Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, a PSP-exclusive prequel that illuminates some plot points leading up to the original Kingdom Hearts. I’m always incredibly eager to try my hand at the Kingdom Hearts games because I have a personal attachment to the story, but I’m also the first one to point out the game’s enduring problems. While Birth by Sleep does continue to suffer from some of the issues that have plagued it since the original, the latest in the series also boasts one of the best Kingdom Hearts battle systems to date, and is easily the most ambitious in its design.

So breathe easy, my friends: Birth by Sleep is definitely worth your money.

Let’s start with the basics for all you newcomers out there. Kingdom Hearts is an action role-playing game that combines Final Fantasy-style aesthetics with recognizable Disney worlds. Birth by Sleep is set before the events of the original Kingdom Hearts, so while you don’t necessarily need to know what happened in the other games, your experience will be infinitely richer if you do.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep follows three separate storylines. At the beginning, players choose between three different characters: Terra, Ventus and Aqua. These three Keyblade wielders (and close friends) are tasked with defeating the recent uprising of creatures known as the Unversed. Along the way, they’ll encounter some familiar faces and a few new threats.

These play sessions exist on separate save files, so once you start the story, you won’t be jumping between them while you play. You can opt to start up a game and then quit out to a different campaign, but I found it very satisfying to play one character’s story from start to finish. And as you might expect, you’ll be rewarded for completing all three campaigns (the game keeps track of completed save files in order to unlock some yummy secrets).

Like the original Kingdom Hearts games, your hero in Birth by Sleep travels from world to world solving smaller problems and working towards one ultimate goal. While on a world, players move through the environments, collecting treasure and doing a small amount of exploring. The real draw, however, is the battle system, as enemies materialize around the player as he or she explores.

Fighting in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is awesome. Players can find, purchase or earn special commands that can be customized from the main menu. These commands can be selected with the d-pad during battle and executed with the triangle button. Once a command has been executed, the deck automatically cycles to the next command and the previous command enters a cool down period.

This system keeps the action fast and user-friendly, but also lets players customize their abilities at will. Commands can also be leveled up and melded to form new ones, so there’s a mind-numbing amount of tweaking players have at their fingertips.

This battle system rocks pretty darn hard.

But commands are just one element in the formula. As you build up combos, a meter fills up on the side of the screen. If you use special commands to build up that meter, your character might enter a special “command style” which gives them a temporary but tremendous boost in ability. If, for example, Ventus were to cast a few thunder spells while filling the command meter, he would enter the Thunderbolt command style and his moves would be electrically charged.

If that wasn’t enough depth for you, each hero also has access to attacks called Shotlocks, which are designed to help deal with large groups of enemies. These attacks take some skill to use effectively but the results are devastating.

But that’s not all! Each hero also forges Dimension Links, or D-Links, with characters they meet as they travel. By activating a D-Link, your hero temporarily gains the abilities of that character. More commands means more variety when it comes to fighting, and that’s a good thing.

THIS A REVIEW FROM IGN

The long-awaited return of Parasite Eve, ambiguously titled ‘The 3rd Birthday’, is a welcome one. The third title in the series, fans will get the most out of the smaller character cameos and setting details. New players shouldn’t fret too much if you haven’t played the previous games though; Square Enix provides a lot of optional background to pour over that plug the gaps. More critically though, each game features entirely different gameplay slants – with a dense RPG backbone blended with third-person action in this instalment.

Manhattan just can’t catch a break these days. Aya Brea, hero of the original titles and Square Enix cult-favourite from the PSOne era, is back in the Big Apple, which has been torn apart in a terrific CG opening sequence. As the game-proper begins, we discover a year has passed and humanity is in a dire state. Aya, pulled from the rubble and now without memory, is tasked with travelling back in time to prevent the outbreak spreading.

The expanded universe of Parasite Eve now incorporates a strange new genetic threat – a gigantic infestation of heinous tentaclular beasts known as The Twisted – and Aya has a new ability at her disposal to stop them in their tracks — and no, it’s not her ability to flash a lot of butt cheek. ‘Overdive’, triggered by holding down the triangle button at any time, allows Aya to immediately teleport to and inhabit any human being nearby. This is, hands down, the coolest mechanic in The 3rd Birthday. Overdiving creates a lightning-quick pace to the shooting and serious depth to the strategy that most shooters can’t touch. It works simply, logically and fairly accurately.

Overdive works like a quick-time event – a triangle indicator pops up when you’ve whittled down your target’s health.

By inhabiting other humans, you immediately gain their health status, weapons and placement in the battlefield. That means you can effectively guide your AI counterparts into different formations on the field, creating crossfire points. It also makes it harder for the enemy to pin you into one place.

The Twisted are initially easy to dispatch, but after a couple of chapters, the skies fill with targets spraying toxic clouds, gigantic wriggling behemoths roll towards you from all angles and cover bring a fleeting reprieve. There are dozens of types – and not all are vulnerable to bullets. In fact, without mastering movement and working out individual strategies for each, expect to get punished. It’s at this point that mastering Overdive becomes essential.

To balance things, Aya is fairly weak. If you’re not fleet-footed and master your dive-rolling and auto-cover abilities, you’re smoked. Thankfully, you can choose to ‘ascend’ back to the secret between-missions facility and tune up before choosing to dive back in time.

It’s therefore critical to spend a while tuning up your latent genetic abilities and armament. This is, like both previous entries, a game built on RPG stat-tracking and upgrading – and you can’t afford to simply charge into each level expect to live. Weapons are plentiful – and at various points in each stage, there are safe-rooms that allow for saving. The pace and placement is generous, and we’re grateful for that.

Like stats and grids? You’re in for a treat.

You really do need to spend your experience points upgrading the potency of your weapons and adding new active and passive abilities to Aya. Weapons tables cover all manner of pistols, revolvers, various sub-automatics and a cool dozen special weapons. Tweaking these is fun; pouring points into upgrading clip size, accuracy and overall damage is completely worthwhile – but arguably holding onto some points is also a good idea. You’ll unlock a couple of new weapons at the end of each chapter – and these tend to benefit from decent stat-boost anyway.

If that kind of constant upgrading isn’t your bag, you’re probably going to come up against a wall. Likewise, Aya’s genetic makeup stands in for ‘magic’ – though you’re not actively casting spells. Still, the 9 x 9 grid of stackable ‘cells’ take a bit of thinking to master. If you’re not careful, you can completely waste your new genes – and starting again wipes any you’ve already applied to the grid. You need to be careful.

Of course, you can stumble your way through, since the menus and presentation are fairly clear-cut and, honestly, Square Enix did a great job making a while lot of content as accessible as possible without sacrificing depth. This depth extends to the between-missions briefings, backstory logs, character biographies, a variety of optional achievement-like ‘Feats’, loads of unlockable costumes and the ability to replay any mission. This is a rich experience for a PSP game.