Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Release Date: 9/7/2010
Available Exclusively On
The mash-up of Disney and Final Fantasy set fanboys squealing and shook the gaming world. It was like a huge tsunami of awesomeness that no one could have predicted. Thus, the first Kingdom Hearts was born with lots of charm and character but had a lot of problems with combat and one confusing story. The second game came out and really added depth to the game and was fan-freaking-tastic. Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the first game, and you really get a lot of stuff that was answerless in the last two games. You play as Terra, Ventus, and Aqua, who are three key blade wielders trying to stop the darkness from spreading through the world and within themselves. While the story works and is a lot simpler than in past games, it never feels like it really goes anywhere and isn’t as emotional as in other games.
With that aside, the next biggest thing is combat. While it’s a lot deeper, it’s also a lot more confusing and can be daunting to understand, especially for newcomers and younger players. You have a command deck that allows you to swap out abilities, and there are a lot of them. You can eventually equip up to nine commands, but flipping through them is tedious and not so combat-friendly. Using the D-pad to flip through commands can really kill you, especially during tough boss fights. Having to move from the analog nub to the D-pad means you stand still while switching. This leaves you vulnerable and can mean life or death if you have one hit left.
You can use the shot lock command, which is like a special attack that requires focus. You go into first-person mode and lock on the target for a few seconds, and it unleashes a pretty devastating attack. Summons are no longer available; instead, they are replaced with the less spectacular D-links. As you beat worlds, Disney characters can be selected, and basically, you just have a different set of commands to choose from. Your health replenishes, but this doesn’t seem as exciting as seeing the character fight with you.
You can meld commands together and add boosts to create new commands. This can be really interesting, and you can make commands you can’t normally buy or find. Other than this, the menus are usual with character bios, documents, and whatnot, but once you get used to the menu, you will have no problems. The biggest issue with combat is the stupid camera. Relying on a camera is critical with PSP games due to the lack of a second analog nub, but this camera is stupid. Locking on seems like a good idea until the lock-on breaks for some unknown reason and you lose sight of the enemy. This is really irritating during highly intense boss fights because you lose sight of them and can walk right into their traps. The camera likes to flip-flop around constantly, and fighting enemies above you is like going down into a swirling toilet with needles stabbing your eyes. It jitters and jitters and spasms, and it feels like the game is having an epileptic fit.
Despite this, it’s manageable, and you get so used to it that you just deal with it. Exploration is still the same yawn fest, but even more so since most of the environments aren’t as active or lush as KH2. The worlds are super short, and you can get to each boss without even fighting a single enemy, but if you return, they respawn, and this is only because of the irritating amount of level grinding. No matter what you do or what level you are at, bosses can kill you in just a few hits. At level 25, I was still getting my butt kicked by a boss late into the game. This leads to each character’s story completion time of about 10 hours. The words just don’t feel as alive and exciting as in KH2, and they just seem like bite-sized samples of what they should be. There are a few original worlds that are a nice touch, but they could have made the game so much better.
There is a command-board game that is so complicated and boring that you may not even care about it. You move around a board trying to collect new commands, and it’s overly complicated, as all Square mini-games are. This is more like a mini-mind meltdown than anything else, and co-op doesn’t make it any more fun. The game’s best feature is its technical achievement, being one of the very few games that pushes the PSP to the max. You could easily mistake this game for a PS2 game, but there are some frame rate issues, and if you don’t install your data on your memory stick, you are most likely going to experience horrendous load times. The voice acting is a bit iffy, but the game looks amazing. The enemies are pretty boring and generic, and they could have been a lot better.
Overall, Birth by Sleep is a great start, and I hope this isn’t the last KH on the PSP. If they improve the game’s many flaws, we are looking at the best portable game ever made. What the game really needs is a reboot because this formula is tasting a bit stale in 2010.
Great post tthankyou