I like Birth By Sleep a lot. It is among my favorite of the Kingdom Hearts games. The story is a bit more coherent than normal and the combat is fun and expressive.
Being set in the past with a limited amount of characters really helps this game's story. This is a good introduction to Aqua, Ventus, and Terra, but it also lets us see some other characters earlier in their lives, so that is cool. The story is straightforward and predictable, and some of the character decisions are pretty asinine, but it mostly makes sense and lacks most of the trash that causes KH 1, 2, and 3 to be incomprehensible. Aqua is everyone's favorite character for a reason, and I like seeing the version of her here that isn't all traumatized by spending 100 years in the darkness dimension or whatever.
The game does suffer a bit for having all three characters go through the same worlds, even though they play different, some of the bosses mix things up, and it is interesting to see the story from three different perspectives.
Gameplay in Birth By Sleep takes a bit to wrap your head around, but once I got the hang of how commands work, I found the system to be super fun to exploit. The basic gameplay of setting up your command deck to put you into the form you want is very satisfying and it feels great once you get things working the way you want. I really enjoyed that each character pushes you in a different direction, favoring different forms and commands.
Melding is great. I love being able to improve my abilities directly like this and the addition of commands granting you abilities you can discover and permanently unlock (Final Fantasy IX!?) is really rewarding.
By the end of each character's story, when you have the most powerful commands unlocked, it can get a bit repetitive, however. It is never worse than combat often is in this game though, and the form changes let you opt into different gameplay pretty easily, if you want to.
Birth By Sleep is a really great game. Possibly my favorite in the series. If you want a solid action game with some cool systems, check it out!
(played in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix)
Being set in the past with a limited amount of characters really helps this game's story. This is a good introduction to Aqua, Ventus, and Terra, but it also lets us see some other characters earlier in their lives, so that is cool. The story is straightforward and predictable, and some of the character decisions are pretty asinine, but it mostly makes sense and lacks most of the trash that causes KH 1, 2, and 3 to be incomprehensible. Aqua is everyone's favorite character for a reason, and I like seeing the version of her here that isn't all traumatized by spending 100 years in the darkness dimension or whatever.
The game does suffer a bit for having all three characters go through the same worlds, even though they play different, some of the bosses mix things up, and it is interesting to see the story from three different perspectives.
Gameplay in Birth By Sleep takes a bit to wrap your head around, but once I got the hang of how commands work, I found the system to be super fun to exploit. The basic gameplay of setting up your command deck to put you into the form you want is very satisfying and it feels great once you get things working the way you want. I really enjoyed that each character pushes you in a different direction, favoring different forms and commands.
Melding is great. I love being able to improve my abilities directly like this and the addition of commands granting you abilities you can discover and permanently unlock (Final Fantasy IX!?) is really rewarding.
By the end of each character's story, when you have the most powerful commands unlocked, it can get a bit repetitive, however. It is never worse than combat often is in this game though, and the form changes let you opt into different gameplay pretty easily, if you want to.
Birth By Sleep is a really great game. Possibly my favorite in the series. If you want a solid action game with some cool systems, check it out!
(played in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix)
Best combat in the series
Game drags hard by the 3rd character
Game drags hard by the 3rd character