Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

– Writing/Story-

Characteristically for a Kingdom Hearts game the characters are likeable while tending to be a little stereotypical and shallow, but oddly enough quite memorable.
The english voice acting ranges from actually quite decent all the way to very underwhelming, but I can imagine that acting some of these really clunky, cheesy and subpar dialogue lines can be quite a challenge if you are not already an accomplished and experienced voice actor like Mark Hamill and Leonard Nimoy, who are doing a great job voicing Eraqus and Xehanort.
Storywise this is probably one of the if not the most important game one has to play to understand the entire plot of the long lasting Kingdom Hearts series.
It serves as a gigantic origin story to pretty much everything relevant in the franchise, explaining multiple plot points in other Kingdom Hearts games and is experienced through the eyes of three protagonists with different routes to choose from.
For a full grasp of the story you are required to play through all three routes with the final boss for each route revealing new aspects of the overall plot, heavily differing from character to character.
While Ventus‘ and Terra‘s route are quite interesting from a plot point of view, Aqua‘s route is bland and basically consists of Aqua chasing after her friends, trying to make them see reason and come back to their homeworld.
The final boss of Aqua‘s route makes up for it, but playing through her standard route is unappealing at best.
The biggest highlight is probably the reveal of Xehanort as the main villain of the entire saga, showing ties to all the other Kingdom Hearts and how they are intertwined in Xehanort‘s grand scheme and goal.
Apart from that the story holds its own pretty well and is one of the more interesting plots of the franchise, especially when seen in a bigger context and what it does for the entire story of the series.

– Visuals –

For a Playstation Portable title the game looks quite nice but of course never reaches the visual level of one of the home console entries.
There are many complaints which could be made about how bland, linear and uninspired the worlds themselves are, but I think that is majorly due to the limitations of the platform the game released on.
Back then the Playstation Portable already had massive trouble running the game smoothly, so I understand why they had to keep it simple in size one way or the other.

– Gameplay –

Like in Chain of Memories, the combat system and progression system got revamped by quite a huge margin, but in contrast to Chain of Memories, I think Birth by Sleep managed to change the combat system into something very enjoyable.
While the whole command system rubbed me the wrong way at the start, it really grew on me.
Also the introduction of charging finishers and shotlocks were huge pluses in my book, adding something very unique to the combat system, while sadly replacing magic bars and equippable abilities.
I personally really disliked the very slow nature of fights in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep though, they feel unusually sluggish for a Kingdom Hearts game and especially Terra feels like playing the game in slow motion.
I understand why they wanted to make all the three protagonists feel different in terms of gameplay with Ventus relying on speed and dodging, Aqua leaning towards a more magic based combat style and Terra being the slow heavy hitter, but Terra really feels just awful and clunky to play.
Speaking of clunky, the platforming sections of the game are probably the most clunky platforming the series has ever seen.
People used to complain about Kingdom Hearts platforming since the first game, but Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep really takes the cake here, the controls feel stiff and sometimes even a bit stubborn when it comes to jumping and climbing and I don‘t believe that anyone would miss these sections if they were gone.
Another aspect plaguing all entries of the series are the forced minigames you have to play.
They have always been my personal biggest weak point in all Kingdom Hearts games and I hate most of them with a passion, because they disturb the flow of the game and have you play through badly designed distractions to drag out the game more for whatever reason.
Maybe I am a bit harsh here, but I never understood how you can remotely enjoy the majority of minigames being thrown at you.
Another questionable design choice are the difficulty spikes towards the end.
Enemies suddenly hit way harder and act like damage sponges with you either having to hammer the attack button for minutes to get one pile of mobs down or you go back and grind in worlds you already finished.
Both sounds like terrible game design and I don‘t see how this bypassed the testing at Square Enix.
Making the bosses towards the end tougher is understandable, but blasting damage into damage sponges is plain boring and just wastes your time, strongly slowing down your progress.
But that is maybe due to the game before you enter the late game being such a cake walk with you almost never being in danger of dying.
So it might be the contrast of these two which is feels like a bummer.
Speaking of difficulty spikes, some final bosses in this game are easily some of the hardest bosses of the entire series.
The most infamous probably being the final boss of Terra‘s route with many people advising to just cheese him down with healing spells and countering his attack with block.
I personally didn‘t mind the really rough challenge of the final bosses in this game and actually appreciated it, but I can see how some people play through the entire game and just can‘t get past the final boss, being frustrated so close to the goal.
As the last big negative I want to bring up the keyblades you get as a reward for finishing the worlds.
Outside of your standard and final keyblade, all the keyblades are dull, uninspired and add barely anything to your playstyle outside of boosting some of your attack and magic stats.
As someone who always really looked forward of trying out new keyblades and how they have to be used effectively, it was one of the hugest letdowns in this game.

– World Design –

The worlds you visit are even staler and more boring than the ones in Kingdom Hearts 2, but that was to be expected from a Playstation Portable game.
Also the problem of having three protagonists running through the same worlds obviously is that doing so will get repetitive really soon and it definetely hurts the experience even more due to the worlds themselves being so linear, boring and uninspired.
While the events in said worlds are different from each other, depending on the chosen route, it doesn‘t help much.
Especially the Lilo & Stitch world is an all time low designwise in the entire franchise.
It is literally a bunch of corridors with rooms and then a boss fight in one of those rooms.
Sure it is a spaceship, but even spaceships can be designed in a more appealing way.

Conclusion: Overall this game is an absolute must for everyone who wants to fully understand the Kingdom Hearts franchise, but I am sure that every single true Kingdom Hearts fan already knows that and I am just extremely late to the party.
For everyone else I can’t really recommend this game, because I simply don’t think it is a good game from a rational standpoint.
Instead I would suggest to play the original Kingdom Hearts from 2002 and if is that to your liking and you really want to get deeper into the franchise, then Birth by Sleep is the game for you eventually…after playing Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days beforehand…of course.