It's got some neat ideas and worlds, but it also has a lot of really rough aspects that feel trickled down from earlier games. Going from the command deck in Birth by Sleep, which I thought was fine, to this was kind of weird in my opinion. That coupled with the main gameplay mechanic being a weird pokemon/smt/ buddy sim, this felt like the kingdom hearts where I really stopped thinking about combat and just mashed. Birth by Sleep using the command deck to make themed decks that turn into different command styles is a pretty fun feature. Here its just kinda slapped in with little payoff and any duplicate spells you get go into a creature creation process I didn't pay much attention to and didn't feel too much of a need to do so playing on normal mode. Also flowmotion is a super fun to use mechanic, too bad it almost feels like it just shits on any attempt at level design since you can just do stuff like infinite wall jump up to high up locations and disregard any rails or other platforms leading up to it. It was incredibly funny getting glide 80% of the way in despite the fact there's so little need for it when you just have the most insanely implemented movement mechanic in kingdom hearts right from the first world.
Story wise its still that kingdom hearts brand stupid-fun-enjoyable-cheesy amalgam the other games are but this game did make me have an epiphany. I no longer care about any prospects of Sora getting into smash. I want Riku instead that guy's pretty cool. Really glad this game gives you the chance to play as him in a game that isn't Re:CoM. (sidenote: it didn't take me until I was almost done finishing this review that I remembered twewy characters were in this, really odd they're here for like <10% of the game ngl)
Also a lot of the post-game completion just seems really redundant. Probably one of the easier games to 100% skill wise but takes a lot of time with regards to how skills work, special portal drop chances, buddy raising, etc.
Lastly, fuck flick rush.
It's still a pretty enjoyable time with some good fan service thrown about, but a lot of the new mechanics charm wore off after the first few worlds or so, leaving me kinda disappointed.

this would be 5 stars if it weren't for some of the issues i have with the gameplay. i really love the concept of ddd, but there was a lot i didn't like and, well, it all had to do with gameplay. the grid is the worst kingdom hearts world literally ever, and honestly a lot of the worlds were lacking besides traverse town, symphony of sorcery, and of course twtnw. dive sequences sucked. i hated a lot of the bosses, too. this kind of takes away from replayability, but upon beating the game, i loved it. loved the ending, loved playable riku, loved the music especially. i'm very fond of this game looking back on it, but wasn't always while playing.

Now this... this is a good Kingdom Hearts game. Right away, you're given a whole host of movement abilities and told to go fucking nuts. The command deck from Birth by Sleep is back, only without the insane tedium of the melding system. It's just find a cool new command, equip it, and fuck shit up. The game is always pushing you to move faster, fight faster, and all the while get better at dodging and planning your moves around a boss's attack patterns. Complex, yet still tied to that simple concept of slashy, satisfying combat that made Kingdom Hearts 1 so immediately lovable. In fact, aside from the titan that is KH1, this has to be the best game in the series by a landslide.