Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is one of the titles that meant Sony PSP owners didn't have to feel like the neglected relatives of the main console series. Square Enix decided not to make just a handheld cash-in, but a full-blooded entry that fills the prequel gap in the overall story while also working as a self-contained chapter with its own ending. The player thus arrives, for the first time, at the moment when the key decisions were made that would go on to shape the fates of Sora and his friends years later.

The game's structure rests on three playable characters – Terra, Ventus, and Aqua – whose stories intertwine and show the same locations from different points of view. The combat system stays true to the series' action core but adds the Command Deck system, in which the player assembles their own set of attacks and spells and unlocks new combinations by using them. Visits to worlds inspired by Disney films are once again spiced up by the presence of Sora and company only as passing references, since the leading role here belongs to three new heroes with their own motivations and emotional arcs.

The game set an unusually high graphical and audio standard for a handheld title – the cutscenes, Yoko Shimomura's music, and the pacing of the storytelling all feel like a full-fledged console experience shrunk down into a pocket format. It's precisely for this reason that Birth by Sleep is still considered one of the reasons the PSP was worth owning at all, and fans of the series rank it among the most important entries for explaining the mythology of Kingdom Hearts.

Why play it: Because it's a key prequel chapter of the Kingdom Hearts series, wrapped up in one of the most ambitious RPGs ever released on the PSP.