I think it’s fair to say I’ve played this game to death now. I’ve seen the Japanese-only secret episode that ends with the enticing prospect of ‘Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep 2’ (though I would’ve preferred it to be labelled ‘Kingdom Hearts 3’). I’ve gotten all the trophies, collected all the ice creams and beaten all the hidden bosses – the one that seemed so hard in the original, the one that seemed so much harder in the international release, and the new arena bosses that make how the arena was before this seem like a joke. And all on critical mode. Yup, I’m done. The only thing I could do to get any further than this would be to beat the extra bosses again with Terra and Aqua, but I don’t really have any inclination to do that: once is enough, especially when it comes to the Mysterious Figure.Of course, the core of the game is the same as it was before – the epic fantasy of Terra, Aqua and Ventus and how they come to be totally and utterly screwed over, which is actually my favourite Kingdom Hearts storyline so far, though the original still has the most charm. As I’ve said before, I thought aiming for too much seriousness would be the death of the franchise, but I was wrong and the concept works so, so much better than the main titles have since the introduction of Organization XIII. Of course, learning that most of the events of the main series were preordained when the main characters were very young and why exactly they’re so ‘special’ takes away a little of the impact of their stories, but makes for a more believable and complete world overall.
Final Mix, like the other final mixes, basically takes the international release and builds upon it. Thus, all the cutscenes but the new ones in the secret episode are delivered by the English voice cast, who I’ve never liked nearly so much as the originals – but thankfully, all cutscenes can be watched in the ‘theater’ menu in either language. The only disappointment with this arrangement is that the ice cream minigame carries over from the international version – which is to say, more songs but no ‘special’ mode, which is the only time the extra little game actually got challenging and fun. Other things that were added are mostly cosmetic – a fun new ‘rhythm mixer’ command style that gives you very satisfying DJ scratching noises as you zing about, new keyblades and a fun little world for Aqua at the end where for some reason it’s oddly thrilling to fight heartless instead of unversed.
Other than little additional cutscenes, it’s really the hidden bosses that get the attention – and took the most hard work! The Unknown Figure remains easily the hardest of them, with so many ridiculous attacks that will kill you instantly. What was really annoying about him was that he made the limitations of the PSP more obvious – the vast majority of times I died were when I was trying to change what spell I had selected while having to keep the analogue stick held in a direction, or because my thumb slipped slightly on the grip there. One tiny moment of not rolling one way or another and you die. No exaggeration. Luckily, I eventually found that fire surge is far more effective than thunder surge and won through.
The armoured forms of Eraqus and Xehanort are more interesting, but also much easier. They were fun, though, even if the latter is a hard slog if you haven’t levelled like crazy. They were far less frustrating than the Unknown Figure, though, because dying was usually something that made you realise you’d made a mistake, rather than because the hardware made things stupidly hard.
It’s been well worth getting everything possible out of Birth By Sleep – it’s easily my favourite PSP game, and favourite Kingdom Hearts title. I’m also very happy it has such an active fanscene, and modding my rom to have English text, Ventus wearing Sora’s clothes and Terra in constant ‘Terranort’ mode made everything that little bit more satisfying!
