The 3rd Birthday is the third installment for the Parasite Eve franchise developed by Square Enix.

The 3rd Birthday is a third person shooter for the PlayStation Portable with roleplaying game elements like character and weapon levels. This is my first game in the Parasite Eve franchise and I’m liking what I have played so far. There is nothing really ground breaking about the game but somehow when the gameplay and Aya’s abilities come together, they kept me interested in playing more and finding out the different ways they can be used to my advantage.

So apparently like other Parasite Eve games, you play as Aya Brea who has to fight against these monsters called The Twisted which had a sudden outbreak in Manhatten. I do not know what is the history behind her, but in this game it seems she has lost her memories. She is constantly travelling back in time through the use of a machine called the Overdrive System.

I can’t really give any proper judgement to the franchise’s story and how The 3rd Birthday linked to it. However fans of the franchise seem to bash it a lot saying that it’s too short or too “anime”. As a guy who is new to this franchise, I find the story in The 3rd Birthday to be ok so far. Sure it’s not gonna win any awards but I’m not gonna say it’s bad or anything. I have played games like Dead Rising 2 when the story really bores me to a point that playing it felt more like a chore. That was not the case for me in The 3rd Birthday.

PSP – Friendly Gameplay

With the lack of dual analog sticks, shooters on the PSP usually suffers because accuracy is often difficult to achieve. In The 3rd Birthday however, this has been taken care of. The game has auto aim for all its guns except for those categorized in the Sniper and Special Class. That may sound boring, but whoever was in charge of the combat design dealt with it pretty well.

The normal enemies’ health are usually very little on the difficulty that I plahyed on (Easy), so there is no need to hold down the fire button for long periods of time. At times even if you want to just stay at one spot and just keep firing, you will find yourself dodging enemy attacks, swapping weapons and also using Aya’s abilities. It makes me really glad that I do not have to painstakingly align my shots as it will probably take the same amount of time for the monsters to come after me and attack me. The combat design is really well thought out and balanced for a portable system.

Making Use Of Aya’s Abilities Is Key

It is very important to know what Aya’s abilities are, and play around with them to uncover new strategies with them. There are the basic ones like dodging and hiding behind covers which you will find yourself constantly doing since the enemies in this game are so agile and deadly. Aya is also able to activate a cross fire with friendlies around the area which really helps ammo conservation.

Then you have the more “powerful” abilities like Liberation and Overdrive. Liberation is what most people describe it as “god mode”. When it is activated, Aya becomes invincible for a few seconds and is equipped with dual wielding pistols. Her basic abilities are also enhanced, enabling her to move around quickly. Although Liberation only lasts for a few seconds, you can deal a lot of damage to enemies and it is really handy to get yourself out of sticky situations.

What Overdrive does is that it allows Aya to swap bodies with any CTI soldiers or civilians that are in the vicinity. In some missons you can even overdrive into military vehicles if there are any nearby. It is very convenient to use when your health is running low or to find a different vantage point since some troops may be stationed on the roofs of buildings.

You can also use Overdrive on enemies to take away a huge chunk of their health and also fill up the Liberation bar. However, you will need to shoot the enemies a number of times and their health bar will glow and pulsate before the button prompt appears for Overdrive. Cross fire really helps to get a quicker button prompt since everybody will be focusing their attack on that specific monster.

Some Interesting Gameplay Varieties

For the most parts, you will be running through maps and eliminating monsters along the way. But Square Enix decided to let players experience something slightly different every now and then. I have been treated with some sort of free-fall fight and vehicle combat with tanks, humvees and helicopters. I appreciate that Square Enix is trying to put in some variety to the gameplay.

Customizable Weapons And OE

You can customize both Aya’s guns and Over Energy. I was very surprised at the number of weapons there are in this game. They are divided into 6 classes: Handgun, Assault, Sniper, Launcher, Special. Some of them may even have their own sub class.

You can hold up to 3 weapons at a time, but only 2 of them can be changed. Majority of their stats are customizable with upgrades that you can purchase. You will have to replay the missions to unlock more weapons because I have played through the story once and I have not even unlocked half of what the game has to offer.

So apart from your character level, each weapon class have their own level as well, depending on how frequent you use them. If you have played Borderlands before, you will recognize this as weapon proficiency. For me, I used weapons from the assault and pistol class the most, so their levels are way ahead of the others. I’m not sure if a higher level weapon class promises better damage, but they will unlock more upgrades and weapons.

Over Energy (OE) are like Aya’s passive abilities. They can be customized by using DNAs obtained from overdrived monsters, though the frequency of getting a rare DNA is pretty low. You can then place them on a 3×3 table. I have not played around with it much, but it will grant you special bonuses as you perform different abilities during combat (e.g. overdrive, cross fire).

Each OE can be leveled up as well, but I am not sure exactly how to do it. What I did was applying similar OEs on top of existing ones and that worked out pretty well for me so far.

It seemed like a hassle to try and understand how this stuff works at first (what’s more its in Japanese), but nothing is impossible with some online help.

Boss Fights Are Not Very Fun

The boss fights in this game do not really require you to do anything different from what you have been doing while fighting the normal monsters. Each of them have some sort of special power, but most of them are not too different from one another.

Auto aiming may not work too well with boss monsters that have multiple aiming points on them. Currently I have only encountered this once, so I am not sure if there are anymore in the later missions. I found myself always targeting the wrong part so I had to frantically scroll through the other parts while keeping an eye out for incoming attacks. To make things worse, you can’t move while picking out aiming points because your thumb has to let go of the analog stick to push the directional buttons.

Menus Are In English, Helpful Text In Japanese

Only the Japanese version of the game is available now. I was quite surprised at how much English text there is in this game. Most of the menu stuff are in English so it really helped me to navigate my way around and guess what are some of them are used for.

However the help messages, subtitles, mission objectives and so on are still in Japanese. So if you only know very little Japanese (or none), then you may find yourself stuck in a mission, not knowing what to do to advance. You may want to look up for some online help if you are at a lost.

Very Good Visuals

For a game released on a portable system, the in-game assets held up really well overall. The amount of detail applied onto the environment and main characters are more than what I bargained for. On the other hand, the CTI soldiers and civilians look kind of low detailed. The monsters are generally ok, but some of them look like one big mess with no distinguishable features.

There are two types of pre-rendered cutscenes. The first is the high quality Final Fantasy XIII type featuring shiny hair and high detailed characters. I have only seen it once or twice though.

The second type is like the in-game graphics topped off with some extra touches like fog or bloom. This one is used for majority of the cutscenes so far.

Made In Japan

Like a lot of Japanese games out there, The 3rd Birthday was made to be played over and over again and it rewards you for doing so. During your subsequent playthroughs you may unlock better guns, find rarer DNAs (which leads to more abilities), and level up your character and weapons. This will help you take on the harder difficulties where you can earn more experience points with each monster killed.

Those are the game changing unlockables. The aesthetic ones include costumes and bonus scenes. Oh something to take note about the costumes, they will only appear during normal gameplay. During the prerecorded FMV cutscenes (shown above), her clothes will be reverted back to the default ones. Unless you want the game to be a few gigabytes bigger, Square Enix can’t possibly record every single cutscene with each costume.

Final Thoughts

The 3rd Birthday is a great game which dealt with portable gaming very well. It looks, plays, and sounds great. There aren’t many missions packed into the game which is kind of disappointing, especially for those of you who are fans of the Parasite Eve franchise. Once again I can’t account for the story since this is my first Parasite Eve game, but in terms of gameplay I really enjoyed it.