The highly anticipated PSP game finally has a set release date (although only for Japan unfortunately).

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the first Kingdom Hearts game and takes place about 10 years before Sora received his keyblade. The story follows three [playable] characters, Aqua, Terra and Ven, who are searching for a missing keyblade master and encounter monsters known as Unversed (sort of like a Heartless or a Nobody in the other KH games).

I heard that each character will have his/her own scenario you must play through to beat the game which lasts about 15 hours each. You can switch between scenarios any time you want when you’re playing and game play changes, depending on which character you choose. So if you’re tired of playing one character over and over again, you can switch to one of the other two characters to spice up your game play.

The game is slated for a release on January 9 next year in Japan which means a US release will soon follow.

I am really excited for this game. The KH games are crazy fun to play and I like the interesting mixture of Final Fantasy and Disney characters. Who knew those two franchises can mix so well? The only real problem I have is that I don’t have a PSP any more so I won’t be able to play it as soon as it comes out. I don’t even have a Nintendo DS to play the newly released Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. And then when Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out for the Playstation 3….argh. I’m so behind on the video game scene. The latest game I’ve played was Persona 4, and that was released last December…

Oh well! I don’t have any time to spare for video games anyways. Let us just enjoy this new trailer (with subs!)!

Thanks to Lissar from Kingdom Hearts Insider for the translations!