[granville]

Square Enix has released the newest trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance online in high quality. This trailer was shown at the gaming even Jump Festa this past weekend. KH3D is of course a new Nintendo 3DS game and directly continues the Kingdom Hearts plot, beginning after the events of Kingdom Hearts 2. It is intended as a sort of linking game to connect the story into the future Kingdom Hearts 3. In this game, Sora and Riku take the Mark of Mastery exam under the teachings of Master Yen Sid in order to become true keyblade masters. They must prepare for the revival of the series antagonist Xehanort. During this exam, they enter the Realm of Sleep, a place where fragmented people and worlds are perpetually stuck. Sora and Riku (for reasons as yet unexplained) appear as their younger forms from the original Kingdom Hearts, though they now have new clothes (and they retain all their memories from the past journeys). Worlds confirmed thus far include a completely redesigned Traverse Town, La Cité des Cloches (Hunchback of Notre Dame), a world based on the Mickey Mouse cartoon Three Musketeers, Prankster's Paradise (vastly expanded and redesigned Pinocchio world), and even a Tron Legacy world. There are even cameos of the main characters from the DS game The World Ends With You (Neku, Shiki, Joshua, Beat, and Rhyme). New to the series is a new kind of creature called a Dream Eater. They are both your primary allies and foes. Friendly species appear as your partners during battle, while aggressive Dream Eaters with attack you similarly to the heartless, nobodies, and unversed from other KH games.

Gameplay has some new enhancements as well. First of all, you control both Sora and Riku. You switch between them during the game every few minutes. The drop bar next to your health bar is the timer that controls this switch. After it empties, your character will go to sleep and control will switch to the other character (though you can also manually switch early if you wish). Gameplay retains the system introduced in Birth By Sleep, the command deck is the menu you select skills, magic, and items from. Though new to the series is a free-flow "parkour" style of gameplay. During both combat and just normal movement, Sora and Riku can perform a great many acrobatic feats such as wall jumping and rebounding, swinging around poles and posts around the environment, grinding on railings, etc. These actions are used not only to move around environments fast, but also to perform deadly combos in combat. There are also new minigames akin to the Gummi Ship levels from the first two KH games. Dream Eaters also play a role not only as your battle partners, but as a means to perform certain special attacks.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance is releasing in Japan sometime in March of 2012. A localization to other regions has yet to be announced, but is inevitable. Expect it within a few months of the Japanese release.

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On-Going Discussion

[tigris]

Damn! I hope they keep the game with both English Dub and English Sub+Jap Dub (Like in Xenoblade).
All these localizations for english sound disgusting when localized INTO english

[granville]

I highly disagree in regards to Kingdom Hearts. With the exception of a couple of annoying characters, the English dubs are generally top quality. Disney voices are always great as they're usually official ones (even some of the original actors), and the villains for the series are generally really awesome. I'm impressed with every voice of Xehanort they've gotten, most recently Leonard Nimoy as the old Master Xehanort from BBS. Jesse McCartney is great as Roxas and Ven, Haley Joel Osment has really gotten better and better as Sora (and was awesome as a certain antagonist), and David Gallagher is great as always for Riku. They usually go out of their way to get great voice actors for the KH characters. Even some top paid actors like Christopher Lee are used. I actually like them a lot better than the Japanese voices in general.

Only a few bad ones, none of them are even major characters. Aerith from KH2 was probably the worst i can think of.

Anyways, sorry but i intended to lock this and forgot. We're continuing the topic at the On-Going Discussion link in the top post. So go there to discuss.