[The 3rd Birthday] Review

I recently played The 3rd Birthday for the PSP. The game was basically described as the sequel for the Parasite Eve series after a long time of absence. The game was released around March 2011 and most reviewers rated it ranging from low to fair score.

Unlike the previous Parasite Eve games, The 3rd Birthday is more like an action-shooting game than the traditional action RPG style before but then again, they also made changes at the gameplay system back at Parasite Eve 2 (from what I heard). I didn't played PE1 that much and never played PE2 at all so for this review, I will not make any comparison to whether how The 3rd Birthday was differ from its predecessors.

The story starts at the city of Manhattan at the midst of Christmas Eve. The city was struck by plant-like structures suddenly grow out of nowhere destroying most part of city in the process. Since then Manhattan was actively attacked by unknown creatures known as Twisted. Few years later, a group is form called CTI (Counter Twisted Investigation) specifically to engage against the Twisted. One of the members was Aya Brea. Aya mysteriously lost her memories and only vaguely remembers one thing where she sees herself supposedly getting married but with an unlikely scenario. As Aya carries on engaging the Twisted, she’ll soon realize the whole connection between herself, her power, the Twisted and her lost memories.

The story is simple to me. It doesn’t have much of a deep story-telling so I can’t really say if the story appealed to me. There are only few characters in the story but personally, all of them aren’t interesting (except for Aya, I guess). One that killed the story-telling is the bad voice acting. Not all of them were bad but you would frequently catch some off moments in their conversation. Aya’s backstory slowly unravels as you progresses but things won’t be interesting until the end of the game. If you haven’t got any clue throughout the game, then the ending might surprise you.

The gameplay is almost your typical third-person action shooter with some unique elements like the Overdive that you will use primarily in the game. The controls are a bit odd for me since I’m not that use on mapping the fire button on the shoulder button but it’s not that hard to learn once you get a hang of it. When it comes to gameplay, the action is solid. There are no dull moments in the game except for some few cinematic scenes and intermissions but most parts are non-stop action so personally, I have lots of fun with it.

Aya is build-up by using DNA boards and attaching or mixing sorts of DNAs to create certain skills. The problem here is using it is all trial-and-error thing. Unless you don’t have a cheatsheet for it, you might end up spending too much time on experimenting on it. Aya’s weapons can also be upgraded as well. Weapons are usually unlock through game progress or obtain from certain NPC’s Aya have dive-in although most of the powerful weapons are only accessible in more advance difficulties.

Replayability is encourage here for they’re lots of unlockables even after beating it for the first time. Once completed, a new difficulty mode is unlocked, and you can start a new game retaining your progress. You’re encouraged to play through harder difficulties thus you can obtain more unlockables like weapons, costumes and such. It can still be fun and challenging for the second or third time around but it can be tiring to repeat the game all over again. But it depends if you’re up to challenge of getting the unlockables. 

The 3rd Birthday got its mixed opinions by many. Honestly, it may not be the best but it’s still a fun game. The action is solid and its definitely fun, so anything bad like the voice acting and such can be forgivable at the very least. And yes, the game is good WITHOUT seeing that Shower scene, okay!? So if you like shooting action in general, then try The 3rd Birthday.

Until then ... and MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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