It was 2010. It wasn't my 3rd birthday, and I didn't know this game existed.
Now it's 2023 and I know it does exist. The simpler times are long gone and while no cakes were harmed or birthdays were ruined during the making of this game and the writing of this review (but certainly could be if you gifted this to someone for their birthday), this was overall pretty bad.

To begin with the positives, I like the music and the graphics (compared to most things on the PSP) are among the handheld's best. That's pretty much it.

The story is weird and not in a good way. From what I could gather, you don't need to play Parasite Eve 1 and 2 to understand it, but nevertheless, it's confusing and paced like a Rick and Morty episode. It's all over the place and you never get a good explanation for much of it until the very end of the game.
You can read stuff concerning characters before the beginning of a mission (or as they're called in-game - episode), but it feels lazy that they went with this route rather than incorporating it into the gameplay and cutscenes.

The body switching mechanic (called Overdive) is a cool idea, but everything surrounding it brings it down. Beyond giving the AI orders to focus on one target, you can't really tell them what to do, so a lot of strategy and depth which would've benefitted the game is not there. The friendly AI itself kinda stands there and just shoots. It's not well designed and you have to really try to go out of your way to keep it alive.

The worst thing, however, are the controls. At times they make Shaq Fu look like a masterpiece. There's a clunkiness to them that makes you feel like you're walking on a wet floor. The camera doesn't help, and oftentimes adds to that feeling. At least they added an auto-aim for most weapons, which is nice. Be prepared for a lot of frustration even with that, as enemies even on normal difficulty don't show much mercy and can quickly kill you, on top of also being bullet sponges.

The game would've been fine on the gameplay side of things if it was initially designed for PC/PS3/XBOX360. The PSP was a bad choice for this type of shooter. Considering the first two games of the series, it would've been best if this was an RPG like them.
The story, preferably, also needs an overhaul.
The 3rd Birthday, more like The 3rd Disappointment, am I right? :P
Yeah, in its current state, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

This game truly was a travesty, cannot remember the last time a game infuriated me this much. More like the 3rd bullet to seal the deal for putting this great franchise in the grave. Looks like the whole budget just went straight to all the cgi cutscenes. They should have just made this a movie like Advent Children. Why do my clothes have to fall off when I take too much damage as well? I was struggling through the repetitive shitty rooms while running around in my undies for like 2 hours. Cannot believe after many frustrations and raging I managed to complete the game. Please bring Parasite Eve back, but make sure it is nothing like this! Also, why did they give Maeda different accents when speaking? In one part he sounds like Jeff Goldblum, then he sounds like Goldman from House of the dead, and then just sounds like a text-to-speech program.

Terceiro game da série Parasite Eve, mas na verdade ele nem parece ser da franquia.

A história é uma confusão que só, sem contar que eles ignoram os eventos dos jogos anteriores (Eve e Maeda que o digam né, alias o que virou o Maeda aqui hein).

O gameplay em si nem é de todo o ruim, mas aqui temos um jogo que foca unicamente na ação e esquece o terror dos jogos anteriores. Minha crítica ao gameplay é o controle de camera (afinal psp) e o fato que se vc tentar jogar de pistola, vc nem vai fazer muito dano.

Enfim, um jogo que infelizmente matou a franquia Parasite Eve.

One of, if not the worst shooter I’ve ever played. The game Is a bullet sponge fest with no player feedback, as In enemies don’t react to your damage at all, you might as well be shooting a wall that happens to have a health bar. The bosses are especially egregious because they’re like RPG superbosses and have 4+ health bars that you’re gonna be endlessly shooting at. The game does that shit where they don’t allow the protagonist to talk because they previously didn’t have a VA so Aya walks around grunting to everything while people talk to her like a regular person that’s supposed to respond back, she’s not even a mute protagonist cause she talks in text boxes??? So why Is the game like this????

Only good things about the game are the visuals and music but thats been a consistent staple regarding Square Enix games anyways. Oh and I found the battle damage cool, seeing your character get more bruised up and their clothes torn up over time Is something I wish more games did. Dogshit game.

I really tried to like this game. I was a big fan of the Parasite Eve series though I still tried to keep an open mind while playing this, which means I didn't let nostalgia ruin my experience. But this is just a really bad game overall. Part of it can be blamed on the system it was made, the PSP, due to lacking the right analog stick which made the controls very clunky. Although even if it had better controls, the gameplay is still very frustrating and RNG dependent and makes which it so bad to play. I really don't know what they were thinking when making this game.

A redeeming quality of this game is that the Body Switching mechanic is fun and unique to it. And the graphics are great for a PSP game, I suppose. But it ends there.

So for the bad things:
The enemies can one or two shot you even at normal difficulty making the game very frustrating, if it had good controls it would be a little bearable but it doesn't have that. And good luck dying! Because you're retrying that 10 to 15 minute level from your last checkpoint.

Passive skills also have RNG activations which makes them useless at tough situations. Seriously, a skill can sometimes only activate once in an entire chapter even at level 25 (the max level of it)!

The AI allies are so dumb that you have to body switch to them just to keep them alive and helping. And when you run out of AI allies, sometimes reinforcements will arrive after some time and there are times that there will be no reinforcements at all. But there's nothing that indicates that! So yeah, good luck waiting for that reinforcement whenever it'll come.

The camera is also really bad. It doesn't show what's directly above you. So if there's a flying enemy above Aya's head, the camera will look up but you won't see where the enemy is. The game also likes to throw homing missiles at you but they're so hard to dodge because the camera won't let you see where they're coming from.

I don't really want to comment on stuff like the characters and story because then, I'll be comparing it to its predecessors (and I will be trashing this game a lot more) which I don't want to do. This review is only about The 3rd Birthday as a standalone game.

Holy shit we may have a true contender at worst sequel of all time. Even DMC2 would look down at this game. Its a disgusting franchise killer and an embarrassment. Not only is it a not fun grind but it actively shits on its history and disempowers strong female characters as nothing but sexual objects. I can tolerate sleaziness but this game way crosses the line. Even outside of that the story is laughably bad and down right offensive. Most bad games fail cause lack of budgeting or time or good direction. The third birthday is just bad on concept alone. It even had time budget and talent.

an irredeemable turd of a game that features such quality material as:
-ruining Aya in a manner not unlike Metroid: Other M tried to do to Samus
-ruining Maeda by turning him into a creepy pervert
-a story that makes no sense because they cut half of it in the middle to meet deadlines
-mediocre at best gameplay with a gimmick that should be cool but is mostly annoying
-and much more!

Pior aniversário que já participei da minha vida.

Cara, graficamente falando esse jogo aqui é perfeito e muito bem equilibrado em tudo, sem dúvidas ele tem um dos visuais mais interessantes e bem construídos do PSP.. porém, não se faz um jogo bom só por gráfico

Tirando o gráfico e a jogabilidade que é bem funcional, isso aqui é HORRIVEL, a forma de contar a história é confusa você se perde muitas vezes no que ta acontecendo, a construção de cenários é confusa e o jogo todo é MUIITO repetitivo, é só tiro tiro tiro e tu começa a adquirir tendinite de tanto ficar apertando no botão L e R do PSP

Enfim não joguem 3rd Birthday se estiverem esperando uma sequência braba de Parasite Eve ou tiverem esperando um jogo TPS bomzao, ele não se sai bem em nada citado acimaKKKKKKKK

This has been a long time coming. I have been trying to get through this game since it was released and just gave up. The game is not only difficult, but it’s so repetitive and strange. It has an odd vibe to it, but at least it controls well for the PSP and looks fantastic. The voice acting is spot on, but the story is so strange and broken up that I just couldn’t follow it.

That’s not to say the game’s horrible. All I know is that you play as Aya Brea from Parasite Eve (this is the spiritual successor) and you get jacked into a system where you can warp into people’s bodies and control them. Think of them as lives. Once one guy is dead you have to transfer to another body or you will die. As you bring down the health of these parasites that have taken over New York City a yellow triangle will flash over them that lets you transfer into them and do massive damage. This is essential to winning most boss fights. You just run around blasting everything with traditional military weapons, but at least you can upgrade them. Adding more power, accuracy, and various other things require points that you acquire through completing levels. There are a plethora of weapons in the game from handguns to rocket launchers. It’s nothing special and I wish there were more unique weapons. The combat is fun at first but gets tiringly repetitive as you get further in.

Every level nearly plays the same. You blast through parasites, transfer through bodies, then fight a boss. Sometimes you have to destroy nodes to advance, but it stops being fun less than halfway through. The bosses are extraordinarily tough and you will die dozens of times. If you shoot stuff long enough you get Overdrive which allows you to do massive damage, but there’s a weird pause between every few shots and it wastes precious time. Some bosses I died on dozens of times and nearly gave up — they have multiple life bars and if you don’t beat them a certain way you never will.

The action never lets up, but the pacing is so poorly balanced. You get a good run through a level then suddenly are have to run from some unbeatable monster. The platforming is atrocious and even climbing ladders can be hard. I died multiple times because of how linear the levels are and I just couldn’t maneuver properly. The game could have been one of the last great PSP games if it just had more polish. The graphics are fantastic with some great lighting effects and good-looking textures. There are just too many issues for this to be considered one of the PSP’s best.

Overall, The 3rd Birthday has a lot of amazing aspects and ideas, but they fall flat because they weren’t fleshed out all the way. The platforming sucks, the game is just too damn hard, and it’s overly linear. The story is an unfocused mess, but at least the game looks amazing and the controls are great. The shooting feels good as well and there’s a lot of customizable features. It just needs more polish, but what’s here is worth a rental or cheap bargain bin price.

I really wish this was good. It almost threatens to be. But it's just not man... It's just very frustrating. The best I can describe it is the Other M of the series.

In addition to being a totally unnecessary sequel, it doesn't even try to make sense let alone do much with the previous established events.

The combat is almost good but every enemy is literally the worst enemy in the entire game and it all feels so fucking stiff.

The only real positives I've got is it looks fantastic for PSP and I love the tracks that are composed or heavily contributed to by Yoko Shimomura.

Other than that, it reeks of peak millennial angst era Square Enix.

What even is this game?

Not the Parasite Eve sequel we wanted at all.

The gameplay was interesting enough to see me through the horribly convoluted shitty plot.

This is not a full review, but since I cannot see myself finishing this game right now, I really just want a space to share my thoughts.

First, the positives. This is a very technically impressive game; the action is silky smooth and the models are all great quality for the PSP. The menus and UI have a very clean and well designed look to them. However it really doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of originality to the visuals, the monster designs just kind of a gnarled mess and the character designs aren't anything to write home about. Even Aya herself has been downgraded from her older design, I feel.

And then the gameplay is... frustrating. I like the concept of it's core mechanic, the Overdive system. You have the ability to switch between the bodies of nearby allies to give yourself an advantage over enemies. Sometimes, it does offer a bit of strategic thinking. But I just, don't think it really works in practice?

The other mechanics are all really just, not enjoyable. Sometimes you just have to, target an enemy without shooting it and wait for a bar to fill, then you can order your squad to shoot it all at the same time. It feels weird to just, have to stop what you're doing, stop shooting, and wait.

And the cover system is just so awful. The little blocks you hide behind break all the time, and thing is, when you're reloading, you don't duck behind cover like you think you would. That would make too much sense. You just, stand up, out of cover, and the enemy can just, go to town on you. And levels last way too long, even at the beginning. And when you keep dying because the enemies have way too big of an advantage over you, it just makes it go on even longer.

Not knowing the whole story, I can't comment on all of it, but I can tell it's probably not going to be a winning narrative, when the game expects you to do read files just to learn about what is actually happening in the story. I'm not saying the game should tell you, but it should s h o w you and give you bits and pieces through the cutscenes. But after two levels I honestly just, didn't really have much interest in seeing where things would go.

There's just no soul to the story so far, and you're told things that were probably supposed to have some sort of emotional weight, but I just don't really feel anything because the story so poorly sets up who it's characters are, what they're like and what is even going on. If you didn't read the in-game lore encyclopedia, then you wouldn't have a single clue. A fucking codex shouldn't be required reading for the basic understanding of a story.

I haven't played the original Parasite Eve, or it's sequel, yet. But after giving this a try, I feel like my time would be much better invested in those games, instead of this.