A brilliant addition to the Kingdom Hearts franchise.
User Rating: 9.5 | Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep PSP
Kingdom Hearts is a mash-up between Disney and Square Enix and it very surprisingly works! The franchise is at least eight years old now and it has been a huge success selling over 8.6 million copies worldwide! When Square Enix announced three new Kingdom Hearts games at the TGS 2007, I was really hyped! The first one was Kingdom Hearts: coded which is an episodic game released on the Japanese Mobile Phone service. It was only released in Japan but Square Enix announced in 2010 that Kingdom Hearts Re:coded was coming out in our territories on January 14th 2011 for the Nintendo DS. But let's get to that later. The second game they announced was Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Unlike coded it was released worldwide and has been a hit success. It too was released for the Nintendo DS. If you have the system I suggest you check it out! It's a pretty good game! The final game Square Enix announced was Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for the Sony PSP. It was released worldwide as well and out of all three it was the best selling and biggest success. The game is set ten years in the past from the first Kingdom Hearts title and you follow the story of three Keyblade Wielders. They are the students of the Keyblade Master Eraqus. Their Master's friend, Xehanort, has gone missing along with a Masked Boy called Vanitas. They all set out on a journey to find them both and find out who Vanitas is. The three Keyblade Wielders are Terra, Ventus and Aqua. Terra is a tall young man with brutal strength. Ventus. or Ven for short, is the youngest of them and is extremely quick at attacking with a Keyblade. Aqua is the only woman of the group and is mostly powerful with Magic. The group's goal is to find Xehanort and go to many world's based on many classic Disney films like Neverland from Peter Pan or Deep Space from Lilo & Stitch to find out information about him. The actual story is much more complex than that but I'm not spoiling anymore for you. The gameplay is unique from the other Kingdom Hearts games and in my opinion the best and most enjoyable. This makes boss battles less boring and very exciting. The enemies in this game are called Unversed and they come in many different shapes and sizes. The enemies differ from each other largely in many ways. For example most enemies are small but have great power. Some enemies are huge but with even greater power. You have to find out easy ways on how to kill them and get your attacks and timing correct at the right time. You could choose the difficulty of each of the character's stories at the start of the game. There are four of them and they are Beginner, Standard, Proud and Critical Mode. If you want your enemies easy or even normal then chose either Beginner or Standard. If you want a challenge or an extremely hard challenge then choose Proud or Critical. But beware. Critical is much more than extremely hard and if you want the ultimate test of your skills then choose that mode. The bosses at the climaxes of the character's stories are the hardest so you have to use everything you learned to defeat them for once and for all. After you complete all the Character's stories and the Last Story then you unlock the secret boss. After you defeat the first secret boss you have to defeat another. The second secret boss is probably the final thing you have to do in the whole game and yes. You have to defeat him on all three stories. He is very, very hard to defeat. Be prepared. The gameplay does get some getting used to but as you progress through the game you'll be sorry you ever thought it was bad even by the slightest. The voice acting in the game is terrific even in the English version. The game has a sad but happy ending. Graphics are superb and the Story is amazing. Boss Battles are exciting and keep your blood pumping. There are only slight flaws in the game though. The biggest one is the long loading times. It seems like Square Enix packed so much into that little UMD. But that's the only flaw I can think of right now. Still it's a brilliant game a highly recommend for any gamer. I'm giving this game a 9.5 out of 10 because of its brilliant performance and exciting boss battles but annoyingly long loading times. 
