As I'm sure most of you who know me on the board already know, Kingdom Hearts is my JAM. My favorite series of video games by far coming in first even ahead of Pokémon and Zelda. The amazing graphical detail, and the exploits of the brave protagonists create a comfortable gaming atmosphere that reaches a whole new level of immersion and Disney-filled fulfillment.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is unique because there are three protagonists that are all playable characters. Ventus, Terra, and Aqua have all grown up on the Land of Departure trained by Keyblade Master Eraqus. The game revolves around their exploits and adventures in managing being responsible masters, and controlling the darkness that attempts to control them. Unfortunately while one of them, Terra, falls into darkness, the struggles of himself and his comrades prove to be effective against fighting back Xehanort in the hopes that Terra will once again be able to reclaim his true self.

Gameplay follows an identical pattern to previous games; Birth by Sleep is largely about fighting hordes of enemies. After choosing your hero, you travel through various game worlds, most of which are based on Disney franchises. The likes of Peter Pan’s Neverland, Sleeping Beauty’s Enchanted Dominion and Snow White’s Dwarf Woodlands are all here to explore, and while there you’ll meet up with the likes of Minnie Mouse, Winnie The Pooh, Pluto and many more familiar characters.

Let's go! Review #4!

Graphics: 10/10

I honestly bought a PSP to play this game. That being said, anything less than a 10 in terms of graphics would be a tad disappointing.

What's truly remarkable is how a portable console can have graphics that are as visually appealing as BBS. The gameplay is incredibly well designed, and the combat system improves upon that of previous KH titles, and at the same time remains true to the typical imagery and animation found in the aforementioned titles. It's classical and innovative at the same time which is partially what makes it so incredible.

Again though, Birth by Sleep's true graphical greatness is found in it's cutscenes. With a total of 3 protagonist stories the game has a total of over 7 hours of beautifully designed animated shorts that illustrate the character's emotions and struggles more powerfully than combat or quest boxes ever could. I found that Ventus's cutscenes were especially powerful because of the struggles he underwent to escape the grasp of Xehanort and Vanitas, the game's main antagonists.

In my humble (and correct) opinion, Birth by Sleep has presented the best graphics in any hand held Kingdom Hearts game. Easily beating out 358/2 Days, Re: Coded, and Dream Drop Distance for the title.

Sound/Music: 9/10

The music of the Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep video game series was composed by Yoko Shimumora with orchestral music arranged by Kaoru Wada. The original soundtracks of the games have been released on three albums and a fourth compilation album. The soundtracks to the Kingdom Hearts games feature several musical pieces from both Disney films and Final Fantasy games.

Arguably the most important part to any Kingdom Hearts game is it's ability to incorporate various Disney worlds into one came and watch as characters from parallel Disney universes intermingle amongst one another. It's beautiful, in a geeky, video game nerdy kind of way. But for that process to be successful, it becomes necessary to draw from a plethora of musical sources. Each individual Disney world has music that's characteristic of it's movie. Even the spaceship you adventure on with Stitch has some iconic Lilo and Stitch sounds.

And of course. When discussing music you can't leave out Sanctuary, by Utada Hikaru. Since I talked about it a lot in my first review of Kingdom Hearts, I won't go into how brilliant to music is. But know that it IS brilliant, and anyone who hasn't listened to it should. Like RIGHT now.

The only reason that Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep doesn't get a 10 is because the PSP doesn't allow for some of the tracks to come out as clearly and crisply as I'd like. It's just me being picky to be honest. Yeah, I tend to do that.

Addictiveness: 9/10

The game for me was almost impossible to put down while playing. I played BBS every opportunity I found during the day until I finally "beat" Vanitas and Xehanort.

However I've found that playing one single Kingdom Hearts game can be somewhat exhausting. It takes a lot to be able to keep up with the twisty, turny KH storyline if you're not accustomed to it. But BBS is a bit different. The dynamic of having three separate protagonists greatly boosts the game's already stellar levels of addictiveness because it allows to user to experience the same events they've progressed through from two other key perspectives. Putting these perspectives together gives the player the whole view of the game's thrilling plot. So, even after you've completed one storyline you almost feel compelled to keep playing to complete all other aspects to the other protagonists' stories.

This gives the game a score of 9.

Story: 7/10

The one unpopular opinion I'm sure to have in this review is my perception of the story's quality. It's not that Birth by Sleep's story is bad. In
fact it's quite good.

*Setting Summary*

Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the first Kingdom Hearts game, taking place ten years prior. Like the other games in the series, the player progresses through a collection of various worlds, based on various locales from the Disney animated features canon: Dwarf Woodlands from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Enchanted Dominion from Sleeping Beauty, Castle of Dreams from Cinderella, Olympus Coliseum from Hercules, Deep Space from Lilo and Stitch,  Neverland from Peter Pan, and Mysterious Tower from Fantasia. The game also features various new worlds specially created for the series by Square Enix such as the Land of Departure and Radiant Garden. Disney Town, which is the town that surrounds the castle grounds of Disney Castle, serves as the game's minigame world. Worlds such as Destiny Islands and Castle Oblivion also appear in the form of cutscenes, while the 100 Acre Wood from the Winnie the Pooh franchise, which had appeared in most other games of the series, only appears as a Command Board in Birth by Sleep. The staff first chose the worlds based on the game's scenario, leading to the inclusion of Princesses' worlds. They then added the worlds of Neverland and Deep Space to add variety to the game, while Olympus Coliseum was selected to reflect the game's earlier setting compared to the original Kingdom Hearts.
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The story just didn't hold as much value for me because

1. As a general rule I'm not a huge fan of prequels
2. The plot line is getting even more convoluted
3. The amount of touchy feely dialogue increased dramatically.

That being said, the game's story isn't poor. It's just a bit much, presenting yet another twist in a story that could be continued without so many unnecessary plot alterations.

Depth: 8/10

Honestly there isn't much left to say for the depth category. As I said in my first KH review, the reason I rank depth lower than the rest is because the plot line of every world you visit revolves around the same three things.

Kill unversed
Kill boss
Find/don't find companions.

But Birth by Sleep gets a slightly higher depth rating than it's predecessor because of how seamlessly it integrates characters from future/past KH games. For example, the scene where Axel fights Ventus is golden. It's one of my favorite scenes in the entire game because of how brilliantly is shows off Axel's humanity that he tried so hard to hide in KH2.

Difficulty: 6/10

The Birth by Sleep interface is slightly different than the interface of past handheld KH games. But it's still very easy and with a three different game modes to change how hard you want the mobs to be, anyone with a basic knowledge of games could complete it.

Even without extensive knowledge of battle like most Kingdom Hearts games, you can't really go wrong with mashing the X button to attack. Keep potions handy and a Curaga ready to go and you should be fine in almost any encounter.

However I would like to add that while the difficulty may be low the option to change your difficulty does make the game significantly more interesting as it makes mobs much more durable, and in some cases even gives bosses a few extra abilities and powers to hit you with.

Graphics = 10*20% = 2

Sound/Music = 9*15% = 1.35

Addictiveness = 9*25% = 2.25

Story = 7*15% = 1.05

Depth = 8*20% = 1.6

Difficulty = 6*5% = 0.3

Overall Score : 8.6/10

GO PLAY THIS GAME. IT'S WONDERFUL.

Seriously though. This is a quality title that everyone should try at least once before deciding it isn't for them. So pick up your keyblade and jump on in!

Takz out.

NVTaks : i can not tell you how much i love this game and now i love it more because of this great Review of it you put together you told basically all about it and made some interesting thoughts that might bring new people to start playing this series. so thumbs up for you