Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

[Somebody]

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

Genre: Action Role-Playing

Release Date: TBA

 

 

Previews: Kingdom Hearts PSP

Hands-on impressions of the latest Kingdom Hearts title.

 

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII may well have been a turning point for Square Enix, the moment at which its developers suddenly realized they'd mastered the PSP hardware and should set about milking their success for all it's worth. It was an impressive piece of work -- not just for its technical prowess but also for how perfectly it worked as both a portable game and a spin-off of a blockbuster hit. So the fact that Kingdom Hearts' first PSP venture (subtitled "Birth By Sleep") evokes the feel of Crisis Core should be regarded as a very good thing.

 

Obviously, the two games share a very similar visual style, both being based on the porcelain pretty-boy characters of Square's workhorse designer, Tetsuya Nomura. Birth By Sleep is probably the more attractive game, though; the slightly desaturated blue-tinged visuals of Crisis Core feel rather dull next to the vibrant colors of the Disney canon. That's right: While Sleep has nothing to do with series mainstay Sora and his friends (at least not that we've seen), it's still Kingdom Hearts. And that means Disneyana everywhere.

 

The Sleep demo playable at Square Enix's DKS3713 event in Tokyo let players try their hands at two different heroes, the Zack Fair-like Terra (not to be confused with the demihuman girl from Final Fantasy VI) and the younger Ventus. Both appear to be Keyblade warriors battling through various Disney-inspired scenarios, but each has his own specialties.

 

Terra's sequence was fairly standard KH fare: Players battled through a series of linear paths, moving from a forested area to a rocky ledge and into an enchanted castle, facing off against progressively more difficult foes along the way. The standard Heartless are replaced by similar but different creatures, primarily angular blue fighters with a slight ninja feel and their much larger counterparts. The boss waiting in the castle was a massive, red mechanical construct with multiple body parts to target and the ability to fling portions of itself at the hero -- it's good fun, but it's nothing that hasn't been seen before in a KH title.

 

 

Ventus' scenario, however, was at once the most original take on Kingdom Hearts yet as well as the most frustratingly traditional. Set in Cinderella's world, this sequence saw the hero reduced to a few inches' height and conspiring with Jaq the mouse. In several areas, Ventus was able to hop into a ball of yarn and roll it about the battlefield, crushing enemies along the way for a quick, simple, painless and rather amusing victory. The down side is that Ventus' scenario also required him to backtrack and seek out progressively higher ground, with some unforgiving jumps in which failure meant starting the process of climbing and platform-hopping all over again. While some of the mechanisms were fairly amusing -- the use of forks embedded in the wall as a springboard to higher ground was a nice touch -- it's a bit too reminiscent of some of the worst areas of the original KH, and the nerve-wracking jumps spoil the fun somewhat.

 

Balancing things out is the combat system, which is a significant refinement of the battles of previous titles. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's an elegant evolution of the KH system, incorporating concepts from both of the PS2 titles and the clumsy Chain of Memories into a unified and wholly effective hybrid. As usual, battles are played out as combo-driven melee action sequences with a heavy emphasis on button-mashing. The analog nub controls the heroes, and pressing up and down on the D-pad scrolls through a list of commands. Basic attacks can be executed at leisure, but the command list is a series of special skills activated with the Triangle button. It's a simplified version of the console KH games, requiring no on-the-fly menu-diving in the heat of combat. Simply scroll up or down until you reach the command you want and execute the command. Once a skill has been used, be it attack magic, healing, or a Keyblade technique, it becomes depleted and slowly builds back up to maximum. In other words, each special command has a fairly lengthy "cooldown" period. It's less irritating than it sounds, though, because the cooldown time is specific to each individual command, so you can fire off a series of special abilities in rapid succession or use a command while the others are refilling. It's quite reminiscent of the card system in Chain of Memories, but it's unobtrusive and effective -- strategic without hobbling the action.

 

Unique to Sleep is a special targeting mode called Focus. By holding down the R button, the player can cause both heroes to enter a first-person view in which they have a few seconds to target foes by moving over them with the reticle. Pressing Circle without releasing R will cause the current character to launch into a rush attack, striking each targeted foe several times. This depletes the Focus meter entirely, but it fills again fairly rapidly.

 

 

And to add an extra twist, each character can enter a special attack mode by filling a combo gauge and pressing the proper button. One mode, for example, is a fire-elemental mode in which all attacks are accompanied by flames. On top of this, each of the characters seemed to posses unique individual abilities, such as Ventus' Zero Graviga, which causes a targeted foe to float helplessly in the air for a while, making them an easy punching bag.

 

Despite its apparent shortcomings, Sleep is a stunning-looking game -- and for the most part, it plays better than any Kingdom Hearts title to date. There's no telling where this chapter fits into the grand scheme of the series or how well the levels and missions will play out. But without question, Square Enix is on the right track -- and Birth By Sleep could well do for the series what Crisis Core did for Final Fantasy spin-offs.

[CarbonCore]

Awesome . Looks like the pendulum is swinging more towards PSP than the triple. Agito+KH is superwin.

[KnackChap]

Awesome . Looks like the pendulum is swinging more towards PSP than the triple. Agito+KH is superwin.

dont forget parasite eve 3

[CarbonCore]

Yep, and the best part is, there's no other portable in the market with similar hardware specs (iPhone doesn't count), so these games won't go around jumping platforms like 13 and get delayed.

[KnackChap]

both games jumped from mobile to psp

 

similar hardware specs (iPhone doesn't count)

 

dont believe carmack

[CarbonCore]

both games jumped from mobile to psp

 

yes, but they can't jump back, can they?

[playstationdude]