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Flashbacks appear from time to time to flesh out the story. Although it’d be nice if the story followed chronological order every now and again…

After the battle, you’ll unlock a scene Memento, or Flashback, so let’s watch.

Flashback: The Mark of Mastery Exam

At Yen Sid’s tower in Twilight Town, we learn that Xehanort is also a Keyblade Master. He sought for why there was power in the heart and thought that the Keyblade War held the answer. Thusly, he renounced his mastery of the Keyblade for the path of the seeker.

His seeking has led to many clashes with other Keyblade wielders not unlike Sora, Riku, and Mickey. And, of course, he’ll fight us again. We need to be prepared; Sora and Riku need to take the Mark of Mastery exam to prove themselves true Keyblade Masters, despite what they really think of themselves:

Sora thinks he and Riku are Masters, given what he’s gone through, but Riku thinks different because of having walked the path of darkness. Riku believes he needs to be tested, so Sora decides to join in to “pass with flying colors”. And then their examination was to begin.

Dive Mode

Get used to diving; you need to do it to enter all the various sleeping worlds.

After watching the scene, or not if you didn’t, you’ll enter Dive Mode. Dive Mode is akin to the Gummi Ship minigames of Kingdom Hearts I and II. You must meet certain goals in the Dive to the next world to be able to find the goal ring, which takes you to the next world.

During this mode, use the A Button to attack things that have a cursor on them that is yellow, and, if you find a boss, you’ll need to smack their weak points that flash.

Also during the Dive, use B to make a skydiving X to slow down, and use the Y Button to dodge swiftly. You’ll also find magic prizes on occasion, which can let you use X to do a special magic attack.

Here, you’ll need to pick up 600 of those star-shaped prize points. Simply go through the rings and attack anything that gets in your way.

Traverse Town

After the Dive, Sora awakens in Traverse Town, the first world other than his own he visited on his first journey. It was where he met Donald and Goofy and others that helped out: Leon, Yuffie, Cid, Aerith, and others. He also became rather acquainted with what the Keyblade is there.

Sora notices his surroundings, and also notices the change in his clothing, which is akin to his Valor Form in Kingdom Hearts II. He also notices that Riku is nowhere nearby and starts shouting, only to be interrupted by an unknown kid. This kid is some kind of Player in some kind of Game.

Sora offers to help to no avail, pretty much. You’ll end up watching this kid use Flowmotion to leave. And you get a Memento/Tutorial on it.

Memento: Flowmotion Tutorial

Flowmotion is a skill that basically makes it easier to move around. To use it, first you’ll need to press Y while moving towards a wall or pole; if you hit it, you’ll activate Flowmotion. Flowmotion allows more powerful attacks with the A Button, higher jumps with B, and high speed with Y.

Roll into the nearby lamppost and press Y to get yourself a boost of speed. Fly around like a maniac for a while until you land.

After you land, you’ll learn that some things can activate Flowmotion by merely landing on them, such as the rail north of the two lampposts. Try it!

Traverse Town

After the Flowmotion tutorial, go to the northern portion of the area however you wish. There, you’ll find a Save Point (the glowing green circle). By walking into these, your HP is fully restored. If you press A while there, you will be able to Save and, later on, use the World Map or switch between Sora and Riku.

I suggest saving, then head north to the next area. As you enter, you’ll get a tutorial on Reality Shift.

Memento: Reality Shift Tutorial

Each world has its own Reality Shift; in this one it’s Slingshot.

Reality Shift, as one might guess, allows them to bend the rules of the world. In each world, it will work differently. In Traverse Town, you’ll find some star-marked barrels to use first.

When there is a pink targeting cursor on something, and some down-pointing arrowheads appear on the Touch Screen, you can use A and X, or slide down on the Touch Screen, to trigger the Reality Shift. The action then moves down onto the Touch Screen.

Here, you’ll be using the Slingshot Reality Shift. After triggering the shift via the barrels, touch the thing you were targeting, then slide back and aim. Practice it.

You’ll then learn that the conditions to make the marker appear may differ from the just-used walk-up-to-it method. For most enemies, for example, you may need to deal a lot of constant damage.

That ends this tutorial.

Traverse Town

After the tutorial, practice some more on the barrels if you want. Once you are done, go north of the area in front of the fountain for a scene. The unknown kid comes up, as well as some Dream Eaters. Apparently, you’ll have to fight them.

The kid takes some with his Spirit (friendly Dream Eater) before finally telling you his name: Neku Sakuraba. Okay, time to battle? Well, time to learn about Flowmotion combat.

Memento: Flowmotion Combat Tutorial

As one would guess, moving around real quick has its use in fighting stuff as well. By activating Flowmotion by rolling into a wall (or a pole), you’ll be given some other attack commands, which can differ depending upon the Flowmotion used.

In this tutorial, defeat all of the nearby Dream Eaters by rolling into the wall and using your attack. You can just take them on as you would a normal enemy with Attack and the Command Deck, if you wish.

More ways to take out bad guys is always awesome.

After this, you’ll learn that rolling into enemies may also trigger your Flowmotion. If you roll into a large enemy, you can use the A Button to do a Flowmotion throw. Do this with the two big Kooma Pandas that appear, or batter them to death if you prefer.

If you’ve done every tutorial up to this point, you’ll also Level Up and increase your Strength . Woo. That ends this tutorial.

Traverse Town

Afterwards, Sora notices the Spirit, or friendly Dream Eater, accompanying Neku. You’ll be asked if you can manage them and you’ll get a Flashback on the same subject of Dream Eaters.

Flashback: Dream Eaters

Here, Yen Sid talks about needing extra help if we are to get rid of Xehanort: the individuals mentioned in his letter. We need to lead them into our world out of the sleeping world. To do this, we must unlock the seven Sleeping Keyholes and retrieve a great power.

Every world is walled off nowadays, so interworld travel is impossible. But the worlds with the Sleeping Keyholes are even harder to reach - not even the Heartless can get there.

Why? They are in a limbo between darkness and light; on your first journey, you brought many worlds back into the light, and some were just left halfway returned. These are the sleeping worlds.

The darkness is still present in these worlds in an alternate form. There are Dream Eaters, which have two varieties. The Nightmares which ingest happy dreams, and the Spirits that get rid of the Nightmares. Obviously, we are to defeat the former and befriend the latter. (Which won’t be hard if they’re as cute as that Meow Wow.)

The Dream Eaters will guide us to the Keyholes at the heart of each world, much as the Heartless did.

Creating and Nurturing Spirits Tutorial

It’s dangerous to go alone in these unknown lands, but luckily you’ve got Spirits to help you!

After that, you’ll get a Glossary entry on the Heartless, as well as a Meow Wow recipe .

We’ll then end up learning about the Spirits more thoroughly out of a memento. Dream Pieces may come when you defeat the Nightmares; these are able to be pieced together to create good-natured Spirits, our allies. Begin by selecting Spirits in the menu so we can learn some.

Afterwards, you’ll enter an augmented-reality mode with the outer cameras on the 3DS. Ignore this for a bit so we can make a Spirit. Press X to open the menu and opt to create a spirit.

You’ll then learn Spirits can be made via a recipe, where all materials are needed in minimum or greater quantities before you begin, or from scratch, which can make unexpected Spirits.

Once you’ve decided on which spirit to make, you can also give it a Deck Command from your stock to raise its stats, and you can also give it a meaningful name, much like you would a Pokémon.

Begin by selecting the only recipe we have: the Meow Wow recipe. Afterwards, you are to choose how much of what material to hand over. Note that handing over more items than needed can raise its level or rank, thereby making it better.

Go ahead and give it all of the materials you have and a Deck Command. I chose a Potion for the HP boost and the fact I had plenty of ’em.

Afterwards, give it a name or go with the default Meow Wow. You’ll then look at it in the AR mode. You’ll learn that giving them some love, much as you would a pet, raises their Affinity and can end up rewarding you.

You can touch the Spirit’s shadow on the Touch Screen to raise its Affinity, EXP., or make it happier in general. You can also use Training Toys to play with them.

Go ahead and rub on the Meow Wow for a bit. Aww…

Bonding with Spirits in this way, or battling alongside them, earns you some Link Points, or LP, which is used on the Ability Link board to unlock new commands and abilities.

Once prompted, press X and tap Ability Link. Here, at the Ability Link board, you’ll find a linear track which you progress across by gaining LP. Select the next ability, Link Critical, to get a minor note on abilities.

They can be learned, then activated, to boost stats or unlock moves. Just note that any stat-boosting abilities need the Spirit to be in the party.

Speaking of Link Critical, it powers up your moves if your Attack and a Spirit’s attack hit the same enemy, and also boosts the Link Gauge.

Traverse Town

After regaining control, go along the path in front of you down an alley. Beat up some enemies on the way as you continue into the Third District.

There, you’ll meet up with Neku. Apparently, someone wanted Sora brought to someone - this SOMEONE is wearing a black coat! Organization XIII? Suddenly, the man jumps towards Sora, and Neku tries to protect him. As Sora tries to stop Neku, he suddenly feels sleepy and groggy…

Riku arrives where Sora once was in Traverse Town before falling asleep, unable to find Sora much like Sora could not earlier.

As he remarks on how he got here, another kid, Joshua, speaks to him about Portals - gateways between worlds. Joshua continues speaking on how that this world is kinda split in two identical copies, with Portals connecting them.

Joshua then employs Riku to run an errand for him. He’s looking for someone named Rhyme, the key to the Portal to the other side. Maybe they’ll even find Sora there… After hearing that, Riku quickly changes his mind and opts to find Rhyme.

You’ll quickly learn about Portals afterwards. Access a Portal to face-off or team up with Spirits in other worlds. Touch a Portal on the Touch Screen when a dialogue box pops up about one. Each Portal has a difficulty level of one to five stars, as well, to gauge how hard it is.

Once you regain control, first go to the eastern part of the area near the fire-marked door to find a chest; open it for some Confetti Candy . After that, go to the northern ledge. Don’t go to the next area; instead, use the Portal on the southeastern corner of the ledge to borrow some Spirits.

Then head north in the Second District. As you enter, Riku ponders on why the Nightmares never fight Joshua - it is because he isn’t a dreamer, unlike Riku and Sora. After the scene, you’ll get the Komory Bat Recipe . Create it like you did before.

Afterwards, some grammatically-impaired guy named Beat comes up, claiming he is going to find Rhyme with the help of a man in a black coat. Obviously, as Joshua said, he’s “made a friend of our enemy”. Then we learn about link with spirits in a memento.

Memento: Linking with Spirits

Basically you need to bash the enemy a bit with your Spirit before you can use its real power.

Sora and Riku will each be able to Link with Spirits in a unique way. Sora will use Link Attacks to team up with Spirits and attack the enemy.

Meanwhile, Riku uses Link Styles, which has Riku absorb his Spirits’ power to boost his combo power briefly. Either way, you’ll end up boosting a Spirit’s Link Gauge, and, once full, it’ll briefly hand over its power.

Once linked, the Link Gauge will refill as the Spirit’s attack hit the enemy. But you need to link first! Once you’re able to, touch the Spirit’s icon on the Touch Screen, or press L + R with X (top one) or B (bottom one). You can also touch the Dream Eater emblem or use L + R + A to link with both.

In the battle, attack the enemies, using a link attack when possible.

Traverse Town

As Beat gives up in the following scene, with Riku sympathizing with him, he, like Sora before him, suddenly gets sleepy…

You’ll also unlock another Flashback. Let’s watch.

Flashback: The Keyblade War

Long ago, in the time of the most fantasical tales, the World was filled only with light. This was a gift believed to result from Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts was protected by its counterpart, the X-blade - it is pronounced Keyblade - so no one could access it.

(I do not really comprehend the naming at ALL. “Key” and “X” (the Greek letter “chi”) sound just the same. It makes no sense at all.)

Eventually, though, want for the light spread across the land. This greed led to the creation of darkness. Eventually, warriors of light crafted Keyblades in the image of the original to help in the war for Kingdom Hearts. This was the Keyblade War.

As a result, all light except the smallest bit of light in the hearts of children was extinguished from the world. Because of this light, the one big World was split into many smaller worlds.

The original X-blade did not survive the fight. It was made of both darkness and light, and shattered into twenty pieces. Seven were of light (good luck), and thirteen were darkness (bad luck).

The true Kingdom Hearts was swallowed by darkness and never seen again; as such, all worlds have at least a small bit of darkness. For this reason, the Keyblade was turned to DEFEND the light.

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Square Enix
  • Platforms,
    3DS
  • Genre
    Action RPG
  • Guide Release
    19 June 2014
  • Last Updated
    7 December 2020
  • Guide Author
    Daniel Chaviers

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How to handle yourself in the myriad (and tourist-unfriendly) sleeping worlds with a complete walkthrough of the main story, from both Sora and Riku’s perspective. Plus extensive listings and tips to help you complete all the Reports, grab all the trophies and generally feel good about yourself. Nope, you’re not dreaming; it’s all in here!

Also Inside Our Detailed Strategy Guide:

  • A summary of the overarching Kingdom Hearts storyline so far.
  • Dozens of high quality screenshots to augment your reading experience.
  • The lowdown on the secret (and tough-as-nails) post-game boss.
  • Detailed listings of all the collectable items, commands and keyblades.
  • How to synthesise all of the friendly Spirits and what abilities they provide.
  • The requirements for all the trophies and tips on how to obtain them.
  • All you need to know about the Flick Rush tournaments.

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