Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

Listen Square Enix; you have to stop jerking around Kingdom Hearts fans like they’ll wait around forever. If you’re not going to give them Kingdom Hearts III, then just tell them. Sure they’ll hate you for a while, but at least they’ll stop being disappointed every time you make a handheld Kingdom Hearts game. I actually bought Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep because this is the game hinted at in the secret ending of Kingdom Hearts II; the one where three people stood in a barren wasteland littered with abandoned key blades known as the key blade graveyard. This brought about certain excitement from fans because we were lead to believe that having a key blade was something very special indeed. I mean the first game had only one wielder, and that was Sora. But lately, it seems they’ve just been handing them out to every androgynous teenager that just shows up. Even Kairi at one point wields her own pink brand key blade. At that point the story got a little ridiculous (and that’s saying a lot with this series). But seeing all the key blades abandoned in the aftermath of what could have only been some epic battle, the excitement level for another installment was never higher. And then we got Kingdom Hearts: 386/2 Days. A handheld game exclusive to the Nintendo DS that was limited by its hardware because you can’t go from console to handheld and expect the game play to stay the same, a lesson everyone should’ve learned with Chains of Memories. But if we didn’t want to play KH: 386/2 Idiots, we had a PSP option in the form of Birth by Sleep (also known as KH:BS, with extra emphasis on the BS part).

I tried to give the PSP hardware a little credit that it could actually reproduce the game play of the only two numbered games in the series and deliver a satisfying experience. How shameful of me, I almost forgot that this game was being made by Square Enix. Let’s see how they screwed it up.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. The graphics are good, almost on par with the PS2 incarnations. Every cut scene and character stays true to its source material and never falter. But we have to remember that this is probably where all the money went to when making this game, so I feel stupid for praising it. I’m sure Square Enix reads all these reviews and just scans for what’s said over their precious graphics; gleefully pointing out every time a game review says “despite everything, the graphics are amazing”. Honestly, I couldn’t give a crap about the graphics of this game. It’s now something that I expect from them. And if they ever fail to deliver nothing but graphical perfection, I will turn in a second’s notice, for they are on thin ice with me ever since Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and that stupid law system.

As far as the soundtrack is, just imagine every area having only one song and having that 2 minute song repeated endlessly. I’m not looking for high art here, but for crying out loud, I want something that actually inspires me to set forth into uncharted worlds and conquer evil. I don’t need some Japanese pop star singing about god-knows-what or its crappy remixed version. Voice acting isn’t terrible, but Terra does have some god-awful deliveries. But even having the voice talents of Orson Welles won’t save your game if the dialog and the story aren’t up to snuff. And what a shame, they aren’t.

Let me give you a summarization of the epic plot. You start off with a Sora-look a like, a childhood friend that will eventually turn evil, and a girl. Sora-wannabe has a strong conviction towards friendship and everything that farts sunshine and puppies, your evil friend has trouble controlling the darkness (this is even shown in the opening sequence, so to be completely oblivious to him being evil at some point requires the mandatory level of retardation needed to work for Activision) and the girl has… boobs. Honestly, the girl, Aqua (named so because her hair is blue?) is the most useless character in the story, and the first character I tried out (because I like magic users even though these games are all about beating up things with giant keys). She really doesn’t contribute a single original thought, motivation or scene in the entire plot. Her entire role is to going around to each world, showing up 10 minutes after everything has happened and go “I can’t believe that would happen”. They even force in moments where you run into Sora, Riku and Kairi when they were still young (well younger) for no apparent reason. Oh look, they’re making reference to the first game. Maybe they’ll do that again by having the camera swing around stupidly in the middle of combat which causes nausea. These nostalgic moments serve nothing to the plot and only are there to make the fans shut up about the lack of KH3 for a few more minutes. But to fully know what’s happening in the game, you have to play through each character’s story, which equates to running through the same nine worlds, watching the same events and doing the same crap about three times. All the while, the game throws out lessons on friendship and hearts and everything else that makes me want to backhand a box of puppies. Events translate to: you get key blade, you go rid worlds of their Unversed problem (this games version of the heartless, although why they need to keep renaming the same type of monsters is beyond me. I guess it’s to make you believe they’re trying to be original) and having your friendship tested. Maybe if there was a bigger crisis affecting the world and not just having a plot that only focuses on the squabble of three pre-teens, I might give a crap.

Speaking from a Square Enix fan (well, really a Square Soft fan) I was disappointed. The primary reason these games became popular was because you could see your favorite Final Fantasy characters out of their element and rendered in better graphics. However, the only Final Fantasy character I found in the entire game was Zack from Crisis Core. Was that the best they could do? Pull a character from another PSP game? Where’s Sephiroth? Where’s Tifa? Sure Zack is a good character, but I crave more. And it’s not like he’s important, he’s merely a combatant in the Olympus World. Because that is the only reason that world is ever added to this series, to serve as a battle arena with all of two areas to explore.

As a Disney fan (not so much as a fan as I liked Phil Collins in Tarzan, I know, I’m a horrible human being) there really isn’t much satisfaction here either. Sure, in the beginning what your character does effects the Disney subplots, but towards the end, what you do in the world doesn’t even really matter. If you subtract the Unversed and your character, everything would’ve just played out normally. It really comes off as a lack of effort to better integrate story with these different levels.

But let’s try desperately to find something to like about this game, like the combat system. Mash X. When you’re done doing that, hit triangle for some variety. But seriously, the combat is quite good at times. You’re given different abilities to work with and you can mix / match / meld them together to create all new abilities with different effects and bonuses. The crafting of said abilities is really well done too. You don’t have to run around for hours, looking for resources and hunting for rare drops. You can buy them all pretty cheaply and the materials used to fuse them drop from enemies frequently. My problem with their integration is you have to use a wheel system which utilizes the d-pad to use them during combat. Hurray, another PSP game that thinks me using the D-pad and analog stick at the same time is a good idea. I’d have a better time using the PSP as dental floss. At least some of the abilities are nice and powerful, making crafting very rewarding. But there is one more problem which is a part of a greater problem with Japanese action games: the dodge button is rubbish. For whatever reason, the Japanese can’t get it that if I press it, it must do something. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of an attack; I need to dodge the second I press it. But not, you’re character has to finish whatever animation they’re in the middle of and return to their original stance before they’ll even think about dodging. This turns combat into more predicting when an enemy attack than it does reward split-second thinking and skill. This is mostly true for every other action you try to perform while you’re swinging around you key blade. Thus, dodging is mostly useless.

The camera is finally handled as a PSP game should handle it, with the L and R buttons. Problem is these buttons also control on the lock on features, switching targets and using some special attack that I rarely ever used. You can switch up the L and R control scheme, but you’re only other options are just varying degrees of stupid. Speaking of stupid controls, I think someone at Square messed up the button assignment. Circle is jump, X is attack, square is dodging / blocking and triangle is abilities. How did circle become the jump button? You know how hard that is to reach on the PSP? Why couldn’t square be attack and X be jump, or even the reverse of that? Why is such a useless feature given the prime spot of the square button? I wouldn’t be as pissed at this if you could reassign the button layout, but you can’t. That’s reserved for the before-mentioned L and R fiasco.

Combat isn’t hampered by controls alone. The camera and lock on system do a poor job of focusing and showing the combat. Enemies will pummel you from off camera constantly. Even if you see them coming, it’s not like you can just use the freaking dodge button! Also, some idiot developer made random objects carry the same targeting priority and enemies. So instead of targeting a particularly threatening enemy, you're more likely the target the seriously menacing foe known as random potted plant. I don’t even want to get into D-links. Just know you can summon the buffoons from other worlds to assist you in battle. Although why you'd want to see anyone in this game more than once is beyond me.

At least the boss battles provided some enjoyment. No two really can be approached the same way to begin with. But even that didn’t last. It’s like this game blew all its good ideas right away in the beginning of the game and phoned it in the rest of the way. Some of the boss battles didn’t even make sense. Take the first one, which is the pumpkin chariot from Cinderella. Wasn’t that a creation of the fairy god mother? How did that become evil? It’s not like it was sitting around, the story clearly has it being destroyed before the prince goes looking for Cinderella (according to the Disney movie), and so why is it back and evil? Did the Unversed resurrect the pumpkin and had it transform back into the chariot? That seems like a long way to go when they could’ve just called upon something from the darkness. Really, anything, just pull a creature out of your butt and throw it at me. Or what about the evil step mother and her two daughters? Couldn’t they think of some creative way to incorporate them into a boss battle?

It seems I've done a good job of beating this game up, but I saved a special complaint area for one more glaring flaw. Load times. Load times, load times, load times. My god are they painful. Even when you fully install the game at 600mbs, the game loads like molasses. Going from cut scene to cut scene, moving to a new area, entering your powered up form or even opening the game's menu: the game loads. These load times are actually so bad, that I get into a hypnotic stare with the loading symbol every time, visualizing it rotating one way, then the other, then back in forth. I don't know why this game has to suffer so much with it. Final Fantasy Tactics had some lag issues, but Crisis Core seemed to play okay. Is it because the areas are a little more vast, or the graphics a little better? Or maybe it's because they padded out the game play over 3 character story lines instead of one. For whatever reason, you will spend a significant amount of time staring at the loading screen. If you've played Dragon Age on a console, you know what I'm talking about.

It really wouldn’t be a Square Enix game if there weren’t some mindless mini-games that serve to distract you from the blandness that ultimately is the game play. You’re given a battle arena (one different from the Mount Olympus), a racing game which uses about 3 different tracks and a board game simulation. None of which are that appealing unless you’re trying to 100% the game, and my experience with the board game is bat-crap dumb. The only time I’ve tried it, I rolled onto some random space that summoned Pete from the Mickey Mouse cartoons in full super hero garbs and he proceeded to drain my currency every single turn, thus making it impossible for me to win. And this was on turn 2. I was basically doomed from the beginning; rolling the dice to somehow fool myself into thinking I had a chance. From what I understand, which isn’t a lot, it’s a more complicated version of monopoly and… that’s about as much as I got. It looked overly complicated and full of extra fluff to pad out an unoriginal concept.

Overall, this seems like another pointless attempt to quell a fan base when Square Enix damn well knows what game we all want. They’d just rather throw up some stupid excuses as to why they haven’t made Kingdom Hearts III yet. Oh, but thanks for announcing Re: Coded and a 3DS game. I’m sure that will make everyone happy. I don’t get it Square Enix. You’re in a position to make games that your fan base is basically screaming for, and yet you make every attempt to ignore them to push out some other piece of crap. I don’t care if PS3 development is hard and take some time, we’ll wait. Other game designers seem to be having no problem making PS3 games on a regular basis. I mean, look at Bethesda: they’ve made Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas in about four years time. Maybe if you didn’t fondle yourselves over your Crystal Tools graphic engine, you’d be able to make more than one console game and one abysmal online game. Let Eidos make the game if you need to, I don’t think the Tomb Raider series is that important that we need another one right away. We just got Guardian of Light.

So is the game worth getting? If you like Kingdom Hearts, maybe. Honestly though, its a prequel to the original game. I don't think anything will be a surprise. Prequels have that tendency to either have them all killed off or some other plot convenient method of explaining why all the characters from this one aren't in the others.