Even if you're not a Kingdom Hearts fan, Birth by Sleep still offers action, humor, and a touch of emotional greatness.
Birth by Sleep tells the story of three young warriors known as Terra, Ventus, and Aqua. These three serve as the main characters of the game, each having their own unique story to complete. It's important to play the stories in the correct order, starting with Terra, then Ventus, and finally Aqua. If you don't play the stories in order, then you'll just end up not knowing how the actual story plays out. What I like immediately was that each individual story was completely different from the others. So, you'll be able to fight different opponents and meet different characters in one story that you'll probably never see in another.
The controls fit perfectly with the playstation portable. However, for those of you that are used to playing Kingdom Hearts on the Playstation 2 may feel a little weird about the control scheme. Since the Playstation portable doesn't have a second analog nub, the controls may seem "off". You'll get used to it though once you actually start playing the game. Even though some control features were changed, a lot of stuff has been implemented into this game. Most of these features include more ways to play against your friends, help power up your character, and learning new ways to take out enemies.
The graphics look exceptionally well for a psp game. The psp isn't so famous for games having nice graphics, but Birth by Sleep really made me forget what I was looking at. At times, I really felt I was looking at a cut scene from the Playstation 2 games. The story lines for all three characters also come together very well. Any plot holes that you see in one story is completely explained in the another one. As I said before, each character's story is completely different, so you won't get bored with the overall story unlike in other games that you may have played. For example, Terra's story involves him controlling the darkness inside of him, while Ven's is about creating the X-blade, pronounced as keyblade by the characters. The dialogue matches the subtitles very well, where some characters actually make it sound funny based of their accents. Each story can be played on easy, standard, hard, or very hard mode. On easy mode, it's impossible to unlock the secret ending. On standard mode, the secret ending possible to unlock, but very hard to get. On hard and very hard mode, the secret ending is actually really easy to obtain. Along with the secret ending, there's also a secret boss. I won't tell anymore though to avoid spoiling it for others.
Now, back to the new features added to the game. For starters, the multiplayer is pretty funny when you have nothing else to do. You can race against your friends, team up with them to fight the unversed, or have a free for all battle with up to six other players. The only downside to this is that the multiplayer slowly gets repetitive over time. Next, we have the Command board. This allows you to play against the computer to earn power ups for your character. This is just a way to gain new items or new attacks, while also upgrading the spells and attacks you have already developed throughout the course of the game. Your attacks and spells in this game are known as commands. There are three basic commands, and the commands help you organize and develop your character the way you want it. So, you can make play style focus on using just magic or possibly just moves involving your Keyblade. Commands styles can also be used by the player, which powers up the character's attacks while also changing the attack power. This condition can only be meant when the command gauge is filled. It's also possible to reach a high level command style when you fill the gauge a second time. Dimension link, better known as D-link, has also been introduced to the series. The D-Link allows you to temporarily gain the abilities of pass characters that you have associated with, changing your command deck completely. You have to fill the D-link gauge in order to use it, but you can turn it on and off whenever you choose. Finally, the "ShotLock
Mode" is a mode that can be used by holding down the shoulder buttons at the same time, and locking on to numerous enemies. This is great if there are just too many opponents for you to take on at once. If you reach max on this mode, you can perform that characters very own magic attack by pressing the correct button at the right moment. There are many more events for you to do if you're not into actually playing the game at the moment, such as racing others, playing music games, or participating in volleyball like match.
Boss battles are rather easy once you know the enemies' movements, although they do get gradually harder as the story continues. Most boss battles are actually enjoyable to say the least. One thing I like about this game is that unlike other games, you don't need to level grind just to defeat one boss. You'll just have to level up a few times, and the fight should be a piece of cake.
The main problem I saw with this game was the load times. There is a data install for the game, but I honestly saw little to no difference in load times. I wouldn't say the data install is a waste of time and space on your memory stick, but it's the main reason why this game couldn't receive a ten.
Overall, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is a great prequel that answers a lot of questions from previous games. This is a must buy for all psp owners because of the fact that Birth by Sleep has little to know flaws in it. The load times are a pain, but everything else is about practically perfect. If you don't have a psp, then this is a good reason to go get one.