Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

Graphics

This is a department in which Square Enix never fails to impress. The graphics seem to be the best that a PSP can provide. I personally love the mix of happy colours used. The animations during the battle are also top-notch. At the beginning, it is kinda weird to see Disney characters in 3D. While I still prefer my childhood 2D Disney, the 3D Disney here is excellent.

This quality of graphics is not only for cutscenes. It is throughout the game!

With animations as colourful and exciting as these, even random battles are enjoyable ^o^

Unfortunately, the only FMV throughout the whole game is only at the game title page -_-"  All the cutscenes (including the ending) are using normal in-game graphics. And guess what, more than half of the opening FMV are scenes from the near-end parts of the games. Why couldn't they just  make a proper one and show it before the final battle!

Gameplay

I am not a fan of adventure games in which I need to control the characters to jump and fly through obstacles and if fail, I need to repeat jumping all over again from the bottom etc. This game is not a traditional RPG since it has the adventure games-like feature. Thank goodness, most places are managable. Only Disney Town and Ventus' Cinderella quest particularly pissed me off.

The battle system is enjoyable. It is a hybrid of traditional RPG command clicking (for using skills, which are called Commands here) and traditional hack and slash games for normal attacking, dodging, and blocking. Great variations are incorporated into the command skills where players are prompted to press certain buttons to deal more attacks etc. Instead of using MP system, the use of skills are limited by cooldowns to prevent spamming. While most of the commands are available for all 3 characters, some of the ultimate commands are exclusive to certain characters.

Shotlock commands are unique to this game and I consider it to be the best (most powerful and most useful) commands even for the bosses to a point that they make the game imbalanced. Again, variations are incorporated to make the execution of shotlock attacks slightly differ from one another. Good thing that the use of shotlock commands consumes "focus bar" and this can only be replenished by normal attacks. Thus, no spamming.

Shotlock

D-link system is in place instead of summon. The most useful feature of this is refilling HP to the max upon activation. At the start, D-link provides access to the commands which we don't have yet. But in the mid to end game, D-link is redundant as the players gain access to most, if not all, commands already. The finish commands of the D-link maybe aesthetically pleasing but they can be too slow.. Better to stay with the faster and more powerful Finish commands of the characters. To me, this system sucks! I rather see Disney characters come to aid in the battle as summons.

 D-link with Stitch

So what is Finish commands? Every attack performed on the enemy charges a bar and once it is full, instead of performing a normal physical attack, pressing X will perform Finish commands which are more powerful than normal attack. Various Finish commands can be unlocked by fulfilling certain criteria such as earning certain amount of munny, killing certain number of enemies, or gaining certain amount skill points etc.

After getting certain Battle Style, when the bar is fully charged, there is a possibility of activating a Battle Style, instead of triggering a Finish attack. There are certain criteria to activate different Battle Styles. For example, fire-based attacks trigger Firestorm Battle Style, ice-based attacks trigger Diamond Dust Battle Style etc. They provide boost to the characters as well as provide us with visual treat when activated :p

Levelling seems to be of secondary importance in this game. I beat the game with character levels of 40-50. I don't feel the need to grind. Just by normal playing, the character and skills will gain experiences, just to be strong enough for the difficulty of that point of the game. In fact, I would say the game is too easy (even in the supposedly more difficult Proud mode). The bosses (including the final bosses) are pieces of cake! It is difficult only at the start of the game. But grind to level 5 in the first location and after that, just play normally and it is okay. The exceptions are the secret bosses which are near impossible to beat with their 1 or 2 hit KO attacks.

Levelling randomly increases strength, defense, and/or magic. Frankly, I see no difference in the stats gained. So what about HP? Max HP only goes up upon clearing certain timepoints/story in the game. And HP is shown by green bars, instead of numbers. So yeah, no idea on how to 'quantify' it. The effects of the ability system are also not very obvious in the game, except for abilities to prevent death (for once) once your HP drops to 1 (how do we define 1 here? lol).

Ventus triggering Fever Pitch (battle style)

Note that at the bottom right corner, blue bar represents D-link, green bar represents HP, and orange bar represents focus.

Replayability/Features

With 3 different storylines, I guess I am forced to replay the game 3 times? Haha.. As an RPG, I guess there is not really a value in replaying the game once you are familar with the story. 

However, the mini-games here can make this game a good time-killer. Firstly, there is monopoly-like Command Board mini-game. The rules are very similar to monopoly: travel to the check points, buy plots, and earn points. The first one to reach the target points and return to the start point will be the winner. This game can be very addictive at first! And by playing this, there is a chance of getting rare commands as well as leveling up the commands. Thus, it sort of helps the main game, not only wasting time.

 Command Board - a creative spin-off of monopoly board game

Secondly, there is a racing mini-game. Well, it's just a racing, no more and no less haha..

 

Thirdly, there is a rhythm game. Instead of pressing buttons according to certain orders (like Dance Dance Revolution), here we are supposed to remember the rhythm! It can be quite challenging to play, especially since most of the songs are not very familiar. Again, it is not just a time-filler. Clearing it gives Frozen Fortune Battle Style which can be used during battles.

Fourthly, there is a soccer-like game using fruits. Basically we are supposed to hit various fruits to opponent's goals to score. Some fruits have special properties for eg: banana can split and produce banana skins which can trip and stun the opponent, a bunch of grapes can break into individual grape and each scores a point if hitting the goal.

Lastly, there is Mirage Arena. Basically it is a Battle Arena, Colliseum, or whatever other games call it. Here we can fight bosses and difficult enemies etc to earn medals to buy certain commands, to get HP boosts, as well as to get the best Shotlock commands and the Ultima Weapon keyblade. It is meant to be a multiplayer arena. Most of the bosses can be solo-ed though.. 

Wow, it does not sound like an RPG, does it? It sounds more like a 6-in-1 kind of game pack. Haha..

Storyline

My opinion will be biased here since I don't play any other Kingdom Hearts game except the Chain of Memories. My knowledge about Kingdom Hearts events and terminologies is quite minimum. Thus, I don't quite enjoy the storyline which I feel is not very newbie-friendly, particularly the ending and the secret ending. Too many references to other games, making it sort of a must to play the other games to understand this game better.

The idea of separate story lines for each character is quite well executed. I especially like the times when they cross path. On the flip side, it can be quite boring to 'repeat' 3 times. The main weakness of the game, in my opinion, is that most of the time spent in the game is just FILLER with no reference whatsoever with the  main plot of chasing Xehanort etc. The characters seem to visit the different Disney worlds and run mindless errands there. Seriously, who cares whether Cinderella reaches the ball safely or whether Peter Pan can beat Hook etc. While I generally love Disney's involvement in Kingdom Hearts, it is a failure here since they don't 'directly' related to the story. Rather than they are immersed in the world of Kingdom Hearts, it feels more like Terra, Ventus, and Aqua are immersed in Disney stories.

Music

The theme song sucks. It feels too J-Pop-ish as a game music. Other than that, it is fine in general. Not bad but not fantastic either.

Overall

No doubt, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is a fun game with the nice battle system (as well as animation) and tonnes of mini-games. I like the minor and unique details such as in some important battles (especially when we are aided by another character in the battle), there is an option to randomly perform a co-operative attacks. It is not a must to perform to win the battle (so no frustration if you miss the time to do it) but they deal lots of damage. A nice addition to really show that the characters are fighting together. The keyblades held by character during the cut-scenes actually follow the current keyblades that we are equipping. Very nice personalisation! Though I find it very funny to see Aqua wielding ice-cream shaped keyblades for the final battle. Lol.

Unfortunately, it fails terribly in the story department. Even Disney magic is not sufficient to save the plot, something which is of utmost importance for an RPG! Reasons being: 1) longer time spent on side-story and fillers than the main story 2) too 'exclusive' and 'newbie-unfriendly.. many unexplained references to other Kingdom Hearts games 3) I just hate it when stories involve transfer of soul (transfer of heart in this case)/immortality and playing with time to 'complicate' the story. But I am sure for Kingdom Hearts fans, who are familiar with the series from start, would certainly be fans of this game too!