As many of you know Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance released this past Tuesday. If you know how much of a KH fan I am, then you can probably assume I've been playing it a lot these past two days. You would be correct. I am loving it so far.

I think it does most of what it does well, some things are not as strong (story-telling being the big one) but its a mostly solid experience. The gameplay is awesome, reminiscent of KH II, but without the button mashing to win. The command deck from Birth By Sleep returns, but in a more perfected form. The production values are very high, as always, and the new elements like flowmotion and dream eaters are handled well.

Something that hasn't been as great... the drop system.

Let me rephrase that. From a story standpoint, and even to some extent a gameplay feature, the system is really cool. i love how you are playing to different stories in two different worlds, but they are the same. That made no sense, I know, but that is whats going on. I think that it is done really well, and the gameplay between Sora and Riku is similar enough that it feels natural, but different enough that you feel like you are two different characters and playing different story lines. The stories unfold in very unique ways.

So what do I dislike?

The frequency and inopportune moments in which the game makes you drop.

Instead of having certain spots that you have to drop (which I hear are still there) you have a meter that drains slowly. there is little you can do about this meter. there are bonuses before you get brought into the gameplay and items that will extend your bar, but mostly its out of your control. Once this bar goes down all the way, you are "dropped" into the other character. This bar really doesn't last that long. Its annoying to be thrown out of the game whenever your in mid battle.

Whenever your really into one part of the game, it may very well throw you out of that and send you into the other characters story. You can choose to manually drop back into that person, but you have to cycle through menus and things to get there. It's a little tedious.

That's not my big problem though, the big problem is when you have to switch in a bad situation. Early in the game I was fighting a boss as Riku. At about half life, my drop bar went out and I was thrown into Sora's story. I assumed that when I returned to Riku, we would be at the same position as when we left, me kicking this boss' a**.

Nope, it freaking restarted the battle. Like from the beginning. There was nothing I could've done to keep the battle going, unless the item is in my command deck. i didn't have room for an item I would only use every so often. i needed that for something that I would actually use.

That wasn't the worse part either. As i fought the boss on The Grid (which I won't spoil) my drop bar started to glow. The boss had 1 life bar, so I figured I had time. I kept fighting, and when I entered my last 30 seconds, he had only a little life left. I kept up my onslaught, but whenever I had 2 seconds left and he had 1 hit left I used a sliding attack. He dodged it... and I dropped into Riku. I would've yelled a lot of obscenities if I weren't around family. That still doesn't make sense to me. Why restart the entire boss?

I would love for the drop system to return in some form in the future. I think it needs some improvements, like giving you other ways from prolonging drops, and not resetting boss battles, but I like it. Still, in KH 3D it bugs the ever living hell out of me whenever I have to restart a boss because of dropping. Why must you drop me again?

Well, that was short and a little weak, but I had to get that out there. it bugged me so much. Grr.

blaze6106