#sphinx thinks

Take the dream eater link system as an example. In DDD, as you fight alongside your dream eaters, you fill up a little gauge next to their portrait. (Image from khwiki)

when the gauge is full, and if you're playing as Sora, you will do a team attack with that dream eater, kinda akin to the limit attacks from 2.

However, for Riku, this is different. Riku straight up fuses with his dream eaters which gives boosts and bonuses to his attacks. He can do this, because at this point he's become a dream eater himself, and thus his interactions with them are different. It's a little gameplay detail that gives a little 'oh' moment when looking back.

Sora is not a dream eater and thus interacts with them in a different way.

Though that does beg the question. If Riku is a dream eater, and Sora's dream eater specifically, shouldn't they have a link attack together?

Well...

Examples:

Eraqus' death, he dissolves into particles

The lack of any other kinds of remains in the keyblade graveyard (in a dry desert like that, I would expect there to at least be some bones)

Sora stabbing himself with the keyblade to return hearts, compared to when Terranort murked Ansem the Wise's apprentices (Sora dissolves into particles and light, the apprentices are just dead on the floor)

Kh1: these kids are building a raft in search of adventure!

Starting off, we can use Day 1, or Roxas' formation as a reference point to kh1. Roxas forms right after Sora becomes a heartless.

From there, we can assume that Sora arrives at Castle Oblivion when Axel leaves to keep an eye on what Marluxia and Larxene are doing with him, which puts his arrival on Day 22, so the finale of kh1, the fight with Ansem (seeker of darkness) took roughly 22 days.

And then, we know that due to memory resonance shenanigans, Roxas passes out until Sora gets put to sleep, and he wakes up on Day 50. Using basic math we can estimate that that means that CoM took about 28 days.

After the rest of 358/2 Days, Roxas gets put in a computer for about a weekish (estimated by the fact that on day 2 of the prologue, Sora's memory restoration is only at 28%. If Roxas was in the matrix for longer, I can assume that the restoration would be higher) .

Also can I just say that her decision to tell Sora that his job is to 'follow Riku and protect him if he starts down a dark path' without bequeathing him was a little... I can't think of the right word here but like. Keyblades are absolutely busted on a power scaling level. If Riku did go down a dark path (cough kh1 cough) what did Aqua expect Sora to be able to do to stop him/protect him? I mean, he could be a voice of reason, but that only works as long as someone is willing to listen, and the most effective way to defend against a keyblade is with another keyblade. And that's not even getting into the fact that if Sora was following Riku being a keybearer, he would need some way to defend himself, considering the things keybearers fight on the reg.

I get that she didn't want to to bring the Horrors down on them (and I guess to try and preserve what continuity they could with the weird circumstances Sora got Kingdom Key) but that ship had sailed when Terra bequeathed Riku in the first place.

can we talk about the foreshadowing the devs managed with this, by putting the Kingdom Key (and even one with Sora's crown on it) on the logo for the *Graveyard*?