The most recent PSP game I’ve beaten is Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.
I remember when the first Kingdom Hearts game was released on the PS2. Coming from Square-Enix, I was very excited so I gave it a shot. I think I ended up beating the game, but I ultimately found it to be too childish (the Disney aspect of the game didn’t quite work so well for me). I had never played any Kingdom Hearts games after that, until Amazon decided to put it on sale for $19.99 during the holiday season and was willing to buy it back for $22. Since Amazon wanted to pay me $2 to play this game, I figured I might as well check out what some PSP gamers considered the biggest PSP game of 2010. Read on for my full review…
Master Xehanort serves as the game’s main villain – and does a great job at it!
The Story & Overview
One of the primary reasons that made it easier for me to pick up Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is that it’s actually a prequel to the first Kingdom Hearts game. This means you can get into Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep and not feel lost because you haven’t been keeping up with the other Kingdom Hearts games. In Birth By Sleep, the story focuses on three playable characters: Terra, Ven, and Aqua. Ven is the young boy that sort of tags along and hangs out with Terran and Aqua, who are both training to become Keyblade Masters. In the beginning of the game, we learn that Aqua succeeds in becoming a Keyblade Master but Terra fails because he still has some darkness in his heart. Shortly after the ceremony, dark creatures referred to as the Unversed begin attacking the various Disney worlds so Terra, Ven, and Aqua all set out separately for their own reasons to deal with the threat.
It is this unique aspect of the narrative that splits the game up into three different storylines, and therefore three different playthroughs. The last time I played a game where you played as different characters to get different viewpoints and storylines was Resident Evil 2 on the original Playstation I think. In Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, each of the three characters have their own 10-hour long quest with a different “angle”: Terra wrestles with darkness within him and goes through the different worlds in a more forceful manner, while Ven and Aqua try to track Terra down separately – Ven as a good-kind hearted kid and Aqua as a newly appointed Keyblade Master.
30 hours of gametime through three different character playthroughs sounds like a good value, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. First off, all three characters don’t really play that differently – Terra is supposed to be more physically strong, Ven is the quickest, and Aqua is good with magic, but they all still pretty much learn to use the same abilities. Each character also visits the same worlds, and while they experience the world a tad bit differently, going through the same world isn’t anywhere as interesting the second or third time around. It also kind of sucks that once you beat one character’s storyline, that character is pretty leveled up so it’s jarring to start back at Level 1 on the next character and start the primary story again (even if some new things arise as you play the game as a different character). If it were up to me, I would have preferred being able to use all three characters in a combined longer game, like 15-20 hours, instead of three 10 hour storylines that have a lot of overlap. Who wants to level up a character like crazy and then have to start over again?
One particular reason why you want to complete all three storylines is that with certain conditions completed in your three playthroughs, you will unlock the “real ending”. This allows for a little more gameplay, a final boss, and additional cutscenes. I was able to unlock it and play through it, but I have to admit that the ending was practically as confusing as having never seen it at all. My questions weren’t exactly answered after beating it, but I guess it provides a little something to tie all three storylines together.
Stitch lends his abilities to you once you help him out.
General Gameplay
As you travel through the various Disney-themed worlds that are home to characters such as Snow White, Cinderella, Hercules, Stitch, etc. you will aid them in their plight while looking for clues as to where all of the Darkness is coming from. You will meet (and sometimes fight) various Disney characters both good and evil. Sometimes you even get to team up with some of the characters, which allow for double-team attacks with Mickey and friends. After you complete each world, you are often given the ability to link with the “hero” of that world. For example, you can activate Peter Pan and gain his ability group until you change back to your regular abilities.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is an action-RPG game. Everything is in real-time, and you clobber enemies with a keyblade or various magical and physical abilities you can equip on your character. Foes generally spawn in groups at pre-set locations on each map, and my first couple hours of play grew stale as I felt like there wasn’t much depth to the game except zone after zone of an enemy group spawning all dressed up in a Disney finish. Fortunately, the story helps the repetitive combat and so does the ability system, which I will get to next.
Level up the right abilities and you’ll definitely be kicking some Unversed butt!
Abilities – The Game’s Best Feature
What got me a lot more into the game was the RPG aspect that Square-Enix is generally famous for (except for a couple more current duds). Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has a very interesting and addicting ability leveling mechanic. This entire system is what actually made me enjoy playing through the game three times. In Birth By Sleep, you start out with 4 ability slots, and as you go through the game, you unlock more and more ability slots until you have something like 8 slots. When you equip abilities in these slots, they are usable when you are in combat, so you can equip spells like Fire, Poison, Cure, etc.
What’s interesting is that there’s an entire leveling and alchemy aspect to the abilities. Each Ability starts at Level 1, but when you have it equipped during combat, it also gains experience points until it maxes out (Levels 3, 4, or 5, depending on the ability). Once it is maxed out, it can be combined with another maxed out ability for a more powerful ability. For example, if you acquire/buy several Fire spells and max out two Fire spells to Level 3, you can combine the two spells to create Fira, a more powerful version of Fire. Then when you max out Fira, you can combine that with a maxed out Fire spell to create a Firaga spell, a 3rd level Fire spell.
Some of the end-game abilities you can create require some serious leveling and mixing of various abilities, so I got addicted to leveling up everything I could and looking for new spells through combining. Some combinations even had a rare chance to create a special ability that the combination would not usually yield, so that is always exciting when it happens and you can discover some really neat abilities when you experiment. This is really the worst part of starting a new character – losing all those high end abilities you leveled up and unlocked.
Another interesting aspect of the leveling up of abilities is that whenever you combine two abilities, you have the option to include a crystal. There are seven different crystals that randomly drop from enemies, and they all have different tendencies. When you use a crystal when combining two abilities, the crystal will produce a bonus passive ability that you will keep for good once you max out the level of the new spell. Examples of these bonus passive abilities include more damage with fire spells, longer attack chain combos, not being interrupted when casting a healing spell, etc. It’s fun to try to figure out which crystals give you what new passive abilities – and there are of course rare ones just like the rare abilities themselves.
Some lengthy and enjoyable 3D CG clips are sprinkled into the game.
Final Thoughts
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is definitely worthy of the Kingdom Hearts franchise. I can see why the game is beloved by many, but fans of the franchise are sort of letting that blind the fact that Birth By Sleep game does have several shortcomings. The game is taxed by the aging hardware of the PSP: having to traverse the small universe by yourself pretty much the entire time, the empty worlds, the repetitive nature of the gameplay, etc. It’s definitely a good game based on the overall story, characters, and ability system, but I would have liked a more unified storyline and more interesting gameplay. Fighting the same five enemies types respawning in group after group for thirty hours is not the greatest, even if I’m enjoying the leveling up aspect of my abilities because of it. Kingdom Hearts fans will of course love this game, as there is some definite new story-telling involved, but as a non-Kingdom Hearts diehard fan I simply just enjoyed it for its ability leveling system and Disney nostalgia. Your mileage may vary on this one – depending on how much you like (or don’t like) Disney stuff and action-RPG features.
Final Grade: B+
