Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 17: Kingdom Hearts, an HBO Drama by David Simon

Well, it certainly seems as though Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance is quite beefy for its more digestible structure; its first “main” level was one of this series’ largest! Fortunately, if the past five weeks have taught me anything, it’s that I want to take these games a bit more slowly. So while we’ll move through them consistently, it’s not gonna be a rush. Will NOT be a rush.

Besides, that’d probably make it easier for me to get all the weirdo conditions I surely need for the plot-central secret endings.

April 24: Completed The Grid (Sora and Riku).

Not what you’d call “happy” with how this world turned out. I think it was a combination of Tron still being boring and the general Sora / Riku gameplay dichotomy. I didn’t find either perspective of The Grid interesting, since I didn’t like the characters, so I didn’t really have anything to hold as I struggled to really grasp the story from two directions.

So far, I’ve died a few times. Mostly, it seems like having only one healing spell on me isn’t enough. I’ll need two, and ideally ones at least as strong as Cura. Enemies hit hard, and I still don’t have access to abilities like Second Chance. I’m nearing the end of fully unlocking two of my Spirits, so hopefully that’s a sign that I’ll get more access to good stuff soon. It’s a good product of my grinding; I don’t want to just “waste” a Drop, so I’ve been spending any excess time just fighting enemies and working to make my Spirits stronger.

April 25: Entered Prankster’s Paradise (Sora and Riku)

Two flashbacks within minutes of each other. One for Yen Sid to explain why this dream version of Jiminy Cricket doesn’t know Sora; the other to explain what happened to Pinocchio. I get that Kingdom Hearts is a full universe now, and not just a template for Sora’s personal escapades, but there has to be a better way to incorporate the supporting cast.

After two levels set in essentially the same area, I’ve finally found the first world that seems to be totally different for each hero. Riku’s stuck slumming it in Monstro from Kingdom Hearts I (let’s call it his punishment for his heel turn back then), while Sora enjoys the pretty Pinocchio carnival and approaches the whale from afar. Really, Riku’s got the most interesting feature—hitting tiny sacs inside the whale to flip it upside-down—but Sora has the benefit of a level that’s actually nice to look at.

Unfortunately, it was too logistically difficult to get good pictures of Monstro’s Dream Drop Distance-era innards this late before publication. On the plus side, his outside is his best side.

I’ve managed to fully complete two of the Spirits’ upgrade trees. It has reminded me of how much I dislike upgrade trees. They’re boring. They put all the life of the game into menus. It’s not that you can’t do them right, but it’s such a banal form of abstraction; they seem to exist mostly to push you to explore without making a game that’s fun to explore on its own. “Collect five X” or “beat Y enemies with weapon Z” are busywork. Stick the dang upgrades in dungeons or after quests—even if the quest isn’t that much more interesting than one of those instructions. Just let us go out in the world. It’s a task, and as we all learned from Mass Effect: Andromeda, tasks aren’t great.

April 26: Completed Prankster’s Paradise (Riku and Sora), returned to Traverse Town (Sora).

It was after finishing both versions of Prankster’s Paradise that we learn that our heroes didn’t go through two alternate versions of a world, but memories of it from two different points in the past. It’s the story of how Jiminy, Pinocchio, and Gepetto found themselves stuck in Monstro, setting up the events of Kingdom Hearts I (except for the part where Jiminy only got into Monstro by tagging along with Sora, but again, this is a dream. They’re not always factually accurate). It’s a neat twist, especially after La Cité des Cloches and The Grid largely did generic, fuzzy alternate depictions of the same stories. It’s also a definitely better way to tell flashbacks than whatever the hell these Flashbacks and Chronicles have been. These recaps need to be integrated with the actual storytelling, not just placed in those side areas. It’s ungainly and, as I argued before, an ostensible olive branch for newcomers that may as well be the petal of a corpse flower.

Another thing I’ve (finally) picked up is how the Abilities work in this game. You don’t permanently unlock them for Sora or Riku; you just permanently unlock them for the Spirit, and you have access to them whenever they’re in the party. The exceptions are the red and purple Abilities, the ones with the really good powers like Once More. With that knowledge, I suppose my current plan is to try to get all of the super-permanent ones first, then worry about building up each Spirit.

Actually, I do think the Spirits have a few other problems. You probably should be able to get more or all of them earlier, see what Abilities they give you before unlocking them, and access the permanent ones more easily. None of these are dealbreakers, but I do think it would have been good to better access the bulk of this system earlier in the game. Unlike the Commands from Birth by Sleep, you’re kind of expected to hold onto a Spirit for a long time in a short game in order to get the most out of it. Still a very imaginative system.

April 27: Returned to Traverse Town (Riku), completed Traverse Town again (Riku and Sora)

It seems that Riku’s naturally ahead of Sora. It fits with him being the smarter, and, I’d argue, better character.

Upon our hero’s triumphant return to Traverse Town, Joshua from The World Ends with You reveals that the two Traverse Towns are not parallel worlds but, most likely, dreams that are being influenced by the Keyblade wielders. It’s quite the dramatic twist, only slightly undercut by that being the explicit and stated premise of Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance. It led to a really cool double fight, where a weird, Viva Piñata looking bird-book thing jumps between the two planes. Reminds me of NieR: Automata’s amazing fight against Ko-Shi and Ro-Shi.

Honestly, the Dream Eater designs in general are great. Better than the Heartless, and blow the Nobodies and Unversed out of the water.

In other news, Maleficent is back. It seems she wants the data from Kingdom Hearts coded, because even a story as bad as coded needs to be plot relevant. She’s quickly stopped by Lea, he who would become Axel (and as I had mentioned last time, basically just is Axel). Dream Drop Distance seemed to posit itself as both the big return of Sora after his fairly long absence and the avenue by which the side characters would be brought into the fold, and I assumed the two goals would be combined. After all, Ventus and Vanitas are both in his brain, and two of the characters—Roxas and Xion—are aspects of himself. But a lot of the threads so far have come in these boring cutaways that remind me more of TV drama. We can’t not have Mickey in Episode 6, “Enter Bird-Book! Traverse Town Returns,” so we just see him in Yen Sid’s Mysterious Tower.

I can’t help but think that this kind of storytelling, one that borrows a lot from non-gaming media, feels like an inevitability here. Kingdom Hearts is a crossover based heavily on preexisting films; it’s also heavily indebted to manga and anime tropes. This isn’t a bad thing. I don’t really think it’ll ever be great at using game-specific storytelling mechanics, especially when you consider how the Mementos are just bad audio logs and diary entries from any contemporary first-person shooter. It needs other tropes to tell its story. Tropes from film and TV aren’t as exciting, just because they don’t take advantage of the interactivity, but they’re easy to understand and can help the sweeping scope of the story (the story of Kingdom Hearts in general, not this RPG-length training montage). But I’d like them to be used a bit more deftly than they are now. This is a crossover from a company that makes, to put it mildly, a lot of films and TV shows. That experience should probably be seen better here.

And this is more true than ever since Kingdom Hearts is now clearly invested in being more than just Sora’s story. He was absent for three of the past six games, and I understand that he lacks a significant role in the next two. Games like Back Cover χ apparently rely on other characters, like Aqua or player avatars, as their protagonists. Characters like Ventus and Roxas are clearly being posited as central to the tapestry, whether or not they’re on screen or even alive. The themes of Light and Darkness and Keyblades are things the games will explore with or without him. If it continues on that trajectory, this series might end up being weirdly similar to TV dramas with massive casts, like The Wire or Deep Space Nine. Rotating protagonists, multi-tiered settings, the works. Of course, that also demands some special narrative techniques (and being willing to not hang everything on the spiky-haired kid), and I’m not convinced Kingdom Hearts can step up to that demand.

April 28: Entered Country of the Musketeers (Sora and Riku), completed Country of the Musketeers (Riku and Sora).

What fun! I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a Fantasia world next, so I don’t want this praise to be too effusive in case that one makes this one look like chump change. But so far, the Country of the Musketeers is the best world in the game, and that’s no mean feat. Tron sucked, but otherwise this has been the most solid line of levels any Kingdom Hearts game has enjoyed. I think each one might be too big with all the switching you do between Sora and Riku (at the very least, the rooms could stand to be smaller), but they’re generally quite strong. But this one—based, uniquely for this franchise, on a 2004 direct to video Mickey Mouse picture and not a theatrical release—is definitely the standout so far.

It has everything! Pete gets to take center stage as the villain, without Maleficent or the broader plot holding down his enthusiasm. His sidekicks are the Beagle Boys! Sure, they’re not the good ones from the new show and come sans Ma Beagle, everyone’s favorite cartoon homage to a real life gangster played by Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale, but they’re still fun! The score is fantastic, whether it’s piped in Kingdom Hearts II music or original tracks. The level design is generally strong and imaginative, with Sora getting to explore the wilds of Fake France and Riku clambering through the backstage. And the plot made good use of the setting by having Riku’s entire quest be to rig a single deathtrap from killing Sora. He’s settling nicely into the role of the guy who does the dirty work to help out the ostensible hero, the sainted middleman of the David Simon televised drama that is Kingdom Hearts, and it’s a role that suits him.

Pete rides on a dang prop sun! He throws crap at you from behind the ship prop! It’s great.

Less positively, I must confess that I am (and perhaps have always been) struggling to care much at all about the broader conspiracy stuff. It’s this combination of bland writing and no immediate connection to what’s going on. I kinda… don’t care at all about whatever Xehanort is doing, or what evil schemes he has to stop those meddling Keyblade wielders. I just want to hang out in these worlds and hopefully see Sora get real character development for the first time since Chain of Memories. But the problem is that whatever development Sora may even get from this—not guaranteed by any means—is probably dependent on Xehanort’s scheme. It’s certainly not coming out of the connections he’s building here, all of which are insipid.

But, again, I want to emphasize the good here. And this was a good level. It’s weird how firmly Riku has moved into being the default, dominant character. He’s way ahead of Sora in level despite the fact that I try to play as both of them as much as possible, and I have no idea how he got past Sora other than that it was somewhere during Prankster’s Paradise. But that’s cool. Riku’s gonna be stuck as the sidekick for the rest of the series, probably, so this is good for him. And it’s happening in a strong slate of levels.

April 29: Entered Symphony of Sorcery (Riku and Sora), completed Symphony of Sorcery (Riku and Sora).

Not even! I managed to actually beat the level as Riku in one go, so I spent an extra drop as him just looking for treasure chests in Symphony and the Grid between Sora’s exploring the level and doing the boss fight. Now I’ve got an angry dinosaur on my team, one with Second Chance to boot.

Symphony of Sorcery is perhaps the best and most evocative name given to a world of Kingdom Hearts. It better be; it’s the world of Fantasia, something we’ve so far only seen in bits and pieces. And the quality of the name is indicative of the quality of the level. Instead of just being the KH1 fight against Chernabog or Yen Sid’s “Mysterious Tower” (both of which do appear here, too), it’s a set of gorgeous, picturesque landscapes that evoke the Disney film wonderfully. There are dark forests, torrential rains, flooded towers, giant forests, icy capes, and starry heavens. The world is fun to explore and uncover. That Square Enix and Disney seem to have made no promotional images of it for the HD remaster of Dream Drop Distance boggles the mind.

This is a picture the 3DS version uses for one of the areas you can warp to. There really aren’t any good promotional images for this world at all, even for the remaster.

Even the sound is unique. To capture the feel of Fantasia, the sound effects and diegetic audio are totally different. The “normal” noises are muffled, with music notes overlaid, and all in-battle dialogue is cut. Timeless River in Kingdom Hearts II did something similar by including fake film scratches and intentionally poor audio captures, but this goes so much further. It’s ethereal, which is a quality I would’ve expected to see more from this franchise.

However, unlike the Country of the Musketeers the Symphony does have sincere flaws, if only a few. Firstly, the entire level features a form of quicktime event based on hitting the notes in a living string of music bars, one that’s too fast and ill-explained to be fun to repeat. Two, it has bad boss fights: the Spellican for Sora and a Chernabog for Riku. The latter is, thankfully, much less taxing than he was in KH1, but both are slogs after a level that’s extremely breezy and energetic. I do also think that it would’ve been better to completely change the sound effects instead of just muffling them, but that was more of a side issue.

I think it’s the best world in the game despite that. It has lower lows than the second best world, but also higher highs. In theory, each Disney IP used by Kingdom Hearts brings in something new, whether a new art style or a new perspective. That’s in theory, mind you, but that’s the hope. And Fantasia provides that gonzo 1940’s energy, the kind of energy that leads you to making a stunningly pretty, wonderful boondoggle. For all of their money and market dominance, that’s something you can’t really get from Disney anymore. So having it here isn’t just good for nostalgia or branding or whatever, but an aspect of history that can only be momentarily captured.

I’ve also gotta be real. It’s far too close to the end of the game to actually use this criticism, but Dream Drop Distance really needs to put the kibosh on Sora forgetting that these friends he keeps seeing in the dream world aren’t the versions he knows. Him forgetting for a second time in a row that this Mickey is younger—and by extension not yet the king or someone who knows him—kinda got my anger up for a moment. I know he’s supposed to be the plucky, kinda dumb shōnen hero, but he doesn’t need to be at “needs to be told multiple times that ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ is a sad song” level of dumb.

Like, I get it. It’s peppy, and that synthesizer is really fun. But listen to the lyrics!

April 30: ???

It’s April 30th. For the first time since I started this project, I’m ending the week while ending the month. That’s kinda cool. It’s making me think, though, about whether I want to finish the game today. Doing a look to see what I need to get the secret ending, it seems pretty easy; outside of ending stuff, all I need are seven PlayStation achievements I almost certainly have already gotten. It’s also nice to end each game at the end of a chapter in this series. If I do that, then next week I can focus on a fragmentary passage and the other one, and presumably other Kingdom Hearts stuff before jumping into Kingdom Hearts III. Like Union χ. That isn’t part of the official collection, but I’m sure there’s YouTube videos of some of its stuff to give me a taste.

On the other hand, it would be easier for me to simply hold off, end it at the beginning of the week, and do the two games together. I’m pretty sure a fragmentary passage is a short game, if only because looking up the cutscenes from the other games leads me to believe it’s only a couple hours long.

…But no. I think I’m going to do it. Though for ease’s sake, I will be writing at least some of the Final Thoughts now, before doing it. Not all of it. Just, you know, some.

April 30, part 2: Completed Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance.

And like an emaciated snake who eyed a komodo dragon, I may have bitten off more than I can chew. After going through the World that Never Was as both Sora and Riku, fighting at least three very difficult bosses, and trying twice to get the secret ending (I know I’ve met the conditions for it. I did the credits mini-game and questionnaire correctly), I got done by about 8:30 PM. You know, “only” about three hours or so for one session, only taking a break right before the final boss. Trying to finish so soon was always going to be an inadequate situation, even if I wasn’t also A) watching a three hour Batman movie and B) suffering a sudden bout of bodily pain that involved vomiting chunks of food out of my nose. Yeah. The life of kings.

So while I would love to regale you with tales of my trials, my complaints about two of the final three bosses and “the real Organization XIII,” Sora’s inexplicable reveal as a Sense8, and my grand list of Spirit nicknames, I cannot. That will be for next week.

Final Thoughts: Viewed solely through the prism of being interactive art, Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance is debatably Kingdom Hearts at its most polished, balanced, and mechanically satisfying. The game is too unclear about its content, and the use of the Spirits is a bit mixed (it’s crazy that just a day or two ago, I learned that changing a Spirit’s personality can give it access to new Abilities), but it’s very satisfying in general. The magic feels powerful, the Keyblade hits hard, and movement is easier and more tactile than ever. The worlds are all quite pretty; almost all of them hit that standard of art direction that Halloween Town established. If all you want is a collection of new stomping ground for Sora, with maybe a couple of new IPs, then KH3D has you covered. Really, my biggest complaints are two of the three final boss fights, which try to replicate those terrible Ansem and Xemnas fights a bit too perfectly.

Narratively… things are complicated. This is a game with storytelling aspirations, a great interest in world building, and no ability to express them well. It wants to create a tapestry of characters, but since everyone is defined by their relationship to Sora, it ends up promoting this weird kind of monomania. That Sora is an ultimately vacuous character hurts that, but it’d be hard even if he was a titan of literary characters. This is why those HBO “it’s like the setting is its own character” shows never have just one main character around whom everyone else aggressively orbits. It’s too controlled, too tight. And when you have a villain that’s trying to do that, too, it only makes things more constricted.

Its ending takes this dichotomy to a breaking point. You’ve got a generally fantastic final level marred but a pair of truly unpleasant bosses. Its story starts playing its hand in extreme ways, positing Sora as the literal collection of people’s hopes and power in one hand and flooding us with copies of Xehanort in the other. It’s a legit swing for the fences that works in some of the smaller ways but flops in the big ones. Copy and pasting the bad guy doesn’t suddenly make him interesting, and a hunt for a bunch of McGuffins to recreate a copy of bad McGuffin that you previous used isn’t great either.

But I’m also gonna say this: Dream Drop Distance is somehow is a better Kingdom Hearts prequel than the two established Kingdom Hearts prequel. So it’s got that going for it.

Overall progress: Completed the back half of Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance.

Other games played: