Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is an action/RPG for the PlayStation Portable. It was developed by Square-Enix and Disney Interactive Studios.
Terra, Ventus, and Aqua are Keyblade wielders, warriors who protect the many worlds (which all look like Disney movies) from the Darkness. One day their master, Eraqus, gets word that the Worlds are being attacked by creatures called Unversed, and sends Terra to destroy them and locate the other Keyblade Master, Xehanort, who has disappeared. Ventus is goaded into following Terra by a masked boy, and Aqua is sent to look after Ventes by Eraqus.
Birth by Sleep follows Terra, Ventus, and Aqua as they go to the different worlds and fight Unversed. The game follows each character separately, all of which go through the same worlds but have their own stories which intersect several times.
Combat is the biggest part of the game and has many parts, some of which work and some of which do not. There is a basic attack, block, and jump button, and the player can lock onto an enemy with the shoulder buttons. Mashing the attack button while locked onto an enemy is a decent way to get through most enemies. Block is way too slow to be useful, and does not work in the middle of an attack; it is only useful when the player knows that an attack is coming a couple of seconds beforehand.
Then there are special attacks. Players can buy, collect, or make a large variety of attacks that cause more damage, or do unusual things to enemies like poison them, or attacks that heal the player. The player can carry an infinite number of these attacks, but can only use a couple in battles, and has to assign which ones to use to a set number of slots. The player can cycle through the list of attacks they have made available using the control pad, but this can be difficult to do in the middle of a fight.
Players can meld special attacks to form new, stronger attacks, which is necessary to fight later enemies. It is interesting to see what new kind of attacks are created, but the process is somewhat random, and the game does not record what creates what, so it is possible to have a bunch of attacks that do not make new attacks and no knowledge of what older attacks to buy.
During the story the main characters establish links with other characters, which they can then use to partially transform into those characters. It is useful at first because it gives the player some extra powerful attacks when they are not quite strong yet. Eventually though the player gains enough strong attacks on their own that the links become useless.
The biggest problem with Birth by Sleep besides the combat is that it makes the player go through the same story three times with the Ventus, Aqua, and Terra. They go to the same levels, fight the same enemies, the same bosses, and gain the same attacks. The only difference is that their stories are different and that they talk to different people, but that does provide enough variety.
The story is okay. Most of it is not going to make any sense to anyone who has not played the other Kingdom Hearts games. It is possible to understand some of it, but the meaning of a lot of plot elements will be lost on newcomers. Ventus, Terra, and Aqua’s are interesting when they intersect with each other; it is fun to see how the characters see events from different perspectives. On their own Terra’s story is the most interesting, while all Aqua does is go from world to world and not do much.
The graphics look really great; the 3d character design look smooth and detailed; not pointy polygons anywhere. The story is told through animated cut scenes which also look great. Voice acting could use some work; the voice actor for Aqua sounds like she is bored the entire time.
Birth by Sleep comes with a couple of mini-games in addition to the fighting, like a racing game and a collection of board games. None of them are fun, but they need to be completed to see the good ending on normal mode, which is really unfair.
There need to be more places to save. There is no good reason not to have a place to save before every boss fight, especially when they have long cut scenes before and after them, though those can be skipped over.
By now one would think Square-Enix would learn from past Kingdom Hearts games and fix problems in the series. Instead they have made another game that die hard Kingdom Hearts fans will buy, but no one else has any reason to.
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