Happy July, Clickbait Boyfriend readers! We’re celebrating the summer by hiding inside from the heat and playing video games. It’s been a very Kingdom Hearts week here at Talk This NYC HQ, between marveling at the Kingdom Hearts III speedrun at SGDQ and the Talk This Sisters going to the World of Tres Kingdom Hearts Orchestra concert! Let’s keep it rolling with some new quotable quips. This week, Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Clickbait Boyfriend arrive in Monstropolis, and things get hairy (literally!).
(First time Clickbait Boyfriend reader? Catch up on all the action here!)
“I was gonna say Sora’s genitalia disappeared, but it’s unclear he had any to begin with.”
-on character design choices I never wanted to think about
Nothing kicks off a Clickbait Boyfriend post quite like a deeply disturbing, un-family friendly observation like this one!
Me, reading this quote.
“Are those Unversed? They’re either Unversed or Dream Eaters.”
-on applying your knowledge of the lore
Think about how little sense this quote would have made to CBB just one year ago today! Our little baby’s all grown up and correctly identifying the forces of darkness!
Get it? It’s A Chorus Line, but instead it’s a line of Unversed because it’s not a verse, it’s a chorus…I’ll show myself out.
“When Ventus comes back and says ‘you can call me Ven,’ I’m gonna cry.”
-on sentimental catchphrases
Did the writers build in that quote with such ubiquity for this specific reason? It feels likely. Of course, that means the equivalent in this game is “Look Sora, a lucky emblem!” and I’m not prepared for that to have emotional resonance. Give me an emotional “Got it memorized?” and that’s about all I can take.
“The factory setting just isn’t that exciting. It feels too generic.”
-on grey walls, part two
Just like the Toy Story vents, the grey backdrop here is pretty blah. This isn’t the last time Clickbait Boyfriend is going to complain about this, don’t worry.
“They painted them up and then they had to come up with some dumb way to take it off?”
-on semi-permanent dye
This thirty second infusion of color was a disappointment. Especially now that I’ve been turning all of my characters in Crash Team Racing into their Rainbow Brite versions, this is especially lame. Give me pink Sulley, dang it!
Clickbait Boyfriend is Sulley, I’m Mike, Sora and Goofy are our (future) dogs
“I don’t like how everyone in this universe doesn’t have genitalia.”
-on forgetting that this was a children’s movie
Me (as both Donald and Goofy) trying to stop this
“The more you look at Mike Wazowski the more you think he looks like a naked fat little man.”
-on unflattering comparisons
Isn’t that the point of the character? If they were trying to make him look like anything other than a fat little man, the folks at Pixar really took their eye off the prize.
“I feel like I’m in a Call of Duty game right now.”
-on fighting in a burning factory
No you don’t. Call of Duty is about the power of killing your friends, not the power of friendship.
Wow, Blaster Blaze looks different than I remember.
“This is the dumbest world. I hate this world.”
-on dissatisfaction
I was not expecting CBB to have such a visceral reaction to Monstropolis! In hindsight, there are some weird autoscrolling sections riding the rails, but nothing about it jumped out at me as that much worse than the others so far? I guess there’s a lot less fun character interaction than in Tangled and Toy Story. Maybe if they had made Boo a party member, this could have been a wackier adventure? Clickbait Boyfriend, give us more constructive feedback to work with here!
We’re silly! Love us!
“Is that John Goodman? I think it is.”
-on the eternal guessing game of which actors returned for Kingdom Hearts
Actually, it is not! The Disney casting directors seem to have done their job.
“Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora.”
-on allocating nine AP Boosts
This has always been the correct AP boost strategy, but I think it’s even more dramatic in this game. For most of my playthrough, just equipping a few decent accessories to Donald and Goofy gave them more AP than they had abilities to spend it on.
“This boss is so hard…am I doing something wrong?”
-on fighting the evil blob
Nah, it’s just super hard. Maybe CBB and I should have used more of our summon links (start at 1:33!).
Honestly this monster is kind of cute???
“How long does this world go on?”
-on the downsides of extended Disney worlds
I’m generally of the opinion that I would have preferred a larger number of shorter Disney worlds than Kingdom Hearts III’s expanded Disney adventures. Not that any of us need to go back to Atlantica again, but it would have been nice to catch up with a few more of Sora’s old friends instead of having to run through assembly line after assembly line in the factory.
Look, it’s hard to get the hang of navigating a college campus.
“Is that HJO?”
-on Vanitas’s new voice
He’s one for two on voice actors this week, everybody! I appreciate the difficulty of having to play two different characters who literally have a conversation with each other, with the added twist of them being kind of weirdly the same guy but different. That said, I don’t love the vocal choice that Haley Joel made for Vanitas this time around. It was a little subtler in Birth By Sleep, and here it’s just radiating ~~*darkness*~~. Not an inappropriate choice for Vanitas, but it feels a little hokey sometimes.
“Is he super buff or are screams really light?”
-on relative strength
Let’s chalk this one up to the power of darkness, shall we? Not everyone’s friends can be their power.
He literally tosses the capsule in the air like it weighs negative pounds.
“Sora is being so lame right now. For no reason, he apparently is weak and on his knees. It’s cutscenes like this that make you wonder how Sora ever got this far.”
-on the withering effects of darkness
Oh CBB, how many times do we have to explain this? Almost drowning in the darkness within darkness took away all of his powers! It makes complete sense, because darkness always makes characters weaker in this…well, no, I just talked about the power of darkness. What about the power of the suspension of disbelief?
You said it, Sora.
“Dismember him!”
-on appropriate punishments for Vanitas
This ship runs on happy faces, dude. Not the blood of our enemies.
Obligatory VanYEETus gif
“He didn’t mention Sora’s heart. Does that mean there’s another heart inside Sora’s? Should I know this? Xion? Namine? Kairi? Puumba? Xion? Xion, right?”
-on hearts within hearts within hearts
It’s incredible that even though this was basically confirmed by Dream Drop Distance, Clickbait Boyfriend is still waiting for the heart rug to be pulled out from under him. That would be classic Nomura.
The residents of Sora’s heart hotel
“But he didn’t deny it!”
-on Sora’s ability to count
He may not be able to count, but you can always count on him to save the day! Hey oh!
Here’s the transcript
Next time: Let it go! LET IT GO!