“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.
“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:
“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.
“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.
“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.
“So, do I get a nice tutorial?”
-on series traditions
Time to learn how to walk!
“What’s going on here?”
-on the Wayfinders
How mysterious!
“No ‘eleven to one’ for me!”
-on sparring
Yeah, this Riku rivalry thing has long since become a full-blown complex.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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*.
“I’m skateboarding around the universe!”
-on the keyblade glider
Far superior to the gummi ship.
“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.
“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.
“Moogle! Look at it!”
-on CBB’s favorite part of the series
It’s really the Moogles that keep him coming back for more.
“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.
“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.
Tune in next time for more of Ventus’s adventures…but you can call them adVen.