Wait a second. Soul searching adolescent, defeating darkness with a key, and classic Disney characters? That’s right, it’s another addition to the Kingdom Hearts series. What’s that? You’ve never played Kingdom Hearts before? Don’t worry about it. This game is a prequel to the series so you don’t need any prior knowledge to understand it. Being that the game takes place ten years before the start of the first Kingdom Hearts, you’ll be playing as an all new cast of characters.
You’ll start off playing as Ventus. The game will run you through the tutorial and a couple of friendship filled cutscenes, and then the real game begins. At this point you will choose the character you wish to play as for the rest of the game. Each character has their own story and sometimes will cross paths with the other two characters.
Playing as all three characters creates a mystery kind of feel as you try to piece together what the others are doing. This is a bit of a double edged blade though. Sure it’s fun to see all three perspectives on what they were doing before they meet up, but by the third time I was going through the game I was really getting tired of the same boss battles and cutscenes. This isn’t a killer for the game, but I find myself being thankful that there wasn’t a fourth character to play as.
The combat in this game is exactly what you would expect and then some. It’s fast and fluid, so jumping from one enemy to another is an easy task. My only complaint here is that sometimes you end up hitting an enemy far enough back with one hit that your next hit in the combo misses. I’ve mostly found trouble with this happening to hovering enemies in the game and it can really frustrating if it happens multiple times in a row. Combat is still fun, but this can really ruin the moment.
Birth by Sleep has forsaken the magic system found in most RPG’s in favor of a new Deck system. No it isn’t anything like Chain of Memories (thank goodness). The deck system really allows the player to utilize the battle system to the best of their ability. An experienced player could make a complex deck to string together a great combo, but the average player can keep a simple setup to make the game easier for them.
You can customize your "deck" allowing you to bring in different spells or special attacks for battle. Each of these spells and special attacks has their own separate downtime after use. In the time it takes to cast the high level spell Curaga you could have cast two low level Cure spells.
This is where you can start to come up with strategies for what you want in your Deck. After you have mastered a spell or special attack you can also combine them to make more commands. Such as combining Strike Raid( a move where you throw your key at enemies) and Blizzard (shots and ice based projectile) to create the new move Freeze Raid (an iced up version of Strike Raid).
For every hit you land or spell you cast the Command bar fills. When you fill it all the way you will do a powerful finishing hit. There is more to it than just that though. Let’s say that while you are fighting you use an ice based move such as Blizzard. Well now when the command gauge fills you have a chance of going into Diamond Dust mode. Now you do more damage and all your hits have ice element on them. There are more modes than just Diamond Dust and those who have played Kingdom Hearts II will recognize this gameplay as being similar to the "Form" system.
There is also a multiplayer feature to this game as well. You can enter the Mirage Arena, which houses all the mini-games found in game as well as versus and arena modes. With this you can team up with your friends or fight them to earn medals. Medals allow you to buy magic or special attacks that can only be found in the Mirage Arena. Some are specifically meant to be used in the arena such as Group Cure, but there are others that function in the single player game as well.
Also to note is the mini-games. These are mostly found in Disney Town and are generic (like a racing game for instance,) but there is an important one that is available from your in game menu. This is the Command Board. Basically it’s a board game between you and other characters. It’s sound kind of boring at first but honestly it is really fun.
You move your character around the board and capture panels with magic or special attack command that you have. If an opposing character steps on this panel then they will be penalized a certain amount of GP. Making laps around the board and touching special panels will also earn you more GP. When you reach the minimum amount of GP that is needed all you have to do is step on the starting/finishing panel. After this the spells or special attacks that you used will gain experience toward mastering them. This is a nice little addition that has me visiting the Command Board every couple of hours to help boost my magic and special attacks.
The voice acting in this game is great. The actors really breathe emotion into the characters and help them come alive. This should be expected as well with many veteran actors such as Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill lending their voices to the mix.
On a similar note the music in the game is beautiful. With many of the songs coming straight from Disney movies it really helps you feel like the story of the game is actually what happened in the movies.
Square Enix has gone above and beyond the call of duty to produce a game on a handheld that can truly compete with console games. This is a great game for any RPG player and a must have for a fan of the series.