Before We Begin
I’ll be honest: after all this time, I’m still not clear on why Ventus looks like Roxas or what Vanitas is. I’m hoping this playthrough will shed some light on those, because I seriously don’t know what to make of it all.
That said, Birth by Sleep is a great entry in the franchise. It sets up the story in the rest of the games without falling into that prequel trope of connecting everyone to everything and constantly beating you over the head with this or that origin story. It has its flaws, but I’m sure I’ll get to those later.
Day One
Starting with Terra’s story. All I did today was play through the training intro, the Mark of Mastery exam, and the Enchanted Dominion.
Watching Sleeping Beauty really made me realize how well the world translated the movie’s style. The textures are fairly realistic for a PSP game, the trees and shrubbery are cubes rather than spheres, and the characters have a slightly flat look that really makes them pop out from the background.
Due to being split across three characters, though, these worlds are short. I remembered it going in, but it still took my by surprise when I finished the first one in about 20 minutes. I actually love the BBS worlds, and I’m glad that each character has different areas to visit so that it doesn’t feel overly repetitive, but it’s too bad they’re not a little bit lengthier.
Day Two
I’ve finished Terra’s story and am leaving off toward the end of Radiant Garden in Ven’s.
Of all the games, I think this is the best one at incorporating the Disney worlds into the journey. For each one, the characters get something different out of them – there are exceptions, but Terra meets with several of the villains, or the characters who are trying to deal with some sort of personal darkness. There’s Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Hades, Jumba, and Captain Hook – plus his meet-ups with Xehanort and Braig. It’s an easy way to learn things about our heroes in a game that spends a shorter amount of time with them than others.
Speaking of which, I do wish the game had been padded out a bit more – if any of these deserved that 35-hour runtime, it should have been this over Days. There are a lot of interesting ideas in here that just don’t seem like they get the time they deserve – the command board, Mirage Arena, and certain things about the command decks all feel underused, or like they make the game too big for the seven or so hours it takes to complete one character’s story. It would have been interesting to spend a little more time with this game, because it’s the one entry that I would argue feels a bit rushed.
Day Three
I’ve played through the remainder of Ven’s story and have played through all but one of Aqua’s Disney worlds – so I’m leaving off at Aqua’s Neverland.
I think I’ve finally figured out the Ventus/Vanitas/Sora/Roxas relationship. Ventus and Vanitas are apparently two sides of a coin – Ventus is pure light, Vanitas is pure darkness. Xehanort’s plan was to merge them to forget the X-blade, but that plan fell through. Ventus wound up in Sora’s heart when he conked out at the end of the game, which explains why Roxas looks like him and not Sora. Still no idea why Vanitas looks like Sora and not Ven, but I feel like that’s about as far as I’m going to get with this.
Olympus Coliseum is really at its worst in this game, and I’ve never liked that world to begin with. For Ventus it’s a bunch of pointless minigames, while for the other two it’s structured like a cup from KHI and II. The catch is that the cup is timed – and you only get a few seconds per round. It’s truly awful, since the only time you even have a hope of beating the clock is when you exhaust your magic.
The Keyblade Graveyard is similarly frustrating. This series always insists on throwing in an enemy-filled room where the walls are invisible and the floor gives you no indication of where you’re at. It’s difficult to navigate, and the Keyblade Graveyard spices it up with enemies that are too big to see or fly too high to keep track of. It forces you into these rooms by way of giant tornadoes, which you can dodge if you’re lucky, but they hunt you down and will catch up to you eventually. I don’t believe it’s possible to make it across the stage without running into at least two or three of them, regardless of which route you take.
Other than that, though, the worlds in this game are great. I love that the big three princess movies are represented, especially because we finally get to see Maleficent as the villain of her own isolated world. She clearly has bigger plans even back then, but fighting her dragon is even better when you’re doing it alongside Phillip as he makes his way to Aurora.
I’m also a big fan of Disney Town. Fruitball is one of the worst parts of any of these games, but the racing and the ice cream rhythm game aren’t that bad (the latter especially in comparison with Atlantica). I don’t know why, but I’ve always been really attracted to that specific kind of cheesy Disney aesthetic, which I usually associate with their parks and attractions. Disney Town hits the nail on the head in that regard, and just like Timeless River, it speaks to a side of Disney history that I didn’t expect to see represented in these games. I really hope that KHIII includes another world like one of these.
Day Four
I’ve finished Aqua’s story and the final episode. “Simple and Clean” is such a perfect way to end this game, bringing it full circle to the beginning of KHI.
For some reason, I only just now made the connection that Xemnas has Aqua’s armor in KHII because it was found next to Terra-Xehanort at the end of Birth by Sleep. Obviously there was no way to catch the BbS hint on my first playthrough of KHII, but I probably should have figured that out before now.
Aqua’s story ends just as well as the others, if not better – after taking Ven home and turning the Land of Departure into Castle Oblivion, she faces down Terra-Xehanort and allows herself to be imprisoned by the Darkness to save him. From there, she wanders on until she’s presumably rescued in Kingdom Hearts III.
Speaking of Terra-Xehanort, he’s one of the most annoying bosses in the series. It doesn’t help that I don’t particularly care for the way Aqua handles, but the constant dodging and minimal attacking only to have him heal every once in a while makes for a long, grueling battle. Thankfully he only has two stages, and the second stage is significantly easier.
The game ends with Ventus coming to live in Sora’s heart. I still don’t quite get how that works, but at least I understand the relationship now (for the most part).
Conclusion
Another great entry in the series, and one that’s hard for me to rank against the first game. There are so many things I like about both, and so many that are neither better nor worse than each other; just different.
To begin with, BbS is a much more intimate Kingdom Hearts game than we’ve had thus far. Where most of the series is about the journey, this one is very much about the destination – the various worlds serve mainly to familiarize us with the protagonists as they play off the Disney characters they meet. As I said earlier, for Terra this includes a lot of villains, while for Ventus it’s mostly the people supporting the heroes. Aqua tends to meet and interact more with the princesses and the heroes themselves, playing off her protective nature and her dream of the trio becoming masters together. I feel like I know these three just as well as I know Sora or Riku, despite having spent more time with the other two.
That’s the downside, though – because this game pretty much revolves around one horrible day, all three stories are very short compared to what we’ve gotten previously. The game itself isn’t that short, but it certainly feels a bit more rushed than usual, and as much as I like seeing the same worlds from different perspectives, returning to them three times each does end up feeling like padding. By the time I get to the end of Aqua’s story, I always end up feeling under-leveled due to moving through things faster than I otherwise might have.
The worlds, on the other hand, are almost all great. Where I’m not crazy about most of the areas in KHI, BbS shines, with the big three princess levels, the colorful theme park that is Disney Town, a Neverland that puts Hook’s pirate ship to shame, and even an homage to one of my personal favorite Disney movies, Lilo and Stitch. I do wish that last one could have been set in Hawaii rather than Deep Space, but I’ll take what I can get, and it’s still a great level.
It’s getting late, so I should wrap up. I think I’m going to put this one above KHI – but keep in mind that it’s just barely. I love both of them, but I do think BbS has slightly better gameplay and much better worlds, even if the story is about equal. I also love how BbS ties into the beginning of the series’ mythology, with a few extra surprises here and there in addition to the expected setup.
Next up is Re:coded, one that doesn’t contribute much to the overarching story. I’m not super excited for this one, but I did buy it, and I’ve heard the gameplay is actually better than Days’. It’s also the last game in the series I’ve never played (unless I want to do Union X, which again, no), so if nothing else it has that going for it.
The Ranking
- Kingdom Hearts II
- Timeless River
- The World That Never Was
- Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden
- Space Paranoids
- Halloweentown
- Land of Dragons
- Pride Lands
- Port Royal
- Twilight Town
- Hundred Acre Wood
- Disney Castle
- Agrabah
- Olympus Coliseum
- Beast’s Castle
- Mysterious Tower
- Atlantica
- Birth by Sleep
- Enchanted Dominion
- Deep Space
- Dwarf Woodlands
- Disney Town
- Land of Departure
- Castle of Dreams
- Neverland
- Mysterious Tower
- Olympus Coliseum
- Keyblade Graveyard
- Kingdom Hearts
- Halloweentown
- Traverse Town
- Hundred Acre Wood
- The End of the World
- Hollow Bastion
- Agrabah
- Deep Jungle
- Wonderland
- Monstro
- Neverland
- Olympus Coliseum
- Destiny Islands
- Atlantica
- 358/2 Days
- Halloween Town
- Agrabah
- Twilight Town
- Wonderland
- Beast’s Castle
- The World That Never Was
- Olympus Coliseum
- Neverland
- Re:Chain of Memories
- Hundred Acre Wood
- Halloweentown
- Twilight Town
- Castle Oblivion
- Destiny Islands
- Wonderland
- Traverse Town
- Olympus Coliseum
- Agrabah
- Hollow Bastion
- Neverland
- Atlantica
- Monstro
Mister Binger 