Possibly the oddest combination in gaming history, Birth By Sleep continues the Kingdom Hearts tradition by pairing up the familiar characters from Disney’s portfolio with a bunch of characters from Square Enix’s flock.
Starting the proceedings off in the Land of Departure, the game introduces us to our three main protagonists – Terra, Aqua and Ventus. Like with most RPGs developed by Square Enix, the trio sport big emo haircuts, wear outlandish costumes and probably listen to My Chemical Romance (however, I can’t prove that).
Initially controlling Ventus, the game teaches you all the basics before introducing you to Terra and Aqua, at which point it then demonstrates how to enter combat.
Armed with a bizarre looking weapon called a “Keyblade” (with a name like that, it looks exactly like you might imagine!), Aqua and Terra are training to become masters of the weapon and, after a bit of training, they find themselves fighting each other in an exam to achieve the Mark of Mastery.
Without spoiling anything else, all doesn’t go to plan and our characters find themselves on an adventure which takes them all around Disneyland (Not the Disneyland themepark).
Now, one of the best things going for this game is the combat. It’s all pretty much your standard hack and slash affair, but should you want to add a bit of variety you can assign a variety of different attacks to the triangle button through the use of your D-pad.
Another neat little trick is that you can target which villains to attack by holding both the L and R buttons. After you’ve targeted your enemies your character will then perform a lightening fast attack on them in the order that you selected.
Sadly, the pacing during the start of the game is let down by the amount of cutscenes that you have to sit through.
I swear for the first 45 minutes I must of sat through 20 minutes of cutscenes.
Having said that they do look the part, and once you get past the initial tutorial stages the pace of the game really does pick up.
The environment design is second to none and it’s nice to see a developer making good use of what the PSP has to offer. Sadly, it all becomes a victim of its own success – despite the level of depth on display, they can feel a little desolate at times.
This is probably due to the fact that the bad guys appear out of nowhere.
Overall, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is an ambitious title for the PSP. It’s graphically strong, features a good combat system and an involved plot.
Verdict: 7 out of 10
The good:
Nice use of the Disney portfolio
Good graphics
Great combat system
The not so good:
Environments feel empty at times
Cutscenes galore at the beginning
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