Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep for PSP

Birth By Sleep is one of the newest editions to the Kingdom Hearts Series, and will be focusing on the characters from the Secret Movie in Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix+. The game was announced September 2007, at the Tokyo Game Show, along with Kingdom Hearts: Coded and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days.

Birth By Sleep is being worked on by the same team that created Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories. Development on this game started fairly early, but it was interrupted when the team started to focus on the remake of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Nomura has speculated that this game will be the last of the trio to hit market.

Birth By Sleep is a single player game, that originally had game play similar to past games. Recently, Tetsuya Nomura has stated that the game play has changed. It will now be similar to Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories. But it is not a card based system.

You will be able to play as three different characters at the start of the game: Terra, Ven and Aqua. Each will have their own style of combat and follow different scenarios. Even though the story follows three different heroes, at certain points they will all encounter one another. By completing all three of the scenarios, the player will be able to fully understand the entire story.

A new leveling system has been created and developed solely for this game. The best way it has been described was that, it’s like… growing. There are also new enemies to fight, neither of which are the heartless or the nobodies. They have been called a new type of enemy, that move very fast.

Co-op between players, even players competing against each other, has been discussed. The team is currently thinking of a way to make full use out of the PSP’s system. However if Birth By Sleep has a multiplayer, it will be different from the one seen in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days.

Jump Festa showed us some of the new gameplay in action. Finishing combos and reaction commands make a welcome return to the game. And joining the mysterious new enemies, you will be fighting against one resembling a Large Body . Its also been hinted that limits might be placed on some of the game's events.