The 3rd Birthday is one of the games that I've been eagerly waiting for a while. The gameplay looked fun, the graphics looked incredible for a PSP game, etc. It looked like it was going to be a solid game.The game just recently came out, and I put Dissidia on hold in order to play The 3rd Birthday since I was excited that it finally came out. Anyways, I just beat a few hours ago and played a little bit after to see what I've unlocked, and I would like to share with you my impressions with the game. Again, I'll bold the main points for the lazy people.
The Good:
1. Graphics: Just like Dissidia, they're fantastic. The character models are great, and I thought it was a nice touch that the clothes get ripped/torn after getting hit multiple hits. Whether you find it disgusting or not is up to you. Overall, one of the best looking PSP games.
2. Soundtrack: There were a few tracks that stood out like the title screen song. Really enjoyed listening to that. The soundtrack is solid and diverse.
3. Customization: Every weapon can be customized; you can upgrade the ammo capacity, handling, weapon power, etc. There'll be some cases where you'll have to decide whether to want better handling or better power, bigger ammo clip or ammo capacity, etc. Aside from the weapons, you can also customize Brea's DNA boards. Once you gather OE chips from enemies, you can install them into Aya's board. Some chips might make her have a better defense, faster healing, faster crossfire, restock, etc. There are a tons of chips, each with a different combination, so I spent some time trying to get Aya the way I wanted to. It's one of the few things I liked about the gameplay.
4. Overdrive (dive into soldiers): So Aya has this ability to dive into different soliders, which I found great because you can strategize with soldier placements. You can dive into a soldier, walk toward a location, and dive into another. So, you can distract the enemy with one soldier, and then immediately dive to another to get some sort of sneak attack or evade. You can also put a soldier into a safe place, so he can regenerate health while you fight as another soldier. Also, when you run out of health, you can dive into another soldier to avoid a game over.
5. Inserts: The 3rd Birthday comes with the Aya Brea dissidia costume code for Lightning. Also, the manual - nuff' said.
The Bad:
1. Terrible camera: It's pretty annoying; sometimes the camera moves on its own while I'm walking or rolling. I hated that it moved on its own, so I set the camera setting to behind mode, and it's even worse. The view is extremely limited, so I just had to put with the standard view.
2. Aya Brea is a horrible protagonist: She has no personality throughout the majority of the game; she's a walking doormat. All she does is obey men's order. The chief says, "Aya...do this and this.." and she replies with, "Yes, sir!" She does this like 4 times. I'm not even joking. She's weak, bland and forgettable in this game.
3. Other characters are bad too: Speaking of bad character, the main cast is also horrible. They don't have good or any proper character development. They remain dull and non-existant throughout the whole game. What's even worse is that some of the plot-twists in this game involve some of these characters, and the plot-twists didn't have any impact on me because I had no attachment to these characters. The 3rd Birthday gets a big F from me in terms of characters.
4. Frustrating and difficult for the wrong reasons: Before I begin, I want to say that I enjoy difficult games like Shin Megami Tensei and even Demon's Souls. Those games did difficulty right, imo. Whenver you died, you learned from your mistakes. The 3rd Birthday, however, is difficult because of poor game designs
Red orbs
There was this one chapter that mainly involved destroying red orbs. If you don't destroy the red orbs, the enemies will keep respawning, and you won't be able to progress into the next level. At first, it was no big deal. First, there was one orb in a room. Then, there was two red orbs in a room. Then, there was four red orbs in a room. However, two of those red orbs were floating way up in the fucking sky, so you can had to use the sniper rifle and take them out. Sometimes, you couldn't concentrate because enemies keep shooting at you since you were a sitting duck. Even if take them out, more enemies will respawn.
So I ran to another spot to avoid getting hit, and more fucking enemies spawned. Then there was one red orb where you couldn't reach because the fog wouldn't let you. I tried to aim at the orb from the closest point at could, but it wouldn't let me because the aiming system sucks ass. It would always aimed at the enemy near the orb. Even after I killed the enemy, I couldn't aim at the orb, so I had to waste one of my grenades. After that, there was a room with around seven red orbs, and a lot of tough enemies spawned. It's like this game wants me to fail, but miraculously, I didn't die in this room.
And then there was this one time where there was one, ONE red orb. I destroyed it, and killed all the enemies, but more enemies spawned. So, I thought there was another one hidden in the other room. So I walk into the room, get trapped with more enemies spawning. And there were no other red orbs. It's like this game loves fucking with me.
After the chapter was over, it seemed like the red orb gimmick was done. I haven't seen it since Episode 2 (I was at five I think). But oh no! After I finished killing three tough enemies, more respawned. I was like dammit, I'm almost out of ammo. I walked toward the enemies, so they could kill me and alter my strategy. But guess what, there was a red orb hidden. I ran to check if there was more red orbs, and there were. I'm telling you. This game loves to fuck with me.
Bosses:
The bosses in The 3rd Birthday weren't that enjoyable. In fact, they were mostly boring. It was mostly, press and hold R for ten minutes. Your weapons do very little damage, so you're going to be holding that R button for a quite a while. There was this one boss, which is one of the worst boss fights in existence. Again, this was in chapter 2 (my least favorite chapter).
So you're floating in the babel, and all you could do is shoot. Liberation mode wasn't avaiable in this boss fight, so I just had to do standard attacks with the occassional overdrive. So for ten minutes, all I was doing was holding R, waiting for his HP to drop. After a while, the boss begins to suck people in, so you had to overdrive from people to people in order to avoiding getting sucked. I got sucked in because the aiming system sort of sucks, so I had to redo the boss fight again. That's right; ten more minutes of pressing and holding R. Whopee! After I defeated the boss, I felt more relived than feeling like I'm accomplished something because I won't have to fight that tedious boss again.
But wait! This is The 3rd Birthday; it loves fucking with me. That boss fight made another appearance in the last chapter. Thankfully, it wasn't as annoying since my skills/weapons were upgraded.
When it isn't 'frustrating'
When it isn't frustrating, the gameplay is average. It's just your typical shooter with a standard auto-lock aim system. Sometimes, the auto-lock can be annoying since it would target enemies that are far away instead of the closest. Sometimes when an enemy has a triangle appearing (meaning you can do an overdrive attack), you dive into another soldier instead of doing the overdrive attack. When you try to lock into the enemy again, it locks into another, and by the time you lock into the enemy that had the triangle appearing, you missed the opportunity for an overdrive attack. When you take this and the camera into account, the core gameplay is more frustrating than fun.
5. Short campaign and value: The game took me around 6 hours to beat on the normal difficulty. I did spent some minutes reading through files and talking to the characters. After you complete the game, you get some new weapons and outfits. The outfits have poor defense; they're more for show than anything else. If you beat the game several times, you unlock more 'sexy' costumes and other stuff. These unlockables don't compel me to replay the game.
6. Voice acting: Originally, I was going to put this in the neutral pile, until I met Maeda or something. The voice-acting is average, but Maeda, ugh. He sounds like a robot when talks over the radio, and sadly, you get to hear him in the last two chapters. It's just annoying.
7. Story: Just like the voice overs, I was going to put this in the neutral pile until the ending happened! The story was a little interesting: dive into the past, get some fragments of what happened back then, try to piece them together, etc. However, there was a lot of stuff going on, so there was quite a bit of ambiguity. Also, it takes the FFXIII storytelling approach (ie. reading the database to understand some stuff). The plot-twists could've been better if the characters were better developed, and the script could use some work.
But then the ending came along which made me flat out hate the story. It felt like something out of Kingdom Hearts 2. It was so dumb, and it just created a bunch of plot holes. Nothing can justify the failure of an ending. Then it tries to do a trick from MGS3 (I wish this site had spoiler warnings). Anyways, it was poorly done since you have no emotional attachment to any character. They all suck. And in the end, it left so many things unexplained. I thought it was going to be explained, but it wasn't.
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Overall, my experience with The 3rd Birthday has been negative. It's a difficult game to recommend. While it has some nice stuff going on, the bad greatly outweights the good. The annoying camera, bland characters, dumb ending, awkward aiming system, poor design choices, tedious boss fights, average shooting mechanics, robotic voice acting and short replay value made The 3rd Birthday an unpleasant experience for me.
Score: 4.0/10
