Fans have long been awaiting the next main game in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. Between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, we received Chain of Memories, an interesting side story that fleshed out the year between the two main titles. While it did add a new level of immersion in the KH back story, playing it wasn’t required to understand the plot in the second game (it does give a good justification for “metroiding” Sora at the start of Kingdom Hearts II, but I digress). One thing the franchise is known for is the difficult to unlock and (at the time) completely incomprehensible Secret Trailers that setup the next main franchise game. While it doesn’t have a 3 in the title, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
The first thing you’ll notice the game looks fantastic. Kingdom Hearts has never looked bad in any of its iterations and the PSP version is no different. You can even adjust the game to produce even more details in the menu (which can reduce your battery life). Unfortunately, looking that good has a cost: BBS has some of the worst load times I’ve ever experienced in a PSP game;even the pause screen has seconds-long delay. You can mitigate a good portion of load time pain by installing a chunk of game data to your hard drive and by overclocking your PSP CPU through the option settings (cutting your battery life even further), but the fact that you have to jump through such hoops to play the game smoothly is ridiculous. This absolutely should have been a PSN release, because of the load times. Sadly, it’s still UMD-only.
Of course, the most beautiful thing for the Kingdom Hearts faithful will be seeing brand new worlds. BBS reuses few worlds from previous games, but when it does, it usually has completely new areas to explore. That said, I really hope this is the last time we’ll be competing in the Olympus Coliseum; it’s been in every title in the franchise and has changed very little. In previous games, the Coliseum was host to a number of tournaments that were used to advance the world’s story and usually required multiple visits to finish 100%. The tournament matches were a good place to grind for experience points, munny, and ability points as well as the hiding place of some of the games strongest foes (I’m looking at you, Sephiroth). In BBS, it was replaced by the Mirage Arena, a world with numerous gameplay possibilities, including tournaments, a cart racing game, and competitive multiplayer. In fact, any challenge you want to take on in the Mirage Arena can be tackled as a team or by yourself, with the obvious exception of Versus Mode.
As for the story, I would have to say this is the second best jumping on point for the franchise, the first being the original game. This tale takes place a full ten years before any of the events of Kingdom Hearts, and clears up many of the mysteries that have been haunting the franchise since the first game. The way the plot is handled is actually one of the most interesting changes they’ve made in the franchise: you’ll be controlling 3 different characters instead of just one, each of which only travels to the worlds only once, with a few exceptions. The three playable characters are Terra, Ventus, and Aqua. Terra is the strongest of the three and has the high HP, but ends up with the slowest attacks. Ventus is the fastest, and plays most like the earlier Kingdom Hearts protagonists Sora and Roxas, even have exclusive access to their abilities Dodge Roll and Glide. The last character is Aqua, the first playable female in the franchise and the first focused primarily on using magic. Each character plays quite differently, and has his/her own unique way of tackling challenges.
As the new trio has been trained for years in the ways of the keyblade, they are far more self-sufficient than Sora. This is reflected in the gameplay, which rarely has you teamed with any other party members. The few instances where someone else joins the fight are a real treat, and provide some of the most memorable battles in the entire game. Series creator Tetsuya Nomura suggests you play through the game with Terra then Ventus and lastly Aqua and I strongly suggest you go in that order as well. It will make portions of the game much easier and will unravel the plot in the most logical format possible. To say anything more would be a spoiler.
The only other gripe outside of load times I have with the game is the voice acting. For the most part, the voice acting is really good; Jesse McCartney knocks it out of the park as Ventus, Bret Ewan takes the mantle as the new Mickey with ease, and Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill are amazingly stellar as Masters Xehanort and Eraqus, respectively. All the Disney characters sound great as well. The only problem areas is Terra and Aqua. Terra sounds fine on a basic level, but Jason Dohring does a pretty terrible job of emoting in key scenes. Terra’s story arc easily covers the widest emotional range of any of the main characters, but you’d be hard pressed to tell from the voice acting. Aqua’s voice over is easily the weakest part of the entire game and that’s including the load time atrocities. While she doesn’t ruin the game like Mena Suvari did with Aerith in Kingdom Hearts II, she is really bad for most of the game. I didn’t really like Willa Holland’s voice work in this game; most of the time she sounded like she was distracted and not paying much attention to what was going on. There were a few lines she nailed though, and the battle cries for all characters were spot on.
While we’re talking about the sounds of BBS, I would like to mention that this is easily the best soundtrack I’ve heard from Yoko Shimomura yet, from the faintly melancholic tones of the Birth by Sleep arrangement of Dearly Beloved to the amazingly epic themes used in both the Secret Boss battles. This game has a significant number of call-forwards to latter games in the franchise and the musical score will seamlessly weave in themes to trigger nostalgia. The final, final boss weaves together two characters themes in a beautifully heart-wrenching arrangement.
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Birth by Sleep. This is easily the most fun I’ve had this year and this is this most well implemented game in the franchise from a story perspective and gameplay mechanics. For fans of the franchise, this is a no-brainer. Unlike 358/2 days and Chain of Memories, this looks to tie directly into the core franchise; this isn’t a side story. For newcomers, this is a good lead-in to Kingdom Hearts. In spite of a few hiccups, Birth by Sleep is a fine entry in the franchise, and has the finest gameplay in the series yet. An early forerunner for my Game of the Year, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep comes with my full recommendation.
