Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (3DS)

best 3ds game to date. having only played kh1/2 i missed out on some of the story but the game does a nice job of filling the gaps in as you go along. graphics are brilliant for a 3ds game, spirit collecting/nurturing is addictive and combat is so fun!

I bought my 3DS from a highstreet gaming store and had a choice of 4 games that came with the bundle, this being the one I settled for (it wouldn't have been my first choice if given the whole range of 3DS games to choose from!) However I was a fan of the original Kingdom Hearts game (the only one I ever played!) so thought why not give it a go. In a nut shell, it is a very solid game which I would recommend to those who enjoy a good RPG! Here's the "out of nutshell" version =P The combat controls are fairly tight, only thing I found a bit "niggly" was targeting enemies with both shoulder buttons, you perform a combo attack taking some of their life, then if you end up behind them you have to re-target them over again, taking your fingers and concentration off the action, which can sometimes prove very inconvenient; however the game does compensate for this slightly with a bit of "auto-targetting" of the closest target to you, and using the map on the touch screen as a guide you can see in which direction the closest enemy is even if they are behind your line of sight. Negative point out of the way! The spirit creation and rasing is very clever, an awful lot like raising a pokemon (another positive in my humble opinion) and using them to unlock skills to apply to Riku and Sora was a nice touch (the system there also resembled the "Sphere Grid" used for levelling up characters in Final Fantasy X, but on a much smaller scale). The variety of moves was decent, certainly not too few, but in all honesty if there is a wall/pole/anything you can bounce or swing off of you'll be using the Flomotion Wall Kick 90% of the time as it is dead accurate and relatively powerful to boot. Having missed every game since the first there were some story elements I was completely clueless about, die hard fans will obviously appreciate this but I did skip the odd flash-back here and there and it took nothing away from the overall experience for me. FInally I would say the 3D effects in the game were very nice, though not essential to have on throughout the entire game (plus your eyes may start to bleed a few hours in). So yes, on standard mode I would say there is a good 20-25hours of gameplay to be had (more or less depending on if you're a 100% completionist or a 3DS veteran gamer) plus there is hard mode too (though I probably won't be diving into the 7 worlds again!) Good job Square Enix, one of the better games you've been involved with for a while!