The weird middle child of the franchise with all the pros and cons that the status comes with. Birth By Sleep has moments that make you feel the emotions and excitements that you want from a game in this series but also has some truly middling and baffling decisions that take you away from loving it as a whole.

First step, the story. For me this is will probably the last time when the main story in a Kingdom Hearts game will makes sense from start to finish (I have not played 3D, 0.2 or III yet). I say that because while I was able to understand most of what was happening on my own, there were moments where I had to ask my KH expert friends answers for major plot points. My favorite moments came from the friendship of our three protagonists, even if they do dumb angsty teen stuff which totally tracks for them. The Keyblade Graveyard section is a testament to how cool and ridiculous KH can be and it will forever be etched in my mind. The rest of the game feels barren and lacking of the heart that KH normally has in spades.

The Disney worlds are probably the biggest disappointment here. Maybe it was because I wasn't interested in Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella or Peter Pan but even Olympus doesn't hit the mark like I would have loved it to. The only one that I enjoyed and one that I felt actually affected the protagonists in a meaningful way being Deep Space. I love Lilo and Stitch and I was glad to see one of the Disney worlds being taken in a different direction and having an impact on KH's main plot. Disney Town is like the complete opposite, where I want to tear my ears off at the looping BGM and overall disdain for the world itself.

The protagonists themselves also end up all over the place. I enjoy when games have multiple routes that culminate in a final story, it's a weakness of mine and Birth By Sleep does the style well enough. My problems with the protagonists mainly stem from the fact that Terra and Ventus are mainly along for the ride, getting tricked, duped and ordered to do things so the plot can continue. Thankfully Aqua at least has some agency and takes the reins multiple times throughout but let's be honest, they kinda fuck her over. She ends up feeling like a babysitter who just keeps having the worst shit happen to her. My girl deserves better. At the very least, all three of them have great personalities that shine through when given the chance. Big fan of Terra beating the fuck out of Peter Pan. Hate that guy.

Second, the gameplay ends up feeling like the rough in between of KH1 and 2 with the deck building of Chain of Memories. At times, the game feels very stilted like the first game, but has the moments of free flowing combat that made the second a great time to play, it just feels like whiplash. The combat never really reaches it's true potential always pulling back before it reaches the top.

I adore melding and the tooling of your commands but when the game stays incredibly easy throughout it's entire runtime, the only reason to try out new stuff is the fun that comes from the shiny new thing. At no point does the game try to make you use it's systems in interesting ways. D-Links seem worthless except for using them for a full heal during the early game when you don't have easy access to a cure spell, Shotlocks are easily abusable and are super overpowered and Command Styles are super flashy and fun to use but the nature of them appearing and disappearing at random times during combat makes them frustrating when they happen at an inopportune time or at the end of combat. Rhythm Mixer is so fucking cool but I get one combo with it before I'm forced into using it's finisher and it goes bye bye. The depleting command gauge is just the icing on the cake making you to want to rush between fights to keep it going which would be neat if every level transition didn't reset it. Or just pausing the menu which is a really cool move. Your normal attacks feel weak and the standard finish commands are garbage that totally stops the pace of the fight. All of the good and bad of these systems come to a head when decide to tackle any of the FOUR SUPER-BOSSES that this game has to offer.

Speaking of bosses, this might be the winner for the worst boss fights in any KH game. The only memorable fights are the final bosses (with one exception), Eraqus, Trinity Armor and the fucking Magic Mirror from Snow White. Overall they range from really piss easy, to abuse the game for all it's worth with little in between. I truly hate the fact that they make you fight the Iron Prisoner like 10 times in the arena mode, sometimes in that stupid form where he will become untargetable for upwards of 30 seconds on two separate moves. I understand that the arena was made for multiple players, but this port doesn't have that multiplayer and I feel the bosses here could have used a retooling. The super-bosses truly take this bullshit to a new level. While KH2 has Lingering Will, an absolute banger of a super-boss and the data fights (which some might consider to be super-bosses, honestly feels more like a boss rush to me), BBS instead features 4 fights, only one of which reaching somewhat close to the bar set by Lingering Will. That one fight being Vanitas Remnant which if were being completely honest, is still bullshit with a ton of it's moves. I beat it once in a normal fashion with Terra which took me about 3 hours because damn, Terra is baddd but doing it that way made me appreciate the rhythm that comes from the fight. It sucks that the rhythm is broken by Vanitas going invulnerable for like 15 seconds as he sends clones at you (the most annoying move) and the fact that like 3 of his 15 moves can be actually blocked but it still was fun at the end. Both Armor of Eraqus and No Heart, despite having such banger character designs (biased, I love armor) are complete pushovers minus 1 attack that makes them a threat.

Finally, Mysterious Figure exists as a monument to all of Birth By Sleep's problems when it comes to combat. Just a genuinely unfair fight that really wants you to win the lottery on what attacks and moves that he decides to use. Shout-outs to having a move (the doom timer) that makes it impossible to play slowly as getting hit by it three times basically means game over. More shout-outs to the fact that he will sometimes use it three times in a row early in the fight and even more shout-outs to me finding out that you can influence him into almost never using this move by REMOVING ALL UNIQUE MOVEMENT AND DEFENSE COMMANDS FROM YOUR DECK. This is something that is never brought up or a mechanic used in the game at any point and serves as a final fuck you from the developers of this fight. Seriously, I thought the internet was fucking with me when I looked up a solution to dodging the doom timer move until I did it and beat the fight on the next 2 attempts. Actually mind boggling.

The minigames don't fare that much better. KH games have always been hit and miss when it comes to these and BBS isn't any better with it. Rumble Racing, Ice Cream Beat and Fruitball can all go die in a trash fire but at least Command Board makes up for it. A simplified Fortune Street is something I can get down with any day of the week and the arena is a nice change of pace from the story, Iron Imprisoner 1 through 4 notwithstanding.

Finally you got the completion. The 100% cleanup. The staple of Kingdom Hearts games and my honestly one of my favourite parts of these games. Just like KH 1, CoM and 2, I enjoyed my time getting the report done.

Only once though. Because somebody really thought that in order to get the plat and the 100% in game, you would need to not only do it once, but THREE TIMES, once as each character. Some psychopathic shit that only a masochist would do and lets just say that I now see Huey, Dewy and Louie shaking their asses for ice cream in my dreams now. Even my beloved Command Board I despise with a burning passion after having to play a total of 21 boards not including the extra boards I had to do to unlock some commands that are hidden on the board itself and unobtainable through normal gameplay. If you do play BBS, DO NOT GO FOR THE PLATINUM OR 100%. I beg of you.

At the end of it all, while this review seems like a rant about the worst game of all time that killed my family and my dog, I really did enjoy my time with Birth By Sleep. It still has that Action RPG gameplay that I adore, the campy story about friendship that I can't help but route for and the love for it's source materials and original creations that I stick around for.