A nice little surprise dropped during the June 21 Nintendo Direct, when it was announced that the demo for Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] was available for download on the US Nintendo 3DS eShop. Here’s my first impression based on what the demo has to offer.

The demo is very short, but it does what it needs to do and gives you a taste of what’s to come. Sora awakens in Traverse Town, and Riku is nowhere to be seen. He meets Neku from The World Ends With You before encountering Heartless. There is no clear objective or reason behind why Sora is in Traverse Town. You simply grasp that there are Heartless here and that you need to fight them. After battling with the Heartless in the first area, you’ll engage a boss in the second area. The end of the boss fight marks the end of the demo.

Dream Eaters, special allies in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], feel much like part of a different take on the summon system from previous installments. They aren’t actual characters in the storyline, but they accompany you through your adventure and each have their own set of abilities. The demo was very limited in that they only assisted you in combat.

The Flowmotion action system had me very excited; it gives your surroundings much more relevance during combat. I was spinning around lamp posts, running and jumping off walls, and performing many other acts that infused the game with even more action. As for the Reality Shift system, while different worlds will provide different Reality Shifts, Traverse Town presented special barrels that you could slingshot and damage enemies in a wide radius.

The demo for Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] was awesome, to the say the least, and I eagerly await the release of the full game on July 31 in North America. κ