the power of an artificial Kingdom Hearts created from THOUSANDS of hearts. He rode a ship through space at light speeds, defeated a giant Dragon, defeated Xemnas like 5 times, took down 1000 heartless by himself, saved the world countless times, and you're telling me he's not a master because of some stupid exam you have to take? For godsake, Aqua literally became a Keyblade master from hitting balls.

 

I think I've ranted on enough about the story for now, since I have so much more to talk about for gameplay.

 

Ahhh good old gameplay. Let's get the good stuff out of the way first shall we? Well, the music is nice. Not the best in the series, but still not bad. The graphics are pretty good for a 3DS game. The controls are decent enough with the circle pad pro. And Flowmotion, in my opinion, even though it kind of breaks platforming, is a pretty cool mechanic that makes movement fun, and I'm excited for it to return in KH3. I liked the big worlds, although a lot of it is a bunch of empty space...I still appreciated the feeling of exploration.

 

Unfortunately, that's pretty much everything redeeming I have to say for gameplay.

 

First issue: Balancing

This one you've probably heard a lot. It's an issue in BBS as well, but it's way more obvious in DDD. By balancing, I mean there's one single command in this game that will be automatically the best for any situation ever, no exceptions. Whether if its a mob enemy fight or a tough giant Dream Eater boss, or a powerful "human" boss...the Balloon family will completely destroy them.

 

There is NO boss in this game that resists Balloon, its damage output is absolutely INSANE, and its reload time+cost+how early you can get it (literally before the first boss) completely breaks the command and makes it the best in the entire game. For every single "no damage" or "speedrun" you can find of DDD, you'll see Balloon...and Balloon...and Ballooon....

 

What happened to the beautiful combat options from, say, KH2? What happened to your fancy combos that you can change up, your Magic, your Drives, your summons, your limits? All these combat options, all with uses for different situations, and all gone. Now, you're just spamming one command to win. It makes the game boring and un-fun. The game doesn't take skill anymore; it just takes patience and having a strong thumb to spam Balloon.

 

Also, saying "just don't use Balloon" is a really crappy argument to make because:

1. The game literally gives it to you as an available option to attack, so there's no reason to exclude it if its the game's intention.

2. Playing the game without Balloon makes it even worse believe it or not; bosses on Level 1 Crit literally become impossible.

 

Good game design Square. It's like they purposely made the game around spamming Balloon just to troll us.

"Hey lets put in a really difficult mode, Level 1 Critical. Let's also make the game insanely hard/impossible to beat on that mode, and put in a super overpowered command so they can just spam it over and over again to win. WHOO SOUNDS FUN"

 

Wouldn't surprise me if that was an actual thing.

 

Second Issue: AI Complexity

 

The bosses' AI in this game sucks. That's it. Now I know what some of you are thinking: "Oh no, he's gonna go KH2 nerd on us and bring in Revenge Value and Flinch Count and all that random computery crap."

 

But the thing is, those were very good game design choices in KH2 that I applaud. It made fights interesting; it gave bosses openings, forced you to learn them and time to so you can attack and not get hit. You get better from experience and attempts, and gives you a feeling of satisfaction when you finally win, because you LEARNED something from that fight.

 

Meanwhile in DDD, we have absolutely no system of Revenge, bosses just randomly retaliate. For the most part, the game goes like Balloon>run away>hope you don't get hit by a random retaliation>Balloon. And maybe a cure when necessary. There is zero skill involved, and just doesn't give you the same feeling of satisfaction like KH2 does. When you win, its more like "wow I can't believe I spent 20 minutes spamming Balloon" instead of "AWESOME I BEAT THAT FIGHT BECAUSE I LEARNED SO MUCH ABOUT THE BOSSES' PATTERNS THROUGH EXPERIENCE!" For me, this was a huge downgrade, and ABSOLUTELY inexcusable because the game before it literally had a better system in every way possible.

 

Also, enemies don't stagger. I understand this for giant bosses, but normal enemies literally don't get staggered by your moves in DDD. It's like they're a wall, and you just attack them to inflict damage. This not only makes things super annoying, because enemies can randomly retaliate in the middle of your combos which should TECHNICALLY stun them and render them defenseless, BUT it just makes you want to use overpowered commands like Balloon even more, instead of normal attacks/other commands, since Balloon is one of the few commands that can force enemies to stagger. As if it wasn't powerful enough.

 

I can't emphasize how annoying all these issues add up to be. The story is subpar at best with stupid concepts that feel rushed and made up at the last minute, and it's confusing and full of plot holes. The main character is nothing anymore, he's not special or the "Chosen One", just another one of those hundreds of people who can wield this weapon. The gameplay is once again below expectations, because of the unbalancing and horrid AI. The game is not fun to play at all. If I play on Beginner mode, I destroy everything too easily. If I want a challenge, I can't even get one since I'll just spam Balloon to win. If I restrict myself from spamming Balloon, I'll make the game boring and tedious. Bosses would literally take up to hours for me to beat, because my attacks deal chip damage AND doesn't stagger them. Which means the fights go like "One hit>run away and hope you don't get hit".

 

So yeah this is probably the most I've ever typed in my life and my fingers are absolutely dead. Soooo for those of you who didn't read, I'll try and make a brief tl;dr:

 

tl;dr:

-confusing story, full of plotholes, main character has been downgraded to nothing special

-gameplay is unbalanced, boring, tedious, AI is awful

-a game made literally 6 years before this game is better in almost every single way (KH2), which is unacceptable.

 

Welp I think i'm finally done, and if you do read the whole thing, I will be very impressed.

Aside from that, I'll see you guys later. Let's see if we can get some interesting discussions on here.

 

 

[Trece the Xam ( ▀ ͜͞ʖ▀) 3,859]

Fabulous man! You summed up all of the stuff wrong with DDD very well!

 

To be honest, I like the game... at least more than BBS and Re: Coded, and that's becasue of the following things:

 

Even though the AI is awful and bosses don't stagger (which is the most annoying thing of the game), I liked fighting bosses, especially the final ones, they were hard, really challenging, and while the feeling you had once you won wasn't the same as in KH2, it was still good!

 

Also, the story, the first time I played thorugh it, it hyped me for KH3 as it has quite an opened ending and it has a lot of plotholes that will (hopefuly) be explained in KH3. I actually liked the story, but as time went on you could find everything wrong with it and get mad at the game.

 

I only liked Sora in KH1 and CoM, he was awful from then onwards in my opinion, so knowing that he's a dull ordinary boy isn't bad at all for me... but it's hard to think that a dull ordinary boy destoryed Organization XIII... that's unacceptable! So yeah, I didn't really like it either.

 

Keyblade wielders... as you said, that happened in BBS, I already got mad enough back then, that's one of the reasons why BBS falls far behind most KH games for me.

 

And I agree, the only good thing in the gameplay was Flowmotion, I'm fed up of the Command thingy, and the Dream Eaters are awful when they're compared to Heartless, Nobodies or Unversed, not to mention how Baloon destroyed most of the gameplay and how the ordinary combo has turned out to be completely useless in the game.

 

Lea having a keyblade was nearly annoying at first for me, but then I just thought there was no point in bothering about it, so I ended up to not really mind. Of course, I prefer Axel to Lea (although they're the same person, but CoM Axel was the best! While in DDD now we've got a Lea who isn't as impressive).

 

 

 

I think that's enough, I don't feel like typing anymore

 

I'll leave here my list of favourite KH games just to let you know how much I like each one of them:

 

1. KH 2

2. KH 358/2 Days

3. KH 1

4. KH (Re:)CoM

5. KH DDD

6. KH BBS

7. KH (Re:)Coded

 

I think I've mentioned all of them

 

 

Let me say this again: Nice rant!

[Headphone Jack 1,147]

agree with everything you said here. i think really my biggest problem with DDD is the sense of betrayal i felt while playing it. the game takes the concepts and characters that have been with the series from the beginning and practically bastardizes them to oblivion in order to fit a narrative that has gone off the rails.  

 

The Keyblade has lost it's value in recent games. By being the only Keyblade master in the first few games it really made you feel like the opposition was gunning for you because you were the lone wielder of the Keyblade. now that everyone has a Keyblade it isn't as effective as a narrative tool.

 

Giving Lea a Keyblade was probably the final nail in the coffin honestly. Up to that point there were at least acceptable excuses for why a character would have a keyblade. Then suddenly Lea gets one after training in another dimension of time and space, which felt like the ultimate cop out excuse for SE to speed the process along. It sort of negates the whole "the Keyblade chooses its master," plot point. Honestly i'm wondering if SE should have just left the plot point with Lea unresolved and then wrapped it up in KH3 with a grand reveal. Let us see him actually trying to earn one at least. What they did in DDD just made it feel like you can fill out an application for a Keyblade and then get it in the mail a day later. 

 

well i'll just stop my Lea/DDD rant there and just say again that i agree with your post above. well said. DDD is the black sheep of the KH series imo.

[thatkingdomheartsguy 153]

Seems like many people agree, which is cool. I've seen comments everywhere saying how DDD was the best KH game ever, and I honestly just couldn't come to understand their reasonings.

[Jermaine 79]

The game is very short, and tries to change the entire complexity, and tries to make the ENTIRE series irrelevant through. It is the only game in the series that start to end, isn't it's own story. I've made an argument that you could start on any KH game, 1-6, and have a pretty good understanding of the game. It has a defined start, and end. I feel DDD is honestly just an extension game. Trying to introduce time travel, this late, and through the unseen is just ridiculous. You can bring back, Xehanort, I have no problem with that as explained in recoded, but why does he have to fill himself through 13 periods of time, and make these games, and individual Villains, who were great in their own, redundant.

 

 

In KH1, The Disney Villains were the villainous crew, and Ansem was the true perpetrator, with Riku being manipulated. Great crew of villains. In COM you had the traitorous villains within the organization. In 2 you had the actual organization. And BBS had Braig, Vanitas, and Xehanort. So why do all these have to be a part of "motion set in time." Why can't you just have Xehanort come back, and quietly form his crew?

 

The gameplay in DDD and BBS is pretty awful compared to the other games. Boss Staggering is basically gone, and the combo has been replaced by a command.

 

Now, to be fair, I'm still fairly optimistic, so some of the bad things don't bother me as much. I do enjoy 5/7 games, so I'm really hopeful for kh3.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Jermaine

[Iscreamer1 100]

Didn't satisfy me either, Sora and the dialogue were getting childish by the minute. Which is one reason why I look up to the original/unofficial Japanese translations, they make Sora sound more mature and perhaps even more intelligent in the original Japanese.