Kingdom Hearts BBS Review: Great Mechanics Undercut By Story Reboots

Bryan Vore — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:11:00 GMT

Anyone depressed that Square Enix is dragging its feet on a high production value PS3 release of Kingdom Hearts 3 would be insane to pass up Birth by Sleep simply because it’s on PSP or that it doesn’t place series hero Sora in a lead role. This entry stands alongside Kingdom Hearts II visually with impressively detailed characters, animation, and on-screen effects. Instead of retreading the same old worlds, it brings in brand-new locations like Snow White’s forest and Stitch’s spaceship prison (if I never have to run through Agrabah ever again, it will be too soon). And it finally explains what the heck is going on in that crazy secret movie with the bunny armor people in a keyblade graveyard from the end of Kingdom Hearts II.

New characters Terra, Ventus, and Aqua play precursor roles to Riku, Sora, and Kairi respectively. They all hope to become keyblade masters and have trained hard for the privilege. You can’t help but draw comparisons to Star Wars in Birth by Sleep, especially when one of the three must battle against the dark side, I mean, the darkness. Despite the heavy borrowing, replacing Jedi with keyblade masters and the Force with magic fits well.

Combat blends melee combos with easily accessible magic and keyblade specials. Like any RPG, your character levels up as you gain more experience, but Birth by Sleep lets you gain experience in each ability. I became addicted to swapping abilities once they maxed out and combining them to make more powerful new ones. When combining abilities, you can also keep any perks tied to a maxed ability like fire resistance, bonus health, or longer combos. This move evolution system doesn’t always tell you what you’re going to create, however, so I wasted a lot of materials along the way in order to tailor my characters how I wanted. Scoring a powerful acrobatic move or a rare powerful spell makes it all worth it in the end. Once you know what you’re doing you can get stronger quickly.

Players choose one of three protagonists at the start and follow each story from one Disney world to the next until the final confrontation. In 10 to 12 hours, you’ve beaten the game and must start over with the next character. You’ll travel to all the same worlds in essentially the same order, but you’ll explore different areas of the map, meet different characters, and battle different bosses. In Cinderella’s world, for example, Ventus is shrunk down to mouse size to help collect items for her dress, Terra escorts her to the ball, and Aqua makes sure she gets to try on the glass slipper. While it’s an interesting concept, by the time I got around to playing Aqua on my third playthrough, I had already been everywhere twice and had powered up two characters. It’s no fun starting over at square one again after you’ve tasted ultimate power. It doesn’t help that Aqua’s story is the weakest of the three, either.

To play the final wrap-up chapter after all three careers, you have to collect all of Xehanort’s reports. If not, you have to go back and grab them and re-beat the game with those specific characters. It’s kind of a pain that you can’t just go right to the end, but if you’ve explored along the way you’ll probably have most of them anyway.

Multiplayer is local ad-hoc only, so good luck finding a friend with a PSP and copy of the game. If you do, you can team up or face off in a variety of minigames like a kart racer, a Monopoly-esque board game, and several arena matches. I didn’t care for the first two options, but it’s always enjoyable to be able beat up a friend in battle or team up with them to take on waves of enemies.

Overall, I loved the combat, leveling, and look of Birth by Sleep, and I applaud the bold storytelling approach of having three storylines. I’m just glad I won’t have to start up another character from scratch in this game ever again.

Getting more out of Birth by Sleep

If you’re interested in playing Birth by Sleep, you should consider investing in a hefty memory stick. To reduce load times as much as possible, you have to install 624 MB of data onto your system. Also be sure to boost color depth up to 32-bit and push the CPU speed up to 333hz. The game will look great and run as smooth as silk no matter how many effects are flying around on screen.

A New Hero Rounds Out Birth By Sleep Roster

Meagan Marie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:11:00 GMT

Our hands-on time with Birth by Sleep at TGS was very limited, but what we saw was enough to get us excited.

Immediately upon starting the demo we were introduced to a new enemy type, which appeared to be a combination of the Heartless and Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts I & II. We took on the new creatures with an unfamiliar male protagonist named Terra. Ventus (who looks nearly identical to Roxas from KHII) and a female protagonist named Aqua join Terra and top off the playable characters at three. As far as story continuity, Birth by Sleep is the earliest chapter in the Kingdom Hearts saga, which should also explain the familiar looking antagonist. The three youths are keyblade apprentices in search of the missing keyblade master, Master Xehanort.

The antagonist is the same menacing figure found in the secret ending of Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix. If unfamiliar with the ending, you can watch it here. As a refresher, the teaser features three fully armored youths approaching the antagonist, who splits into a second equally armored character. From there, the heroes battle it out against the highly powerful pair amongst a field of ancient keyblades. The situation seems desperate, as the foes are able to command earth and magic at their will.

But back to Birth by Sleep. Combat, although not entirely aware of what we were selecting in the Japanese build, felt much more fluid and diverse. We pulled off a slew of unique attacks on the ground, in the air and while dashing across the screen, all of which worked gracefully on the PSP. All and all, we left the brief demo feeling that Birth by Sleep is on par with the numbered installments in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, as opposed to the spin-offs on the GBA and DS that feel a bit disconnected. Similar to Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, Birth by Sleep will let players customize a “deck” of techniques and abilities, and a dice mini-game is somehow incorporated in the mix—although not a part of the basic battle system.

After putting the PSP down we watched a short trailer that revealed several other details, including appearances by Snow White and Stitch. The later appears to have his own unique space-themed level. Cinderella and the other Princesses of Heart also popped in.

Multiplayer mode was introduced at TGS, but no meaty details were given. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is set to release January 2010 in Japan, but isn’t yet confirmed for the states. We don’t expect that to last too long.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep - PSP

Kingdom Hearts BBS Review: Great Mechanics Undercut By Story Reboots

A New Hero Rounds Out Birth By Sleep Roster