Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep - Sony PSP

(To add perspective to my review, I am a 22year old male) Kingdom Hearts is one of the few series that manages to nail sequels, and Birth by Sleep is no exception. If you are a newcomer to the series or a veteran, this game will suck you in and keep you enthralled to the end. Every aspect of the game is a rewarding and enjoyable experience. I played the game through on the hardest difficulty (and struggled a good deal) and I found myself playing the mini-game board game (used for obtaining goodies for unlocking new moves) as a welcome relief to catch my breath before the next onslaught of chaos and darkness. Specifics though... Combat: Real-time, fluid, fast paced, combines hack and slash with strategy for a happy mix Character Progression: Unbelievable, this portion of the game resonated with me EXTREMELY well... you start with low level abilities or spells, and you can simply combine almost any spell/move via something called synthesis and presto, a new move! If you toss an item in the mix with the synthesis, it adds a perk such as invulnerable while casting heal or auto suck-in items that drop or even gain 1 exp for every step you take. The premise for these perks is, a spell starts at lvl 1, and by using it etc it levels up, (to lvl 3 or 4 max) and once it reaches that lvl, the perk attached to the spell is yours to keep and use forever, regardless or if you unequip the spell, or synthesize it into something new. Visuals: Gorgeous, a fresh batch of heartless were created with maybe 1 or 2 semi-familiar ones. The keyblades are new and full of wondrous intricacy. All characters have their own styles, animations, and even keyblade grip techniques. Audio: I forgot to pay attention to music, but it was good. The voice overs though....wonderful! Keeping strong in this tradition, dialog and voices actually drew you in and made the story grow deep. (as opposed to those games where youd press mute whenever anyone spoke to avoid embarrassment should someone overhear it...you know you all did it for KH1 little mermaid world haha) and by the way...LEONARD NEMOY is the voice of Xehanort! Thats Spock for those of you who arnt aware...but if you didnt know that, you probably wont care. None the less. Quality voice actors (which is surprising for a mobile game) Story: great, I wont say anything else but it kept me playing for sure. 1 Complaint: The game is broken up so you select 1 character out of 3 (Ventus, Terra, Aqua), play the entire game through them start to finish and see the story evolve from their perspective. Say if your Aqua, you arrive at ???s planet or world and maybe Terra has already been there, so youll be learning about what he helped with while he was there and what needs doing from where he left off. This is fine and feels good and like a full experience...however. Once you beat the game all the way through, its hard to motivate yourself to now pickup the next character and re-visit all the worlds and replay the entire game, granted it is DIFFERENT, with all different experiences, you still see the same worlds and are a part of the same over-all story, all be it from a different perspective. The 3 perspective approach is a great idea, but if they were all together, so you had to (or could choose to) skip back and forth between each character and complete events in chronological order, this would allow you to experience all their stories without replaying the game. Minor fault though...I played it, loved it, will pick it up again sometime for a replay, but instead of replay it will be new with a new character and story...so excellent replay value atleast 3 times!

This is the second KH game I have played, the first being 365/2 days. I was relieved that I didnt have to know much of the story to get into it (So confused with 365/2 days). I loved the story and the battle arena you could visit, and the worlds had a decent size map. I enjoyed playing with the different characters it gave some variety. The big con for me would be some of the mini games which some are mandatory to complete or to get 100 % completion for the game overall. I would recommend to anyone, and now Im going back to play the first KH so I can understand more!

Probably my favorite of the series. It can be considered easy even on critical until you get to the secret bosses. Then it becomes impossible and you will not win.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is a great prequel to the kingdom hearts series that helps understand kingdom hearts complex story line. I highly recommend this title to new comers to the series and old fans that want to enjoy a kingdom hearts tittle until Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD remake comes out in September for PS3 and the long awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 which comes out in two to three years for the PS4 and XBOX1

I have to admit, I am a die-hard KH fan, but to tell you the truth, I am getting tired of all of these side-story games. I have played every game released in the United States and so I know the whole story. Out of all of the side story games (Chain of Memories, RE:chain of Memories, Coded, 358/2 Days), I think it is second. 358/2 Days is still my favorite. But the storyline is pretty good. The graphics are superb, but personally, I expected better gameplay. It was mixing 358/2 days with the original games. It was good they were trying something different... but I wanted to have some more... KH1/KH2 parts since the game was for PSP, not for the DS or GBA. The controls were sometimes a little hard to handle, but thats coming from someone who rarely plays the PSP. I am more of a nintendo person. XP But yeah, I got it fast and for cheaper than in the stores (about 33% less) through Amazon. A great KH game, and I hope they finally get to making KH3! XD

Kingdoms hearts birth by sleep is a great game specially for those who like or are familiar with the other two KH sequel. This game is fairly long, somewhat because it allows the player to complete the game in 3 different characters (terra, ventus, aqua); which are in 3 different settings of the worlds or their crossing paths. The near end part this story have taken me by surprise. Looking forward to these KH games

Nothing special but not too bad either. Just the endless repeating is kinda boring and the side-quests are not that great. Story was rather hollow and uninteresting but it was ok at times, i enjoyed it to some extent. Liked Aqua and Mickey the most. I consider 358/2 Days way better than this one. My favorite games are I and 358. Then II. The other games are decent but not a favorite.

My stepdaughter gave me the money to buy this for her. She has previously played kingdom hearts 1 and 2 on her ps2 and since she bought a psp recently, she was saving up the money to buy this prequel. This was purchased at a reasonable price. She loves this game. She has been playing it for hours with no signs of stopping.

Just might be the best Kingdom Hearts game. Ever. Made. There are 3 different characters & storylines to play through, the new gameplay mechanics are fun and the graphics are great! The multiplayer arena is a blast with friends and its nice to see some older protagonists come into play. It had me going for a 100% completion rating. Classic.

You can play three different characters with three different journeys, but what annoys me is that you have to protect a certain character until it reaches a certain point. Its the reason a stopped playing Kingdom Hearts 2 on PS2. The first one was much better and I wish they had the PSP version of it.