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_ On a very Japanese portable console, another very Japanese game was released. Here, boys, more like girls, beat the nondescript monsters-yield swords in the form of door keys. And then Guphi and Donald Duck suddenly appear in the frame. They, like Mickey Mouse with the rest of the heroes Disney , accompany players in Kingdom Hearts for the seventh time for. At the same time,DROP DISTANCE -Only a preface to Kingdom Hearts 3, which should announce in the next year or two.

If you don’t understand anything now, then this is not scary – then it will only be worse.

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I have such a key

The next crossover of the universes Disney and Square Enix Surprising that heroes from Final Fantasy There is almost no here. Instead of them in Dream Drop Distance, characters from niche RPG participate The World ends with you for Nintendo DS, the most original game in the genre in many, many years. Her heroes are unlikely to surprise anyone: a depressed teenager, a lively girl, a young man with a brazen grin-in a word, all anime-stamps on the spot. However, there are not much required from the statists – all the same, the most interesting thing happens with the main characters, and Rick.

► Many opponents in Kingdom Hearts resemble anything but not enemies.

Together, they travel along parallel measurements, where they awaken the sleeping worlds captured by “Dream Eaters), and at the same time a test is held, the essence of which is to establish whether the Padavans are worthy of become knights of the kibilid (sword in the form of the key). Just do not ask what all this means; The authors are not even trying to explain what is happening to the player: if you do not remember by heart the content of the previous six parts, you are unlikely to be able to understand the plot of Kingdom Hearts 3d. Therefore, let's get off the fact that there are good characters – Sora and Rick, for which we play alternately – and is a bad, evil gray -haired zeanort, who has either a bifurcation or a studies of personality. Disney heroes do not fit into this intricate scheme. They are just too different: for every tentacle of Ursula it is on the musketeer, and for each quasimodo – Pinocchio.

► Only in Kingdom Hearts can you see reflective Pinocchio. And he is not the most miserable character in the game.

In Dream Drop Distance, we literally jump from one world to another: in the lower right corner of the screen there is an indicator of the charge, which, no matter how much it slow down, is depleted and transfer it to another dimension to another character. So that this happens according to your will, you need not to linger at the levels and independently go to other worlds at the points of conservation. Dreyfuya from one Disney attraction to another, the game is gradually selected for the finale. And on the way, we meet its main pride – a stylistically impeccable “throne”, surprisingly great fit into this whole fantasy circus.

How they created a series of Kingdom Hearts

[[Bullet]] It’s scary to think, but if Sinji Hasimoto once preferred a staircase of the elevator, then Kingdom Hearts could never appear.

The story of the creation of Kingdom Hearts began with a conversation in a stuffy elevator – this is how most stories begin, where in the end all involved earn many millions of dollars. By happy chance, the offices of Square and the Japanese branch of Disney were in the same building, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that the producer Shinji Hasimoto Once I met my colleague from a cartoon studio in the elevator and talked with him.

It is not known who exactly dropped the idea (perhaps it was just a joke), but it turned out that the leaders of one company lit up first, then another, and by the end of 2000 the development of the first part of Kingdom Hearts began. Games in a unique (and, frankly, rather delusional) universe, where the characters of Disney and Square are incomprehensible in an incomprehensible way.

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Even before the unification with Enix Square, she performed very powerfully at the new, sixth generation of consoles: Final Fantasy X conquered the players and brought a bunch of money that she had to come in handy – the company was going through the best of time, not having time to recover from the failure of the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits with. The success of the Japanese strengthened the faith of Disney into the idea of ​​a crossover. You need to understand that the corporation did not go to the Union from a good life. The old characters of the cartoons lacked novelty, and with the unprecedented increase in the popularity of the video game, to come up with another way to return the relevance of Mickey Mouse and his friends (though there were not so many in the first part of the main character, but it was corrected in the following games in the series).

The leading game designer was appointed Tetsui Nomur. It is to him that we owe to the fact that the characters of the Square games have always been so much similar to each other. He was responsible for all aspects of the development of Kingdom Hearts, and painted the main characters himself, so it is not at all surprising that the faces of Sora and Rick (not to be confused with Ricku from FFX) are almost the same. At first, Nomura did not quite understand what to do: on the one hand, he now worked for a wider audience, consisting mainly of children, on the other, he wanted to hold the bar of the quality of his previous games. When the development has already begun, the creator of Final Fantasy prompted him the right path Hironobo Sakaguti, then still working in the studio. He advised Nomura not to simplify the game – children do not like when they are treated as small, they always want to seem adults.

Big bang

[[Bullet]] Tetsui Nomur.

After the Nomura team decided on the concept, another difficult question arose: how to explain the meeting of the heroes of such different universes? Oddly enough, this was no problem. Nomura himself later wondered how easily Disney heroes were woven into serious stories and at the same time look more adequate than some characters from Final Fantasy.

The latter was most difficult. Nomura refused to work with the heroes that he was not invented by himself (the game designer changed his decision only to the second part). They argued about the inclusion of each character for a long time, because if everything was clear with the most popular heroes of Disney, then the personal factor had the meaning in choosing the “relatives” – each team member had their own favorites, and could not agree for a long time.

Given this dilemma of the developers, it is surprising that in the end none of the characters of the FF went beyond the usual role. True, in order to somehow connect all the familiar characters, I had to add new.

[[Bullet]] The main merit of Nomura as a designer – KH characters are recognized unmistakably.

Such a solution created many problems with the perception of the game that are most obvious in Dream Drop Distance. Explain what is happening in the world Kingdom Hearts is not so easy. Understanding is complicated by the illogicality of individual storylines, an amazing argo of fans and the reluctance of developers to give answers to questions. Nomura used an ancient technique that Jay Abrams loves so much: if you want your game (book, film, series) to discuss for many years, explain only obvious things, leave plot holes and less care about the coherence of the narrative.

The development was close to completion, Disney launched a large -scale advertising campaign and invited famous actors to voice the characters of the game. Kingdom Hearts turned out to be contradictory – it seems like it was a children's game about how a little boy destroys the gigantic key of evil bubbles from the world of Disney, but the approach to history was there as in adults, large RPGs.

Kingdom Hearts diverged 5.6 million copies. It is still unknown what, in the end, the game was sold-competent marketing, Donald Duck or a good reputation of Square (do not forget that the Final Fantasy at that time diverged even in the West, where no one really loved games in anime stylism).

Minimization

For Nomura, such a success turned out to be unexpected. At the end of the first Kingdom Hearts, he only hinted at the continuation, naively believing that the game would repel the cost of developing. But when it was time to make a sequel, the game designer was too lazy to explain some points from the first part, and he decided to make a spin-off. Chain of Memories For Game Boy Advance was supposed to become a bridge between the original and the second part. Everything would be fine, but this isometric card game (!) almost did not answer old questions, but only added new. However, sales were good, and Square demolished the roof. After the release of the second license plate came out Kingdom Hearts: Coded For phones (in Japan, mobile games have become serious things long before Apple expansion), then spin-off for DS with one of the most strange subtitles in the history 358/2 days , PSP-conjure to the first part Birth by Sleep And finally, Dream Drop Distance – and this is not counting reprints and remakes. Each game added something new, but the series clearly fell into a stupor.

The third extra

[[Bullet]] Nomura next to the poster of the main game of his career.

The ten -year anniversary of Kingdom Hearts Nomura met with promises that the next in the series will certainly be a third part. According to rumors, the game was supposed to reach WII, but it did not work out – now the game is made for more powerful consoles. According to Nomura, take up Kingdom Hearts 3 His team interfered Final Fantasy Versus XIII , Although given that the direct development of the game began only last year, this was hardly the main reason. The designer himself mentioned that he had no idea how to translate the game into HD, but now it seems like he knew.

Now Square Enix has a crisis of ideas, and in the third part it will be completely clear what it is connected with. It would never occur to anyone to criticize the company for making money in such a straightforward way – releasing endless sequels under a license. But you can do this in different ways. Previously, Square was able to observe decency, but after a pile of mediocre spin-offs, the Japanese is not quite believed. We hope that Kingdom Hearts 3 will put the series on the feet.

Newton sat down

The basic gameplay Kingdom Hearts is not much different from the usual Japanese action/RPG. We run by levels, randomly press the attack button, select spells in the menu and sometimes meet with bosses. But so many different elements have been added to this cultural program that the head goes around. A lot of tutorials at the beginning of the game still does not help to figure out how the new Kingdom Hearts works. The developers threw a lot of ideas into one heap: here the Flow system is an analogue of acrobatics from Assassin’s Creed , and playing with a slot in style Angry Birds , and the recruitment of monsters, as in some Japanese RPG, and much more.

The most interesting things are with the "Dream Eaters". Some of them, having suffered a defeat in battle, go over to the player, helping to learn new abilities. Interaction with tamed monsters resembles a Nintendo classic about dogs that you need to scratch behind the ear of the stylus-only here are still augmented reality cards (they are supplied with the game).

In many ways, Drop Distance repeats the errors of the cited The World ends with you – She was also crowded with mechanics, some of which were clearly superfluous. But, unlike Twewy, Kingdom Hearts 3D needs to use all available opportunities to get to the end.

► Dialogs occupy a decent part of the game, but you can’t call them very substantial – everything holds on a fan service.

stairway to Heaven

Dream Drop Distance once again proves that the Japanese are very fond of their portable consoles https://sister-site.org/bass-win-casino/. How else to explain the fact that the budget of this ordinary spin-off is clearly not inferior to two full parts for PS2? In Square Enix, they thoroughly worked on the voice acting of the characters and the screensavers (one of them, according to the authors, the longest in the series), recorded an excellent and diverse soundtrack and gave out perfect technical execution. DREM Drop Distance not only looks great (by the standards of the console), but also surprises with a cool 3D effect, one of the best among games in general. But … everything spoils the camera: she lives her own life and loves to show the wall at the most tense moments. To cope with her, you have to play with Circle Pad Pro (a 3DS stand with a second analogue, which, recall, is sold separately and costs decent money), and this deprives the game of any portable. Although it is already not entirely clear why to include it in the subway or bus. DREM Drop Distance has a scope of the game with a home console, you can play short sessions, but in this case you can hardly keep track of the development of the plot.

► Powerful attacks that the tsora conducts amazing in 3D.

* * *

For the game, in which there is Guphi, Kingdom Hearts is too confusing, but this is its charm: who said that the everal dog cannot be one of the heroes of the epic (and intentionally meaningless) story? If you know what the XIII organization is, then you hardly need to explain something and advise. Well, those owners of 3DS, who are not familiar with the Kingdom Hearts series, Dream Drop Distance will seem very expensive, beautiful and large -scale, but wild and incomprehensible game.

Rehibition – no

Cool plot – no

Originality – no

Easy to master – no

Gameplay: 7

Graphics: 8

Sound and music: 8

Interface and management: 6

Waited? Kingdom Hearts 3D – a game exclusively for its. She will almost certainly appeal to the fans of the series, but the newcomer is unlikely to understand anything in the vicissitudes of the plot.

Mania rating: 7.5