Clickbait Boyfriend: Birth by Sleep AKA Three Identical Strangers

“I’m a little bit nervous!”

-on starting Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

Welcome, Kingdom Hearts fans old and new, to the third iteration of Clickbait Boyfriend! Despite all my early fears that he would hate the series, Clickbait Boyfriend is back for his first foray into non-numbered Kingdom Hearts territory. I’ll admit that I was once a hater who thought these so-called “side games” couldn’t be essential to the main story, and I’ll happily own how completely wrong I was. Still think it was dumb to release them on every single handheld device ever made instead of sticking with consoles (or even with a single company), but that’s a blog post for another day.

For now, let’s dive (to the heart) into this new adventure! Will silly things be said? Will Josh be confused? Will we all be born…by sleep? Time to find out!

(Want to follow the journey from the beginning? Check out the previous blogs here!)

“Oh s#!t, remix!  I could totally groove to this at the club.”

-on “Simple and Clean”

Nice try, cool guy. As if Josh is a regular at “the club.” On another note, I really think this is the same version of the song that plays at the beginning of the original Kingdom Hearts, but CBB is convinced its faster.

Image result for kingdom hearts remix

Not that kind of ReMix.

Kingdom Hearts is so confusing. This guy IS Roxas.”

-on Ventus lookalikes, part one

Clickbait Boyfriend gets worked up about this every single time I mention it. See the differences for yourself below:

The real difference between Roxas and Ventus

“Oh look, where I got my @$$ kicked.”

-on Riku island

He’s literally never letting this go. It’s been almost a year since these fateful defeats, and here we go all over again.

Sora and Riku KH1 Fight Destiny Islands

A peek into CBB’s recurring nightmares.

“He kinda looks like me.”

-on Ventus lookalikes, part two

Clickbait Boyfriend did also think that he looked pretty similar to Roxas, so it makes sense via transitive property.

Sora, Roxas, Ventus Three Identical Strangers

Get your tickets

“Well, that explained nothing.”

-on the opening scenes

CBB’s frustration with his lack of understanding will become a running theme of the Birth By Sleep blog series.

Kingdom Hearts Ansem You understand nothing

“So, do I get a nice tutorial?”

-on series traditions

Time to learn how to walk!

Ventus Tutorial Birth By Sleep

Or hit rings! Don’t you have somewhere to be, Ven?

What’s going on here?”

-on the Wayfinders

How mysterious!

Birth by Sleep Wayfinders

But how the heck does Aqua know about Paopu fruit?

“No ‘eleven to one’ for me!”

-on sparring

Yeah, this Riku rivalry thing has long since become a full-blown complex.

Riku and Sora Rivalry

Let it go, man.

“I cannot believe it is just now dawning on me why they named him Yen Sid.”

-on revelations

This feels like a good place to mention that Josh is usually a pretty smart guy. You’d think he would know to look out for anagrams in these games by now, especially ones that are literally as obvious as they come.

Yen Sid Disappointed and Mad

Yen Sid is disappointed and confused.

“I cannot believe they introduced this character with no explanation.”

-on Ventus, part three

I started playing Birth By Sleep many years after ever looking at Kingdom Hearts 2, so the resemblance didn’t strike me as quite so outrageous at the time. Clickbait Boyfriend is starting to win me over here though, it’s a huge mystery to drop on fans right from the get-go.

Ventus and Roxas identical.

The boys are cool with it though.

“I’m sorry, but anyone whose ever taken a look at that guy knows he’s bad.”

-on Xehanort

I don’t normally condone appearance-based discrimination, but it does seem like someone probably should have said something.

Xehanort looks evil

I know Keyblade wielders are supposed to be good people but COME ON look at the guy!

“Terra’s hairstyle looks a lot like one of the Ansem styles…and he just asked a rhetorical question about darkness.”

-on strange coincidences

How strange! The good folks at Square must have run out of hairstyles. Yes, that must be it.

Terra Ansem Xehanort side by side

They all go to the same barber.

“That’s Riku!”

-on the masked boy

Hula skirts are in! Also, for some reason it still amazes me when Clickbait Boyfriend recognizes little details from previous games that show up in a different entry. It’s like he’s a true fan or something *tears up*.

Riku and Vanitus same outfit

Honestly, until I found this image I thought their outfits were exactly the same.

“I’m skateboarding around the universe!”

-on the keyblade glider

Far superior to the gummi ship.

Keyblade Glider

Disney Extreme Skate Adventure 2

“Way to exoticize little people.”

-on the seven dwarves

I’m not entirely sure what CBB was referring to here, but it seems like Ventus needs some sensitivity training.

Image result for seven dwarfs kingdom hearts

Doc is not pleased.

“At this point, that should be enough. He should leave.”

-on discovering the dwarves don’t know Terra

Ventus is too wholesome to leave seven old men in need.

Ventus and Snow White Wholesome

Not Terra though. Definitely no one is seeing Terra here.

“Moogle! Look at it!”

-on CBB’s favorite part of the series

It’s really the Moogles that keep him coming back for more.

All the moogles

To be fair, they are really cute.

“There’s one command in this game: this.”

-on the X button

This is a controversial opinion. Clickbait Boyfriend is strongly in the “pure button-masher” camp of Kingdom Hearts players. I was also in this camp when I first played these games…in elementary school. The series takes a lot of crap for having simplistic controls, and it’s true: you can play through the games without much strategy or finesse, just hammering the x-button. However, I think it’s actually kind of cool how Kingdom Hearts is pretty accessible to different play-styles. You can keep it simple (and clean), but you can also really delve into the magic and special commands and find your own preferred tactics. 

We’ll see if Clickbait Boyfriend needs to refine his technique as the game gets harder. On one hand, it’ll make the game easier. On the other hand, he’s pretty stubborn. All bets are off. 

Related image

“Why are all the Kingdom Hearts characters so wholesome?”

-on the compulsion to help others

There’s probably some kind of explanation based on light and darkness and hearts, but I think the simple answer is: they were born this way.

Image result for kingdom hearts wholesome

Tune in next time for more of Ventus’s adventures…but you can call them adVen.

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