Have you played Birth by Sleep?

Its pretty much identical. You equip commands to your list, and those show up when in battle. Once you use an attack or magic command, they go on cooldown and it automatically goes to the next on the list.

If you have potions equipped, then they show up as a command. So if you dont want that, then unequip your potions.

At the moment, I am fumbling through several of the games. I have just gotten the intro movies to play, and stop the game from freezing when I resize the window -- but that comes by selecting "proton experimental", which is probably not a good long-term solution (that sounds like a compatibility layer that will change at random).

I have not gotten past the first save point in anything yet.

If you're using a playstation style controller the d-pad up/down cycle command list options (not sure on mouse/key but i would guess mouse wheel?). Its not the most intuitive so I suggest equipping two cure spells and having them somewhat apart in the list. You get access to cure from the shop after the first boss so just buy two or level your sheep's link board a bit. Potions are pretty worthless for most of the game.

The camera can be a bit wonky as the lock on breaks with distance and enemies have a habit of escaping it especially on bosses. I frequently find myself dodgerolling into a wall so that flowmotion attacks take me to the nearest enemy. They have a long range and auto aim. Works great on most bosses.

In my opinion the control delay caused by certain actions (like flow motion) does not mix well with how aggressive and juggle happy a lot of the enemies and bosses are. If you havent gotten to the second traverse town visit after you clear the first 3 worlds I STRONGLY recommend taking the time to get second chance and once more. You'll fight a boss gauntlet in this world in a very small arena with tons of flowmotion triggering poles and walls that make it super annoying to dodge enemy attacks and heal because of the long delay between flow motion and action commands. I am very good at kingdom hearts combat and I found myself rage quitting, unequipping all of the flowmotion abilities, and then doing this after like 8 deaths to the second boss due to rolling into FM triggers, this was on standard mode.

This game is known to be more annoying and cheap than others. Some enemies have untelegraphed attacks that will leave you stunlocked or outright unable to act for 5-10 seconds at a time (I'm looking at you sleep sheep). Nothing like drain driving into a group of sheep from 20 feet away only for them to instantly and unavoidably cast sleep on you 5 times in a row before you touch the ground, each hit adding 0.3x to the drop meter and sending you flying back into the air. Learn these enemies and how to avoid these attacks and just accept that you'll be able to grab a snack while the enemies juggle a 1hp sora for a few minutes (once more is a blessing).

At the same time though if you take the time to learn some tricks you'll be a god by the end of the game. At least until the final boss reminds you of your mortality.

Originally posted by Vallard:

If you're using a playstation style controller the d-pad up/down cycle command list options (not sure on mouse/key but i would guess mouse wheel?). Its not the most intuitive so I suggest equipping two cure spells and having them somewhat apart in the list. You get access to cure from the shop after the first boss so just buy two or level your sheep's link board a bit. Potions are pretty worthless for most of the game.

Normal computer keyboard.

The camera can be a bit wonky as the lock on breaks with distance and enemies have a habit of escaping it especially on bosses. I frequently find myself dodgerolling into a wall so that flowmotion attacks take me to the nearest enemy. They have a long range and auto aim. Works great on most bosses.

Ugh. Camera. Most of these games seem to hate when I try to move sideways, as they want to move the camera and I'm no longer moving sideways. Or worse, the camera won't fit behind me and I can't see what I'm looking at. Or the camera just wants to change where I'm looking. In fairness, an auto-target system that wants to insist "you must obviously want to face your enemy and ignore all the terrain / landscape around you" is kinda stupid.

In my opinion the control delay caused by certain actions (like flow motion) does not mix well with how aggressive and juggle happy a lot of the enemies and bosses are. If you havent gotten to the second traverse town visit after you clear the first 3 worlds ...

Ha. Did I mention not past the first save point in any game? Second visit to traverse town?

Flowmotion ... feels like a sick joke at the expense of people who are learning a game to give people crazy movie style moves but only if they are willing to learn it -- and not give you your expected abilities if you are not.

i.e. -- making the game less about playing the story, and more about showing off your controller mastery.

If you havent played any of the earlier kingdom hearts games Dream drop distance is a pretty terrible starting point. Ignoring the massive amount of story reasons just the gameplay assumes youre familiar with blocking and dodge rolling from earlier titles and the enemies are really brutal when it comes to how fast they tear you apart if you can't get those blocks in with good timing. Sucks you have so many technical problems

Yeah, DDD is not a good starting point at all. It expects you to already understand the gameplay and story of the KH series up to that point, for it to expand into the new stuff (flowmotion, reality shift). Also the enemies in this game are relentless, they don't give you any breathing room and will combo you one after the other.

The camera in the game is actually pretty bad even for KH standards, just because of how fast the auto-center is. You haven't reached that point yet, but the boss of the Notre Dame (Riku) and Tron (Sora) worlds suffer from this a lot. They zip around really, really fast and if you're locked onto them, chances are that you won't see anything with the camera spazzing out.

About the commands changing automatically once they start to reload, there's an option that changes that. Look up on the pause menu, Config > Deck Scrolling.

Honestly, go play KH1 or KH2 first. This is not a good starting point at all.

Ok. I was doing a "attempt to play everything, to see what works/ does not work". And I put off playing everything since then. (At least 2.5 never worked; I wanted to at least make it to the first save point for each game. Didn't get there for this one).

A patch just dropped, so ... I'll see if I can make some progress now.