Birth By Sleep ~ Kingdom Hearts

I am a big fan of the Kingdom Hearts series.They are a lot of fun to play and have soundtracks, characters, story, and gameplay to brag about. I never would have thought that Disney and Final Fantasy could blend so well together.

Birth By Sleep takes place before the original story, leading up to the first game and giving everyone a chance to experience the story of the Keyblade Masters. You play as three different characters; Terra, Aqua, and Ventus, who each have their own story to play. It is a unique design as each character makes choices along the way individual to their personality as well as each fighting with different strengths and weaknesses.

There are many similarities to Kingdom Hearts I & II in Birth By Sleep, as well as several notable differences. You play on many different worlds, meeting familiar and new characters as you progress, as it is with the previous games. However, the battle system and abilities have changed. At first I was a little intimidated by them, but I quickly became accustomed and actually quite fond of playing with different magics and skills, and learning new abilities as a result. The other noteworthy new feature was the Multiplayer mode. I found it a fun pastime with friends, not much more than that, but still enjoyable.

I played through the game on the Proud difficulty, which I would recommend for two reasons. First, it is a much better challenge than the Standard difficulty. And second, on Proud mode all you need to do is beat the game and get all of Xehanort's Reports to achieve the secret ending. Yes, you want the secret ending. I do not suggest Standard mode because, lack of challenge aside, the requirements to get the secret ending are much more difficult and time consuming. Also, take note that trying the game in Critical mode is just crazy. That sort of difficulty is far beyond reasonable limits...

If you own a PSP, I would definitely recommend this game. And if you have, for some strange and bizarre reason, never played the Kindgom Hearts games, best you get started!