Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Review

Luckily, while the combat does veer toward the button-mashing side, it's fun, looks fantastic, and evolves in meaningful ways as you play. Armed with a keyblade, you bash on a variety of enemies called the unversed. Each character feels different; Ventus is quick with his blade, Terra takes a more deliberate approach, and Aqua is agile and acrobatic. The three protagonists begin with a specific and small selection of special skills, but as you level up, you open up new slots for additional abilities. Spells and skills level up as well, and you can combine them to unlock new and more powerful moves. Furthermore, as you develop relationships with various characters, you earn associated dimension links, or d-links, which let you take on the battle style and skills of other characters, including Disney heroes and villains. On standard difficulty, Birth by Sleep isn't so challenging that you'll get much tactical advantage from frequently utilizing d-links, but it's one of many ways to refresh the action if it starts feeling repetitive. Further energizing the combat are the various keyblades you collect; heightened attack modes called command styles; and showy special moves called shotlocks. Battles explode with color, and spells and skills have you twirling about the screen, launching enemies into the air with whirlwinds and smashing them with blades of ice, among many other possibilities. Great animations and a solid sense of impact keep the action lively and entertaining, even when the easier and longer sequences threaten to get tedious.

Terra fights better than he talks.

The combat shines during Birth by Sleep's excellent boss fights, which feature some loathsome fiends that will have you looking at various Disney set pieces in a new light. On standard difficulty, combat isn't normally too challenging, but this game isn't the cakewalk of Kingdom Hearts II. It's fun to adjust to the various patterns of the bosses or perhaps switch to a different set of moves that provides better offensive capabilities. The bosses run the visual and tactical gamut, from ground-pounding behemoths to agile swordsmen, and while a few stand out as too easy or too hard, these battles are great fun. You may run into occasional problems with the camera and lock-on systems, however. The camera can't always keep up with the boss you've targeted--or sometimes even standard enemies. As a result, you may lose your target lock at inopportune moments or find the camera facing your character from across the arena. And as in other Kingdom Hearts games, the camera can still become a nuisance in tighter spaces, though this minor annoyance isn't apt to interfere too often.

Platforming has also been an Achilles heel for the series, and the general awkwardness of the jumping makes a few sections, such as Ventus' fetch quest in Cinderella's abode, more bothersome than boisterous. Happily, there are few such sequences, and there's always a fun boss fight around the corner to make up for these small transgressions. However, there are a few other noncombat activities, with the command board being the best of them. This is a surprisingly complex board game in which you can earn and improve your skills outside of battle. You can play it versus the AI or against another local player, though this isn't the only way to enjoy Birth by Sleep with others. By accessing the mirage arena within the single-player game, you can meet up with local players in ad hoc mode and battle them in Versus mode or take on increasingly difficult waves of unversed cooperatively in Arena mode. Given that competitive play is best with a full contingent of six players, it's a pity that there's no online play, even though the game describes these modes as "online."

As fans expected, true identity is an important theme in this prequel.

Nevertheless, Birth by Sleep's multiplayer is really enjoyable, particularly the cooperative arenas. Teaming up with a buddy or two to take down a towering boss, particularly if the players are at about the same level, is immensely rewarding. Furthermore, you earn medals that you can cash in for new abilities and other goodies, including team-based abilities like group heals. You can even forge d-links with other players, which gives you access to their special moves in battle. A kart racer variant called Rumble Racing rounds out the multiplayer suite, but the controls and physics are so weak that it barely warrants a mention. Unfortunately, it appears as a minigame in the single-player portion, though the other minigames you encounter, such as a cute ice cream-themed rhythm game, are relatively harmless.

Like previous games in the franchise, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep provides good value for your money. Slashing through all three story strands may take you 25 hours or more, and the command boards and additional modes provide reasons to return once you've left the story behind. It's unfortunate that Birth by Sleep relies so much on repetition and that a few foibles from the series remain largely untouched. These and a few other woes hold this PSP exclusive back from greatness, but vibrant visuals and snazzy, evolving combat will likely charm fans and newcomers alike into forgiving most of the flaws. Birth by Sleep harbors few surprises, but it's a fun and comfortable addition to a quality series.