Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep Review
If Kingdom Hearts is Tetsuya Nomura’s attempt at making his version of Star Wars with Disney characters in, then Birth By Sleep is the prequel trilogy. Though this may sound pretty damning, but I thought that Birth by Sleep was far more engaging.
BBS takes place about 10 years before the events of Kingdom Hearts 1 and tells the story of a group of three apprentice Keyblade wielders, who each get a separate campaign. Ventus, Terra and Aqua are analogues of Sora, Riku and Kairi, but with some key differences to make them feel more distinct. Ventus has to deal with a feeling of inadequacy, as he is constantly having to look up to his two other friends and has a strong rivalry throughout the game with one of its major villains. Terra has a much stronger sense of loyalty to his friends than Riku and would never turn against them. Rather than one big betrayal, Terra is tricked by the villain of each world, but always manages to set things right in the end. I like Terra, but the formula gets a bit repetitive and you would think that he would be a lot more sceptical as the game goes on and start questioning the first person he meets a bit more.
The only real parallel Aqua has with Kairi is that they both serve as the guiding light for the rest of the group. Kairi’s character suffers from a lack of presence in the series and does not get much development. Aqua on the other hand is the strong female lead that the franchise has been missing up to this point. She comes across as a strong leader and negotiator who is far more in control of the situation compared to the other two protagonists. Her interactions with the Disney worlds feel the most traditional, with her assisting the protagonist of whatever world she is in and solving an altered version of the plot of whatever the world is based on. The problem here is that Terra and Ventus get a lot more character development during these parts of the game, making them the best implementation of the Disney worlds yet, while Aqua has to wait until near the end of the game where she ascends to being the main protagonist.
BBS ticks all of the boxes that I think you need to tick for a good prequel. For starters, you know that things are not going to end well for these characters and that creates a lot of tension. It also presents new information for future games to build on. Admittedly, it adds two more versions of the antagonist but this is not a problem in the context of this game alone. Overall the story in this one is very strong.
Gameplay wise, I think this game is the best in the series. It is dramatically different from the main games and is instead a far more elegant implementation of the idea of having a deck of cards that dictate what you can do from Chain of Memories. Rather than the fiddly system where you have to select a group of cards to perform a special attack, you get a much smaller deck that consisting of the special attacks themselves and you are always able to perform basic attacks. Each ability has a cooldown, but you have quite a few options in your arsenal other than relying entirely on the command deck which includes various block, dodge and counter manoeuvres. Commands gain experience and rank up when you have them equipped. After levelling them up a bit, you can combine them to make new commands. This means you are constantly having to change up and adapt to different move sets. When you create a new command via melding, you can also add an ingredient that will give you a passive ability while you have it equipped. You can subsequently gain that passive ability permanently by fully levelling up the command.
Your other three main combat options are your shot lock, Dimension Links and style switching. A shot lock is a charged attack that uses up the focus gauge. While firing your shot lock, you are immune to damage and on a fully charged shot lock you can extend the attack with correctly timed button presses. You unlock several shot locks of varying charge times over the course of the game so use quicker shot locks if you just want to buy time for your skills to charge or long ones if you can pull them off for massive damage.
D-Links represent your character’s relationships with other characters they meet throughout their campaign. When your D-Link gauge is maxed out, you can activate one of the D-Links you have unlocked which replaces your command deck with another temporarily and lets you use a unique special attack when you fill your style gauge. This is incredibly useful early game when you have a small command deck and a limited selection of commands. Once you have hit the midpoint of the campaign and the size of your command deck is at its maximum, I stopped using them because levelling them up is too random for them to be reliable, and they do not work in the Mirage Arena.
Your style gauge fills up at you land attacks. When it fills up, you can perform a finishing move. However, if you meet the requirements, you will instead style shift which replaces all of your basic attacks with more powerful ones. Usually these requirements are something easy, such as using attacks of a specific element, so it does not require a massive amount of effort to pull off. Late in the game, you unlock a second tier of styles you can activate after style shifting once that are even more powerful. This encourages you to pay attention to what attacks you are using, as some styles are more situational than others.
The main flaws I had with these systems was that certain elements were unnecessarily obtuse. You can learn new finishing moves, but the game does not lay out what you are supposed to do to unlock them, and you will not have any idea what abilities you are going to get on a new command without using a guide. There are also quite a few mini games this time around, and while they were enjoyable, they were also somewhat unpolished. A major one is the Command Board which is a passable roll and move board game that is a massive time sink with exclusive commands locked behind it. You can get arena medals by playing it, but only at the Mirage Arena, which makes playing it elsewhere seem like a bit of a trap. I would usually play a single game of it to get a leg up on my commands at the start of the game and then leave it alone. Finally, having to go through the same worlds three times does get a bit old by the third time round as you will have seen most of what each world has to offer by the end of your second run.
There are a couple of issues with this version of the game specifically. For starters, the Mirage arena, where a good chunk of the very healthy post-game takes place, originally had multiplayer features that were cut in this version of the game. I think asking for dedicated servers was a little too much, but a peer-to-peer system could have been implemented. There are also occasions when the game uses a low resolution font which really sticks out. Otherwise the game looks fairly good for an upscaled PSP game. The level design can feel a bit empty due to the PSP’s limitations and levels being designed as big combat arenas like they where in Kingdom Hearts 2. The soundtrack is probably my favourite so far.
In spite of some repetition, Birth By Sleep is my favourite game in the series. In spite of having three characters sharing the spotlight, I felt the characters in Birth By Sleep where more interesting and developed in comparison to Sora. The combat engine and character advancement systems are incredibly engaging.
Now the whole of the first Kingdom Hearts HD collection on PS4 has been reviewed by me, I can say that for Both Kingdom Hearts II and Birth By Sleep it is worth it but at this point you can just buy Kingdom Hearts: The Story so far for only £6 more which contains both HD collections bundled together.
