The Kingdom Hearts franchise is much more than melding of game and animation worlds; it's also the tale of Keyblades, magical weapons that are designed to defeat evil. But the Keyblades existed before Sora started wielding it against the Heartless. At the DKΣ3713 Private party event in Harajuku today, Square showed off a trailer for Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, a prequel to the original title. What's more, there were demo stations that fans could get their hands on two levels of the game.
It appears as though Maleficent, the wicked witch from the Sleeping Beauty tale, plays the primary role of the bad buy in Birth by Sleep, as her machinations appear to be driving the Heartless together to cause a great disaster. In the midst of this disaster, a Keyblade master named Xehanort and his apprentice disappeared. With the events appearing to spiral out of control, another Keyblade master sends his three apprentices to look for the missing warriors. However, it appears that these characters will go through a number of new worlds as it sets up the events for the first Kingdom Hearts title. Two of these appear to be the lands of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the latter of which is one of the Princesses of Heart. It's possible that Birth by Sleep will explain the kidnapping of these princesses, as well as point out Sleeping Beauty's role, but that was unknown from the trailer.
While gameplay with the title was limited to a short five minutes, we did manage to get a quick glimpse at one of the three apprentices in the game. We selected the Terra level, which appeared to be set within the Sleeping Beauty world. Terra looked to be an extremely capable warrior, with an intimidating Keyblade. However, he had many more abilities than simply hacking and slashing his way through Heartless. For one thing, every attack that he landed built up a power meter, which augmented his strikes. Once it was fully powered up, he had the ability to convert this power into stronger attacks or trigger one of four attack modes. The first three appeared to have elemental attacks associated with them: Fireblazer set the Keyblade ablaze, while Rock Breaker allowed Terra to channel earth strikes and Thunderbolt gave him the ability to call down lightning. The fourth mode was called Fatal Mode, and let him pull more powerful attacks on his opponents.
These were not the only attacks that were available to Terra, however. One thing that he was able to do was highlight enemies with a targeting reticule and blast them with a series of homing shots. These are much more powerful that standard attacks. Players could also switch back and forth between special attacks and magic by using the D-Pad. This was an important feature as you started hacking through Heartless. While we managed to clear our way through the minor enemies without a problem, we did find that the boss within the Enchanted Castle was a bit more complex. It was a gigantic loom-like creature (potentially reminiscent of the one that Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger with. However, it had been augmented with Maleficent's magic to be much larger and deadly, and there were multiple areas that needed to be targeted to destroy it properly, weakening its strength before it could be eliminated. However, before we could land the killing blow, we ran out of time. However, we were extremely excited to get our hands on the title which will be hitting PSPs in 2009.
link
this might make me buy a PSP.
It appears as though Maleficent, the wicked witch from the Sleeping Beauty tale, plays the primary role of the bad buy in Birth by Sleep, as her machinations appear to be driving the Heartless together to cause a great disaster. In the midst of this disaster, a Keyblade master named Xehanort and his apprentice disappeared. With the events appearing to spiral out of control, another Keyblade master sends his three apprentices to look for the missing warriors. However, it appears that these characters will go through a number of new worlds as it sets up the events for the first Kingdom Hearts title. Two of these appear to be the lands of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the latter of which is one of the Princesses of Heart. It's possible that Birth by Sleep will explain the kidnapping of these princesses, as well as point out Sleeping Beauty's role, but that was unknown from the trailer.
While gameplay with the title was limited to a short five minutes, we did manage to get a quick glimpse at one of the three apprentices in the game. We selected the Terra level, which appeared to be set within the Sleeping Beauty world. Terra looked to be an extremely capable warrior, with an intimidating Keyblade. However, he had many more abilities than simply hacking and slashing his way through Heartless. For one thing, every attack that he landed built up a power meter, which augmented his strikes. Once it was fully powered up, he had the ability to convert this power into stronger attacks or trigger one of four attack modes. The first three appeared to have elemental attacks associated with them: Fireblazer set the Keyblade ablaze, while Rock Breaker allowed Terra to channel earth strikes and Thunderbolt gave him the ability to call down lightning. The fourth mode was called Fatal Mode, and let him pull more powerful attacks on his opponents.
These were not the only attacks that were available to Terra, however. One thing that he was able to do was highlight enemies with a targeting reticule and blast them with a series of homing shots. These are much more powerful that standard attacks. Players could also switch back and forth between special attacks and magic by using the D-Pad. This was an important feature as you started hacking through Heartless. While we managed to clear our way through the minor enemies without a problem, we did find that the boss within the Enchanted Castle was a bit more complex. It was a gigantic loom-like creature (potentially reminiscent of the one that Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger with. However, it had been augmented with Maleficent's magic to be much larger and deadly, and there were multiple areas that needed to be targeted to destroy it properly, weakening its strength before it could be eliminated. However, before we could land the killing blow, we ran out of time. However, we were extremely excited to get our hands on the title which will be hitting PSPs in 2009.
link
this might make me buy a PSP.