I'm sure most people are familiar with the Kingdom hearts series by now, but for those who are not its a freaky hybrid of Disney, Final Fantasy, and Japan. The main point of the game series is to play as the main character and travel to Disney worlds and meet its respective characters. Various Final Fantasy characters make cameos too. I myself have never wanted to play one of these games but for my birthday this year a good friend of mine gave me a copy of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep the PSP exclusive title. So I decided to finally give this series a try.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is an action RPG or how I like to call it a run-up-and-hit-and-then-run-away game. It has 3 playable characters thus having 3 separate storylines which all expand on each other. This game was actually just released last year in September and despite it being the 6th game in the series, timeline wise its the first game in the series. So what better way for me to jump into a series.....right?
Story:
Okay so it doesn't matter which character you pick at the beginning of the game the storyline is the same with some minor changes. You play as one of the 3 keyblade wielding teens Aqua Terra or Ven and your job is to find out why a strange monster species called the Unversed are plaguing the Disney lands. Of course it evolves into a much more complex storyline but I don't think that spoiling the game would be a great idea.
Points: 7 pretty good considering what happens later in game
Characters:
There are far to many characters in this game so I'll sum it up in two categories Main and Side. The Main characters (Aqua, Ven, Terra) I found were as interesting as a piece of cardboard. I couldn't relate to them, I found them all to be perfect cutouts of each other the only difference being one was short one was tall and one had boobs. The game was a chore to play because of the painful way the game tries to make to like the characters but they end up incredibly flat by the final chapter. Now the Side characters were at least able to keep my attention. The villains had personality(although sometimes too much personality and too many gestures for my liking) and the Disney characters stayed true to their original form and I enjoyed trying to figure out which area from the game was mirroring the original movies. Even the one tiny Final Fantasy cameo (Zack from Final Fantasy 7) had more personality than our Main heroes. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed after hearing about how amazingly deep the characters are from my friend and then they give me this.
Points: 4 Too much angst and only a few minor characters that were interesting
Graphics:
A-maz-ing. The game's graphics are the best I have seen on the PSP to date. Brilliantly vibrant worlds and characters that stand out from each other yet fit each other perfectly. My only beef being that Aqua's hair looked a little pixely up close in the voiced cut scenes and that on occasions Aqua's leg would poke through her half-skirt thing and it looked pretty uncomfortable.
Points: 9 If only all PSP games were this pretty
Sound:
Very nice. The music was well composed and fit all the moods very well. The only Sound track that bothered by was the one that played in Cinderella's world. After you hear the famous “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” theme for the MILLIONTH time you may want to turn the volume off for fear of you throwing your PSP out the nearest window in annoyance. Just saying. The voice acting was well done too, particularly Leonard Nimoy's job as Xehanort. All the voices were done by experienced voice actors which = good voice acting.
Points: 8 Maybe Leonard Nimoy was a little to raspy at times but hey he's and old man playing an old man.
Mechanics:
This is also very nice. I have heard that these are the best Kingdom Hearts controls to date but seeing this is my first I'll just rate them how I see em'. You have a deck of the left side of the screen that determines what will happen when you press the action buttons. You have to build your deck to your liking whether it be magic based or brawling based. Just scroll through your deck and choose and BOOM hit your target. The camera was pretty good but I was a little bit ticked at the auto target system. I want to go after the little enemy that throwing wind discs at me not the GIANT one thats standing idle looking pretty. It just takes a little R button press to switch the targets but often I was just button mashing and when the little enemy died it would auto target the big guy again instead of the little guys friends slaughtering me who happen to be inches away from my feet, so it was a little annoying.
Points: 8 This was the fun part of the game by far
Lasting appeal:
Did this keep my attention? Yes. Did it annoy the crap out of me in the process? Yes. I'm going to make this very clear, don't pick up this game unless your a rabid Square Enix / Kingdom Hearts fan because if you jump into it without know squat like me this game might seem like more of a chore than a gaming experience. Granted I finished all 3 character storylines just to see if it got any better, but it didn't.....it just didn't. Also the loading times were longer than father time's beard.
Points: 5 Booooo a game need more than mechanics you know
Overall:
Like I said before, If you have liked Kingdom Hearts before then by all means go for it and play this game. Its in no way broken but the Characters ruined it and then barely kept its charm alive. I know for sure I'm staying far away from the Kingdom Hearts series from now on.
Points: 5 Better luck next time
TOTAL: 46/70
It seems my higher scores from the graphics and sound section made up for the poor character and overall section. Now I you'll excuse me I think I hear a mob of rabid Kingdom Hearts fans who would like to rip me limb from limb
-Anna
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