Kingdom Hearts 3D/YMMV

• Angst? What Angst?: At the end of the story, Riku passes the exam and is recognized as a Keyblade Master. Sora failed the exam when darkness seeped into his heart but he remained optimistic and set out soon after to train before he takes the exam again.
• Awesome Music:
  • The new version of "Dearly Beloved."
  • The Kingdom Hearts remix of "Twister."
• Broken Base: Lea getting a Keyblade and the revelation that Nobodys can grow hearts have had mixed reactions.
  • The whole game breaks the base, mainly due to amping up the Mind Screw and Kudzu Plot like never before. This is either seen as a turn-off or an attraction. Also, because it generated so much hype prior to release, it has the probelms of having dizzying expectations to live up to, and the base is further broken as it matches some while fails to with others.
  • The new remix of "Calling" is pretty Love It or Hate It, mainly because of the vocals compared to the original.
  • The introduction of time travel (with the exception of Timeless River in KHII) has ruffled more than a few feathers.
• Complete Monster: Hey look, it's Judge Claude Frollo.
  • The sheer degree to which Xehanort has proven himself to be a bastard of the HIGHEST order in 3D is something to behold. What we knew of his actions before this game, nothing he did compares to the extent of his evil in this game.
• Continuity Lock Out: An attempted aversion for once. As part of the whole "10th anniversary" aspect of the game, the announced "Memoirs" feature proves Nomura's promise to "attract a new generations of fans to the series" to be true.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Wandanyan, the fat and doglike Dream Eater.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This correctly predicted the Counterpart Comparison between Kingdom Hearts characters and their TWEWY expies a long time before they were confirmed to appear in the same game. Lampshaded in the commentary. All of this is coincidental, as the trope demands.
  • Not to mention The Sceptre And The Kingdom, predating this game by nearly ten years. Again, it's been a coincidence.
  • Also, remember that music when you were at the Awakening stages at the start of the first Kingdom Hearts? It's called "Dive Into The Heart", right? And that's exactly what Riku does, going to that same place, near the end of the game.
    • It gets even better. Roxas, Xion, and Ventus ask Riku the same questions that Sora got asked in his Awakening from the original Kingdom Hearts, making the Awakening come full circle.
  • Haley Joel Osment, the voice of Sora, also played David in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. In this game he finally finds the Blue Fairy.
• Ho Yay: Of the accidentally implied kind. When Riku first arrives at Traverse Town, the cutscene with his first meeting with Joshua ends with Riku approaching Joshua and saying "I'll help you" while the camera pans up in order to show the animation for the new Traverse Town logo. It wouldn't be so bad by itself, but sadly said animation begins with fireworks. Add Joshua's perceived "Ambiguously Gay" status from the game he's from and you get the picture.
  • In addition, his English voice actor does not help this situation. At all.
• I Knew It!: People were expecting The Hunchback of Notre Dame to get a world sooner or later, or for the TWEWY gang to make an appearance.
  • We also knew that Pinocchio would get a world sooner or later. Heck, we knew it in 358/2 Days.
  • Fans knew a world for Tron: Legacy was coming due to the popularity of the Space Paranoids level as well as the movie's popularity in Japan. Let's just hope the light-cycles get an overhaul if it returns.
  • The "symbolicness" of the cover, a lot of fans expected Riku to be the true hero of the story.
• Jerkass Woobie: Revelations in this game make the Organization, save for Xemnas and Xigbar, even more sympathetic.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many former fans and every fan who hates the Kudzu Plot of the series are only playing this game for the The World Ends With You characters. Or if they're fans of the featured Disney movies.
• Moe: Rhyme, just like in her game of origin. Possibly more so.
• Narm: Riku's Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner to Anti-Black Coat.

Riku: "If you're a nightmare... I'll eat you whole!"

• • In La Cité Des Cloches, with the exception of the Dream Eater boss Bullet Gargoyle - as well as Sora himself - thrown in for good measure, the iconic "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" scene made it into the game. And it's just as awesome as it has always been... except for the fact that there's literally nobody else in there aside from Quasimodo, Frollo, and Esmeralda. No French townspeople, just them. And Quasimodo yells "Sanctuary!" only once.
• Ruined FOREVER: The Three Musketeers is getting a world. One half of the fandom likes this (see the ATFR subpage). The other half was convinced they're running out of ideas. Very similar reaction with Mickey also being present in the Fantasia world.
  • Then again, the Disney Animated Canon has many settings that have never been re-envisioned in the KH series, not to mention that there's currently no Pixar movie represented in any game. In other words: have no fears, we've got stories for years!
  • Some new plot developments, such as Lea getting a Keyblade, time travel, or many of the characters being connected to either Sora or Xehanort. Though the last two were before this game, this game seems to be capitalizing on that.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Mentioned in Nintendo Power's demo run of the game. The Drop Gauge allows you to switch between Riku and Sora as you please, but it steadily drops whilst playing, and when it's empty, you immediately switch to the other character...even if you're in the middle of a battle. Nomura said it was this way in order to make sure the player gets both stories without breaking it up just like in Birth By Sleep.
  • It can, and will, also Drop your character during boss battles.
  • Though there is a small bit of relief here: If you lose all your health in battle, when you respawn, the Drop gauge will have bounced backward a fair bit.
  • Players can also find and purchase items that keep the meter full.
    • Sure doesn't help that the meter drops while you're shopping. Though, it doesn't switch you over until exit out.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Traverse In Trance is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and fitting a "sleeping" version of the already relaxing Traverse Town theme.
• That One Boss: Young Master Xehanort looks like he's going to be this for a lot of players. He's fast, hits hard, has a lot of HP and can rewind time to the beginning of the battle when he hits 0 HP. The only way to defeat him is to use a Reality Shift on the clock that appears when he rewinds time and destroy it from the inside; however, you still have to keep him at bay whilst doing this, and the clock has as much HP as he does. If you don't do it in time, he simply rewinds time to the beginning of the battle and you have to start over again. His nickname of Trollanort is more than deserved.
• Ugly Cute: To an extent with the Dream Eaters; Nomura designed them to be appealing to the player, but not in the conventional sense of "cute and cuddly." The result is creatures like Wandanyan, who are decidedly odd-looking but still endearing in a way.
• Uncanny Valley: The Grid had Sam, Flynn, and Quorra from Tron: Legacy. The faces are so realistic it's really creepy, especially when they share a shot with Riku and Sora who have kept their stylized faces. It's comparable to the Pirates of the Caribbean situation in the second game.