You don't really need to be a fan of the series to know the story but has a lot to offer for anyone who owns a PSP
The main story can be a little confusing for a few people but easily to pick up what's going, set around December 24th 2012 in the city of Manhattan on Christmas Eve. These strange creatures called The Twisted show up from the middle of nowhere and strange roots come from underneath the city and roots known as Babels showing up everywhere; and start to attacking humans. One year later an investigation group called CTI (Counter Twisted Investigation) one of their members of the CTI is Aya Brea, who found lying blood-soaked in her wedding dress outside of St. Peter's Cathedral back in 2010 just before the Babel's and Twisted began appearing.
Aya has no memories of her past or what happened during the day of her wedding, the CTI discover that she's capable of transferring her soul from body to body. CTI develop an Overdrive machine which can go back to the events of 2012 during the events when the Twisted and Babel's started to appear in the city.
Gameplay: With the past Parasite Eve games having a mix between RPGs and Resident Evil series, the gameplay for the 3rd Birthday is different from the past games but easy to get used to. You could say it's more of a 3rd person shooter with elements both in and out of combat; game is played like other normal 3rd shooters like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. You can use the L Button to hold down and target-lock on to your enemies; and use the R button to fire your weapon. You can use the Square button to reload your ammo or you can hold Square and use the directional pad to select you weapon. Most weapons that you will use are mainly hand-guns, sniper rifles, machine guns like an AK-47 or even a laser gun.
There is an ability called "Overdrive" which is where you can jump from body to body from other soldiers, if you are near to a certain death you can jump into another person's body. Teammates can be ordered either to target specific enemies or to defend themselves in combat; if enemies are weak you can jump into them by pressing triangle and destroy them from the inside.
Another thing that you will be using a lot will be the OE Chips, which is where you can add and fuse chips together for abilities and augments. It is a little random but easy to get used to later as you progress through the game and plus you'll be gaining more abilities and skills which will become handy.
Graphics and Sound: The 3rd Birthday does have some really good visuals and CGI cutscenes, most cutscenes throughout the game are pretty breath-taking too from character animation to the large enemies that you'll see in the game. Environments are highly well detailed throughout the city of Manhattan in 2012 seeing the Babel roots shooting from the ground and grabbing a hold of the city; and to its underground catacombs.
The camera control can get a little fiddly at times but doesn't really bother you that much during gameplay, but you might get a little frustrated by the number of enemies that you'll see on the screen. But it all depends on what difficulty you play the game on, Square Enix really have done a good job keeping things in order on its presentation and excellent cinematic graphics. You can Data install this game which will take around 214 MB for your PSP memory stick; or if you own a PSP GO it'll be around 1.2 GB for your handheld.
The soundtrack is well composed you may hear one or two Christmas songs in the background during one or two cutscenes during the game. The voice acting is more of a pick and mix but most of the voice acting isn't really that perfect but still does a decent job; making it an enjoyable 3rd person shooter, this will most likely be putting you off the game at certain times.
Overall: I was actually surprised how incredibly short The 3rd Birthday was, it can take you up to 5-6 hours to beat, but still gives you a good few hours to shooting much stuff as you like and jumping through body to body through random soldiers and ripping enemies in half.
There's plenty of unlockable stuff to collect from costumes, cheats and secrets to unlock; it can still be a pretty solid handheld game for the system. But you may be drifting in and out on this game but that is only aimed at its voice acting not the game itself.