Episode 71: Kingdom Hearts and Farewell

DonaldPrevie: Is Waka the most racist Final Fantasy character? I don't know if he's racist. I've heard that, I've heard- how bad he definitely is. But I've also heard that once he understood the whole background and stuff, he warmed up to them and stuff. Well, is it that he's racist because he's really against their religion? So isn't he more anti-Semitic, basically? Just their version of Yeah, that would be racist. Damn the outfit! Those sand plastic grease monkeys. I mean it's a form of bigotry, but yeah. He's definitely one of those. And then he's like, ⁓ they're people too. Dude, and then he turns around and- Why are you guys fighting anyway? Aren't the almighty outbed Machina enough? He really hates them, huh? We're the Cable Club. We're a video gaming podcast where three guys have too many keys and we're linking up to talk about the games you love and rank them. This is episode number 71. We're your hosts. I'm Steve. I'm Dan. Simple but clean. I'm John. And today we're actually talking about Kingdom Hearts. So get ready to upload data from us to you. But first boys, let's set the mood. Just go to Disneyland. Mood set. I just, I know I told this before the show, I just want to tell it right now. Like I get in the mood to play Kingdom Hearts when I watch too many Disney movies. I have a three year old that's pretty easy to do, but particularly the classic ones. And a few years ago, I went on a family vacation to Disneyland and it like the worst experience ever. But it put me really in the mood to play a ton of Kingdom Hearts. And that's what like, I beat like three of them in a row. It's like 120 hours of my life. ⁓ wow. Nice. Anyway, proceed. There's something about Kingdom Hearts that feels like flipping through an old photo album you didn't realize you'd been carrying. The soft glow of Destiny Island at sunset, the sound of waves brushing against the shore, and the simple dream of leaving home with your closest friends. It all lingers like a memory that's both distant and strangely vivid. Even the chaos of its worlds. stitched together from familiar Disney magic and unexpected darkness, carries a quiet innocence. You remember not just the story, but the feeling of discovering it for the first time, of wondering what was waiting behind the next door, the next keyhole. It's impossible to separate the journey from the emotions it left behind. The bittersweet goodbyes, the unwavering friendships, the sense that no matter how lost things became, There was always a thread tying everyone back together. Looking back, Kingdom Hearts doesn't feel like just a game. It feels like a piece of growing up. A reminder of a time when stories felt endless and every adventure carried the promise that you find your way home again, even if it took a little longer than you expected. one who knows nothing can understand nothing. The darkness darkness darkness darkness. But before we get into all that magic, both Square and Disney magic, I'd say they're both equally magical. I wanted to get into some announcements. So the one announcement that I have is kind of a sad one, but this is actually going to be our farewell episode. This is going to be our last episode of the Cable Club podcast, at least for a while, maybe forever. Not sure. You know, we're just three guys who are also dads, also working. It's just busy. You know, and we want to be able to turn out good content if we're going to turn out content at all. And it's just been kind of dragging a little bit. So for those of you who have already signed up for our indie game league, obviously that's not happening, but I will reach out to you guys independently to talk to you about that and what's moving forward. So we definitely wanted to get this in before we started the league. definitely did not want to start something before we, you know, that, that we couldn't finish or didn't want to finish. So we'll discuss this. more at end of the episode. So if you're interested in hearing some details on what's next in the chapter for the cable club, stick around at the end after the host review and news. We don't always discuss news, but I wanted to, because we're all in this so much. Is the Slay the Spire beta patch? fixed my boy. Okay. one's that? So it is, it is fixed, right? Cause I, cause I'm playing it now and I'm not looking, I'm not seeing any of the issues you guys were seeing like with the whole prepared thing and all that. Yep. They changed it back. That's good, dude. I can't believe people review bomb that game. Like if you're out there review bombing slay this fire I don't care. This is our last episode. You need to go touch grass Yeah, like you have a problem you submit your the beta Well, I mean it's good if you want your opinion heard to play the beta so you can experience it but like I Heard it was a bunch of Chinese people like like really could you imagine not playing a Like magic the gathering back in the day because you didn't like I don't know like vine commie or some stupid card that got printed I'm not playing magic right now because of universes beyond does that count? No, that's a whole set and it's a direction that the series is going that that you don't like but it's like what if they just Printed one card out of an entire set you don't like and you're like, yeah, i'm i'm just i'm just I hate this game. It's stuck everything everything it's been it sucks like I have 80 hours in this, in this game and they changed prepared. So the game sucks now. Like, no, obviously not. Like everybody's just that. are just like that. They buffed a bunch of region cards. Listen. Yeah. He was high. He's hard to use in my opinion. He was one of the weaker guys before these buffs. We'll see what it looks like. Yeah. I have the most losses on him by far. It's just, it's hard to get them going, but once you do it, it feels good. Yeah. It can. The problem with him was there was so much RNG, like create a random colorless card. could be anything. How can you even possibly plan? And then on top of that, sometimes you draw cards that have star cost, but you don't draw your cards that generate stars or vice versa. You draw all your generating cards and none of your payoffs. And it's just, it had a high variance of randomness. Yeah. I always like a hundred percent like pick the, ⁓ the attack one that just gave you stars and the shining strike is very good in the defense one that gave you it too. The shining strike the one that gets put back on top of your deck every time you play it. Yeah, that one's nuts Yeah, I mean if you get a way of Generating stars consistently you can pick the star cost cards like like like shining strike But you in my opinion you really need something like that first before you start going ham like I feel like you can pick one or two of The of the star cost cards and not the big ones until you get something consistent to generate it with Like you should not be picking Comet when you only have venerate. I'm not saying that I'm saying like ⁓ gamma burst or whatever it is. It costs three stars. You can use it without another star generating card. But like if you have one of those and like, you know, I mean, I'm not going to go off on a huge tangent, but I will say that sometimes you draw the cards you need in an order that will work. And sometimes you draw cards in an order that won't work. our next project should be a Slay the Spire talk show. I threw that idea around. Yeah, anywho, I just wanted to talk about that a little bit. So it's kind cool that it's a fast moving game and I like being a part of it this time. kind of like, during the first game I played when it first came out and then I kind of lost interest for a while but by the time I came back, everything had, mostly everything had kind of settled. Well, an update, I'm ascension seven on all of the characters right now. highest ascension is eight on the iron clad. Yeah, but you've been spamming just him, No, no, I haven't. I've been rolling at the ice. It's just like I freaking win with him every time. Wow. And win. Yeah. I'm two with everybody. Two is a good start. Yeah. You didn't play the first one much. So. yeah, from somebody who has like no experience really. Yeah. I mean, I'm starting to, you know, catch my groove with the game. At the beginning, it was just lost after loss after loss. That's a, that's a rug light, man. Yeah. I, for beginners, I definitely recommend playing one character. Play one character all the way up to Ascension 10 and then just move on to the next one. Because like I do random, but I've been playing Slay the Spire for a long time. even then I know I could probably accomplish Ascension 10 faster if I played the same character every time. I'm just having too much fun alternating. mean, you do you, but if you do want to get higher faster, play the same character. Yeah. I've been having fun playing all the characters. The only one I don't really care for is the Regent. I usually save him for last if he's like the last one. out of the roster to get like that next essential level. Yeah, we got to get on and play some multiplayer on that. Yeah. All right. I kind of wonder how like the more difficult the the essential levels are because like the base game is just way too easy. Multiplayer. ⁓ yeah. All righty. You guys ready to unlock the world of Kingdom Hearts? Let's do it. OK, let's get into it. All right. So Kingdom Hearts is actually a game that's kind of near and dear to at least me and Steve. Dan, what's your general experience with Kingdom Hearts? Is this your first time playing it? Zero. Zero. I've heard you guys played a lot in high school. Some of you had nicknames. I remember that much. But yeah, I mean, it's a good series. I'm surprised at so many games. I didn't realize it was as many as they are. super, super cringe with it. Let's just, let's just go back to that point for a second. So we had a friend in high school who went by Sora legit. ⁓ his name was Mike and Steve here went by Riku for a very long time. Yeah. I never referred to Steve as Riku, although other people in not just at all referred to Steve. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I did either. I don't think I did either. Like it was a gamer tag for me and I, I carried dark Riku as my final fantasy 11 character for. ever, but I changed it to Arc Reus, which is my updated. ⁓ just really speaks to the sway this game had over the general community. You know, the, the game itself is, I think a lot of people describe it as a hack and slash now, but I think the newer games are a little bit more hack and slashy. I think the way that this game plays is a little bit more technical and I'm more inclined to call it an A in action RPG. Yeah, action RPG, I would think. Which I think is different than a hack and slash. Yeah, like slash makes you think of like God of War or like Dynasty Warriors Yeah, and that they have RPG elements, but I don't think it's the same thing At least in this in this case, I think the second game you can make more more of that case ⁓ obviously it's a mashup if you don't know between the unlikely pairing of Disney and and Square and now this is believe it or not Even though this game was released in 2002, this is actually, this project started off the back of the success of final fantasy seven, if you can believe it. And the project officially began after seven is when talk started. So Disney Japan and square Japan shared an office building and I guess they, you know, Disney had always had a foot in the door about, uh, you know, with, with video games. Right. So, you know, you remember like the. crappy licensed games that came out for the Sega Genesis and the... do mean crappy licensed DuckTales? DuckTales, QuackShot, Lion King, Aladdin, they were all Lion King is exactly what I'm talking about. Don't you dare. You've never seen the end of that game. Aladdin's a banger, Toy Story's a banger. Just because you couldn't beat it does not mean it wasn't a banger. I can beat it, it just sucks. It doesn't suck? I used to be like basically every day after school It's not Dark Souls. It's just Jane And I also really like the Jungle Book, although I acknowledge it that's probably just a me problem But the the Jungle Book game for Genesis was he was ever played quack shot There's a Donald Duck game on the Sega Genesis and he has a plunger gun Awesome ⁓ Dude, I'm sorry, the Disney games were all good back in the day. Yeah, I think, I think they were, they were sleeper. feel like the article that I was looking at that discussed this was a little bit disgenuous, but you know, Disney just had a bunch of like movie tie-ins. I think they were mostly mixed, right? And I think they were to taste of what you actually remember, what your parents bought you, whatever. I think we can all agree, Aladdin is a banger, but you know, regardless Disney's Disney at the time was a little bit touch and go with their games, especially when they started to get onto later consoles. And, ⁓ they wanted to do something big, right? And Disney was not courageous enough to make the mouse himself, the main character. And this story comes from apparently a book called the Legend of Kingdom Hearts. There's four volumes of it that talk about the story of how Kingdom Hearts came to be from back then to now. Four, four, four volumes. I think it's mostly dev stories. Maybe there's some lore in there, but the first one is definitely about how the, how the game was. Like birthed, so to speak. So Disney wanted the main character to be Donald Duck and Square was insistent upon the main character being Mickey. And we know that neither of those two things happen. So I guess Sora, the, the legend is that Sora, the idea of Sora was pitched in an elevator and they eventually, you know, the rest was kind of history, basically. kind of interesting. It's a weird mashup. mean, I remember seeing a trailer for this and being like, no, thanks. I know. So I thought, I always thought that this was going to be great because I was a huge Disney kid and I had plenty of naysaying friends like Steve and I'm imagining Dan because Dan never played it. Yeah. Who were like, it looks terrible. Yeah. I never really gotten to Disney games back. That was my best. I some of I was so right. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think I was in the seventh grade when the commercial came out and I was like really really big into Final Fantasy and the adult themes of Final Fantasy 8 and 7 and then I saw this and I was like this looks like a game for babies. It was awesome. I was not interested at first but then I played it and I had a lot more fun than I thought I would so. And he started calling himself Riku. Wow. Rika is a badass. liked it a lot. didn't. Steve never went by cloud for as long as I've known him. no, that's, that I'm surprised with like some of the characters that I like actually made it into this game. Like, like Titas, for example, or Waka. was like, didn't that game come out like a year before? Okay. Did anybody else have a problem with Titas? Because that, that, bothers me. I he's Titus to me. They say Titas in the game. So I was just going to say, I, I, I've Yeah, they don't say his name in Final Fantasy X because you can name him so they don't they're very very good about the dialogue in that game and they never say it Yeah Yeah, they sure want all the letters in like probably late in development I'd imagine right you think it's just the voice actor Missed pronouncing it you think it was always Titus. I say it's Tetus Yeah, I think I've multiple things, multiple sources that say that it's Tetus. us in the comments if you think it's Titus or Tetus. I call him Titus, but we may or may not ever read them, but Titus does sound cooler in my opinion. Yeah. Well, Titus is definitely like, it's an English name. Nobody calls that kid Titus in America. Like that's not really a thing. I've not encountered it anyway. So you got Waka, you got Selfie. No one calls that kid Waka either. Yeah. There aren't many redheaded Jamaicans as far as I know. The most, just guessing. I've never been to Jamaica, but just, just guessing. I don't think it's like a South Africa kind of thing where there's like a- Is, Waka the most racist Final Fantasy character? I don't know if he's racist. I've heard that, I've heard- Against how bad he definitely is. But I like, I've also heard, I've also heard that like once he understood like the whole background and stuff, he like warmed up to them and stuff. Well. Is it like that he's racist because he's really against their religion. So isn't he more like anti-semitic basically just their version of it? Yeah, that would be racist. Those sand plastic grease monkeys. I mean, it's a form of bigotry, but yeah, he's definitely one of those and then he's like, oh, they're people too. Dude, and then he turns around and why are you guys fighting anyway? Aren't the almighty out bed mocking it enough? He really hates them, huh? He gets into a relationship with his brother's widow with Lulu who used to be Chapa's wife His brother. Yeah, did I walk us such a bad dude? I'm okay with the situation. I get it. I get it ⁓ You're telling me they found each other You would be fine with your wife and your brother because I think my brother is looking down going like what the fuck Look, my brother is probably a little different. relationship between us is little different. Waka's a racist? Waka is a racist. How do you know the situation's that different? Everybody's racist though. The whole church is racist. That's like the point of the game anyway, but it's not the point of Kingdom Hearts. but like other, other characters that, end up in there like Squall's in there and he's as moody as ever. Leon. Yeah. Well. Can someone explain that? why is he named Leon? he's edgy. I don't know. Maybe it's an alias to like, is like the quote unquote badass name. You know what I mean? He calls it an alias. Somebody, I think Yuffie refers to him as Squall. Squall, yeah. It's Leon. So he's trying to go by some, he's trying to do something else with his life. don't know. It's Squall, man. He's just, he's just the way he is. Yuffie's in it. I never liked Yuffie. You've been stole my materia in FF7 and I haven't given her since it's been like, it's been like 23 years since I like that. That bitch steal my, steal my materia. I've been trying to master that thing. And then you have to fight that stupid boss without the materia. No thanks. You feel you can stay in the woods, not even a high tier limit break. Get out of here. So one of the interesting things about Kingdom Hearts, if you've never played it, is that you get to go to a bunch of different Disney worlds. And we kind of alluded to it a little bit, but. What was you guys' favorite place you visited? I mean, I didn't, I didn't get like super, super far. Like the furthest I got was a wonderland. So I was doing that bit. It would Dan. my issue, and I wish I didn't do this, but like I was already committed was I picked the hardest difficulty. So I was getting stuck on the boss, the robot boss. When you first get goofy and Donald proud mode is not. to be messed with. this is before you get any sort of dodge or anything. And like, just, was getting too shot at every time. I swear to God, I probably spent like two hours on this boss and I almost gave up and just, cause you can't change the difficulty. I almost gave up and like restarted over, but I finally got past him and I was like, ⁓ my God. Listen, listen. Okay. Kingdom hearts is not a challenging game on its face, but I am hesitant to call it a complete baby game, but proud mode. While it might not be like Dark Souls, it will mess you up until you get high enough level. is, it is hard. Yeah. It was a mistake on my part. You know, as a reviewer, I should have just did like the easiest mode or something, like, I'm just used to Yeah. I just, I'm used to picking like hard difficulties. So I did that and yeah, I got roadblock for quite a while. Got a bad ass over here, but to answer Steve's question, Halloween town. Yeah. Either that or believe it or not. liked. Atlantis too, but for a similar reason. like that he changes like as the game goes on, he changes forms in those two spaces to blend in. And I think both those costumes are pretty neat. think if I had to go with a secondary, it's probably Hollow Bastion. The music is what makes the entire thing and beast. Yeah. Chasing that one little heartless. He deals so much damage. Yeah. So in this game, it's an ARPG. You primarily play as Sora. You run around and whack things with your keyblade. You get magic. This game is kind of like a Symphony of the Night kind of ordeal where they stuffed a lot of systems in there and you probably won't use all or many of them through a playthrough. So some of them are like, yeah, you can run around, you can jump, you can glide, you can attack, you can dodge roll. Those are all your staples, right? I think for most people who play, but there's a magic system too. You get all the like familiar Final Fantasy spells fire fire fire Raga ice, you know, etc Blizzard there's also gravity stop slow and everybody's favorite here Yeah, cure is the only spell that I use yeah And sometimes when you're out of MP you're running around saying Donald, please heal me Donald because he's a mage. ⁓ my Donald He's fucking awesome. He's so much better than goofy. It's not close But the problem is that when you preset him to heal you like too liberally he runs out of MP too. Yeah, you just don't preset him too liberally and he's perfect. My man's clutch. My bar goes down and my and that little alarm starts starts going off. Yeah, I know. I know my boys got me. That alarm needs to go away. Yeah, so I don't like games that do that ever. Like any little chime to let you know you're low on health. Yeah, I know I'm low on health. Thanks. Completely aware. Thank you. Well, know Zelda Dude Pokemon you're like, yeah, what else would I be? Yeah What what else would I be looking at and it's like chopping up the music and everything. It's just terrible, dude It's like what like when when you get hit in a video game and you have a health bar. Where do your eyes go? Generally stays on the enemy so I can do the right thing. No, I want to know how much damage I took I go immediately to that Why that's not important. What's important is not getting hit again. That's what's important. You drive, can, you can, you can look at a mirror for a second. You just take a quick glance. Depends on the game. True. Yeah. So, but, uh, the other systems would be like the magic, but then there's like a whole summoning system. I never really got into that. I like Mushu. Yeah. Yeah. Like think he's the only one I use. sits on your head and you run around. I only kind of use him as a joke because he's, he's not going to get Karzisa. Oh, is he? Yeah. He's good against him. So am I. but the, then there's like combos. So like you can get combo moves. Like I think it's called like strike raid and he throws the, the key blade. costs, it costs MP, but there's followups to it. So like if you throw it and he catches it, there's a window where you can hit the button again and he can throw it a certain number of times. And then he does like a big attack. It's like an area attack that does a lot of damage on paper. It's really good. It's just. When you're in the thick of it, trying not to get killed. It's, it's not a viable thing to be doing, but there's ones like Ragnarok and there's like, there's like a whole slew of these things. And it's just like systems I don't really get into. And then there's partners. So you get Donald and Goofy. They're like your evergreen travelers and they stick around with you throughout the whole game. Goofy is like useless. Do you ever get more? Like, do you ever get more companions? You do? Okay. Cause every time I see like previews of these games, it's always Donald and Goofy. So Donald and Goofy stay with you. The other people don't. Yeah, they just for their worlds. So like Goofy like is pretty much there to just pull aggro, I think, and use your items. And then Donald is a mage, which also is not great, but the thing he does well is he heals you. You can set him to like just use cure. So at least he's good for that. And he also pulls hate. But later on you get more companions. Like when you go to the Tarzan planet, it's the first time you get one. get Tarzan as a companion. can swap out Donald or Goofy for Tarzan. Clayton is the first roadblock for new players. He's a jerk. Is that He's got a gun. He's a pushover. Yeah. I, the boss in Alice in Wonderland, I feel like is a pretty good start because you can't hit him unless you're standing on the table and you got to kite him over to the table and you may have to block or dodge his fireballs. So. Or or hit him back. If you don't have dodge roll, you have to actually hit him back like baseball hit him back. Or guard, but you might not have guard if you didn't. Yeah, you might not. Yeah. So yeah, just like a boatload of systems in here, you can kind of play the way you want. I think this kind of gets into our gameplay a little bit, but like the first game, I haven't played too many of the kingdom hearts games. It's always been kind of like this, like, this like, I don't know, weird rave party that I've just watched from a window. It's like Kingdom Hearts that maybe I raved one time and I like to talk like I rave all the time, but I haven't really played that much in the series. From what I gather, the first one has a very unique gameplay. Some people call it slow, but honestly, I kind of call it technical. The later games, like I played Kingdom Hearts too, that feels more like a hack and slash. It's like a mess. It's like constant. Everything's always all over the place. Just. Yeah. When you hit an enemy in this game, they get like bonked on the head and knocked back in some way, or it's an enemy whose body is like tough on the front and you have to get around back of them, you know, and hit them from behind or you can hit them into other enemies or like the enemies are actually pretty dynamic. Even like the little mage guys you got to wonderland Dan, right? Like they're the little mage guys. They don't take damage from their own magic elements, stuff, stuff like that. And they take extra damage from magic that they're weak against. Like all the enemies are in this first game. really have to give it to him. I feel like all the enemies are really engaging. What I thought it was definitely, yeah, not bad at all. But yeah, like I just like, ⁓ like the bosses like that I fought, like they all have like their own separate mechanics too. It's like, like almost like a puzzle where it's like, you got to wait like certain attacks out or like dodge roll or stuff like that. And then you got to go in and get your few hits in and stuff like that. I've kind of like. When I like hit with the key blade, kind of like just doing like a one, two, and then getting out. Cause like that third slash comes, sometimes it locks you into place and, and I don't, and I don't like that. The spin attack. Yeah. Like sometimes I just want to like get in and get out, get in and out. That's how I beat the other bot, like the boss that I was stuck on, the robot with the claws that like spin around. So the meta is the castle crashers that shit and do a short hop into an aerial combo. Like you basically never want to do the ground standing combo. You just want to like short hop and just go like one, two, three, four. You can get like a lot of quick attacks in and deal a lot of damage basically on everything except for like the little ant guys that you can't hit if you do that. yeah. the only two times in this game that you transform your image is Atlantis and Halloween town, right? I think so. Do you look different? Dan, I can't remember. Do you look different in a wonderland? No, definitely not. Yeah, know for sure. No, you don't. Okay. Yeah, I think it's just those two. I know it doesn't change in the Colosseum. It doesn't change in Monstro. In the second game, there's like a ton of different transformations. Yeah. Yeah. In this first one, I think it's just those two. There was something about blending in. like the, the, the story is a crossover game, which I love. I love crossover games, but they never make any sense story wise. sometimes they don't have to. Like, especially if you know all the characters are like, yeah, just watch it. Yeah. It's awesome. And then I think this game, the part of the magic is they allow every like big personality presence to be themselves. Like you go into Alice, Alice in wonderland and the queen of hearts is the queen of hearts. And she yells at you and she lost. Yeah. She locks Alice in a cage. She sticks the card soldiers on you. It's like anyone who's seen that movie knows that scene and like Jeannie. Genie comes out of the lamp and he does his whole, Genie of the lamp. It's a nostalgia trip, They even got Robin Williams to come and do that voice, by the way. It's good stuff. For the game. I had to go back to the second one, but in the second one, the whole Agrabah world is like you on the magic carpet fighting Jafar as the Genie. Oh, that's neat. Yeah. The second movie. So it's like continuity between the games. That's actually kind of cool. It's pretty cool. I'd say that, ⁓ generally like there are a lot of systems, but I'm like the same way as Dawn. Like I'm kind of just basic on it because it's good enough. Like you don't have to do anything crazy. ⁓ I mean, is a story behind it. I mean, don't a hundred percent get it, but like it's, it has to do about like light and darkness and the heartless and stuff like that. And like Sora is like the chosen one. It's Dan let it go. Let it go. They wrote words on the page, but nobody knows what they're talking about. like Jiminy Cricket's like writing the whole journey down. of corporate bigwigs sat in a room and did acid and they came up. Kingdom Hearts. And it's the darkness. Kingdom Hearts is darkness, but it's not darkness. It's light. You know what kind of threw me off is like I bought like the 1.5 and the 2.5 remix on Steam and like you go through, scroll through all the different games and you see Mickey and like these like edgy uniforms and stuff. I'm like, what is this dude? the hood. The hood and there's one he's got like a Sora outfit on. I'm like, this isn't Mickey that I know. Like what the heck is this? The black leather matrix coats. That one I saw it too. was like, they really hurt the series long-term. was not a future proof move to go with the black leather, like chain matrix coats. Yeah. I'm just like, is this Mickey? They, they opted for that instead of giving these characters who are all kind of larger than life, their own personalities and representing them. Instead, they put them all in these black leather trench coats and just. Sora, we have to unlock Kingdom Hearts. You laugh, but Mickey's a monster in this scene. I heard he's like, I was looking up like a, like a tier list of like the strongest characters in Kingdom Hearts. he was always like number one or two. He's Yoda, dude. That's, that's, that's what he is. He's. People, people only act it up because Mickey's locked behind kingdom hearts in the first game. That's the only reason if he, if he was still around, people would, people be in line. like, you find out pretty quickly. It's like this cool movie. think it's after you leave Traverse town, which is kind of like your home base or hub. It's not, it's not a hub world because you can go from one one to the next. It's a launch pad basically. Yeah. So like the first time you leave there, you get a, you get an FMV of a. shadowy figures watching you around a crystal ball. And this is like the first time if you're a Disney fan, you're like, yeah. Dude, that's when like when I saw that cut scene, like that's when like a wave of nostalgia like washed over me. ⁓ God, it hits You like Hook, had like Jafar. Oogie boogie, dude. You had Hades, I think was there too. Yeah, Hades is there. boogie man. And by the way, Maleficent definitely would be leading that group. Yeah, for sure. That's fair. Just awesome. And they're all like, what a motley crew of villains. this is what it's all about for me. This is the crossover game. You guys remember that cartoon show, the House of Villains or House of Mouse or whatever? No, I actually didn't really watch it. There was a show called the House of Mouse and they did like a whole like Mickey Mouse on stage or like people come up on stage and then they present their cartoons. But there was a special that they had where it was House of Villains. And all the villains were the audience on that episode. And it was a, it was like a Halloween special, I think. And it was like an hour long and it, with all the villains together. ⁓ it was pretty cool. Good stuff. So the plot is like, they have to kidnap all the princesses, but even the villains are a little confused on who the princesses actually are. they kind of go the grape shot approach and they like kidnap all the girls and hope they get them all. Like they like kidnap Alice and I'm pretty sure Alice doesn't count or maybe she does we've encountered this somebody somebody doesn't yeah in Wind Waker Well after when Wind Waker came after but yeah Ganondorf can't find Zelda's are just kidnaps every girl. Yeah. Yeah every blonde haired girl taking the safe route Which one of you jerks is Zelda? And it's, it's up to Sora to go and not only rescue them, but there's this whole idea. There's these heartless things and this, this guy, Ansem, who I think is from the same Island that Sora's from. He's some kind of scientist and he researches these creatures that he found called the heartless and they steal people's hearts and turn them into heartless. So it's like zombie plague style, you know, so you have to beat them up and free the hearts of people for them to come back. You get your first glimpse of it when you go to Traverse Town. There's a guy that gets run down by a heartless. He gets his heart taken and he disappears and all that stuff. ⁓ And they can only get into worlds when the world is unlocked. So hence the key blade. You go searching through the Disney worlds. It's like what? 10 of them? 10 or eight. think I would say eight. don't know off the top of my head. Yeah. It's like wonderland, Tarzan land, deep jungle. Okay. Atlantis, 100 Acre Wood. The Colosseum. Colosseum, yeah. Or rather, Olympus. That's where Hercules is from, right? Sure. Yeah, you're right. 100 Acre Wood. I forgot about that one. I always forget about that one until it comes up. Yeah. Atlantis, Monstro the Whale from Pinocchio. Hollow Bastion. Hollow Bastion, Halloweentown. Halloweentown. Neverland. Yeah. Never. ⁓ yeah. Neverland. forgot about it. we didn't say wonderland either. I 10, guess. Yeah. So, you you get, you get, you get a good amount and every planet you go to, you meet the main character of that story. They join your group. You help them through, I'd say pretty key story beats of the movies. So if you've, if you've watched the movies, you definitely go through some of those story beats. as with Tarzan, you fight Clayton, you know, with, ⁓ Ariel. You, ⁓ fight giant Ursula, is totally awesome by the way. Yeah. She's a cool boss fight. All the bosses in this game are cool. Yeah. This is, this is boss fighting. Okay. Like nowadays, I feel like you find a boss in there, a stat stick and a damage sponge. And those are, those are your bosses and maybe you have to dodge a little bit more, but you have to figure out how to prolong a fight nowadays. Like I'm thinking like monster hunter. Like, like when you fight a boss, like. It's just about maybe finding an opening and getting like one or two hits in until the thing dies. I don't know. These, these bosses had like patterns you had to learn. don't know. Something about it feels different. My favorite boss was the ice Titan in the Coliseum. That's a good fight. Yeah. The Titans from the Hercules movie. Yeah. I like bosses that are almost kind of like a puzzle. Like you got to figure them out to beat them. Yeah, maybe that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I'm not a fan of like just like, you know, just beating on a boss until it dies, you know, like when you actually when there's like mechanics involved that that's when that's like really good. I love boss fights like that. It's kind of like Zelda a little bit. Hmm. Like kind of way to say it, you know, Zelda Zelda approaches bosses or at least old Zelda. Absolutely. Usually you have to use like a special weapon of that dungeon in some way to fight. new Zelda's dookie. It's the hack and slash down the boss until it dies thing. That's what I'm saying. For all those people saying, well, know, tears of the kingdom and the breath of the wild revolutionary more like downgrade. Player's license, I guess. games are too big too now. like, it's like, you almost kind of like, ah, when can I like sit down and actually enjoy this game? This is like a bunch of hallways in a good way. There's a good amount of exploration though. And there's a good amount of reason to backtrack. some, in some worlds and other worlds, like, like in the deep jungle and in wonderland, there's a lot more to explore. But I feel like Agrabah is pretty straightforward. Monstro is very straightforward. Halloween town's in the middle. It's good. A lot of exploration there actually. like Agrabah has a lot of exploration in the town and also in the cave. I don't remember the cave being that explorative. felt like a me. There's a lot of treasure chests and there's like a puzzle, like a platforming puzzle in the basement to get to all the treasure chests. It makes a point to show them to you, but you can't get there and you have to zone and do some platforming and get there. kind of remember that, but yeah. Well, I mean in a good way. It's not like gigantic. There are definitely open rooms. Yeah, there are. a lot of hallways, but a lot of times you encounter like a big room. Like I'm thinking Wonderland. Yeah, there's a hallway. And then you go into the, room where you're a giant. And then you have to drink the, the potion to get small. And then the room's huge. And then you're running around as a table. There's the doorknob jerk off who doesn't let you do anything. yeah, know, I didn't mean it in a bad way. Yeah. It's not as linear as it sounds, I guess is what I'm, what I'm getting at. That's fair, but it's not open either. Breath of the Wild is. No, no, it's not. It's It's not. like that. but there's a lot to do. You can spend, I think it's like 60 hours to a hundred percent this game. It's like a synthesizing system. Finding all the Dalmatians. Getting all the crafting materials to make all the different keyblades. You don't have to find all 101 Dalmatians. They stuffed like three to five puppies in single chest. Hey, you want to buy some puppies? I remember finding like three. It was like 1714. Yeah. And then you're like, yeah, they just had numbers. Yeah. I was like, what? Like, can't just be group one, group two, three. The dogs give you good stuff though. You're kind of incentivized to do it. They give you some pretty good stuff. You know, at least they incentivize you. There's plenty of JRPGs where you collect everything in there. Like here's a trophy. Doesn't do anything. Here's a good noodle sticker. ⁓ you collected all 151 Pokemon diploma. can print out on your Game Boy printer. But in Pokemon, it's being able to play as all the characters. That's, that's, that's the treasure, I guess. It's the friends you made along the way. Once you like a hundred percent of game, should absolutely be like get stuff that like just breaks it, you know, because you already a hundred percent. Just give me all the tools to be a god. If you collected the 150, they should have gave you a free Mew. Yeah. Agreed. That's fair. I will. I will see to that. Definitely. It's worth cheating for. Yeah. Now we got to do the fly glitch. So yeah, you you fight different bosses in different Disney, ⁓ Disney worlds. then, ⁓ did you guys have a favorite boss? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't fight them a lot of bosses, unfortunately, but like that the one that I was stuck on for a long time, I guess that would be my favorite. I think my favorite one is it might actually be the, the Oogie Boogie boss, the first form though. spent a lot of time on Destiny Island too, to be fair. Like fighting like, you know, the trio, trying to that. proud mode, you probably had a great time. No, I didn't, but I did it though. And then I'm trying to fight Riku when he like, you know, you hit him like five times, he falls on the ground, does like a jump kick that like takes out over half my life. I was like, ⁓ my God. Dan's sitting here like, this is a baby game. Proud mode. yeah. Well, let's see how proud it is. Humbled. I was humbled. You're that little girl who had wasabi or whatever. Dude, when I was stuck on that boss with the claw, I was was like saying to myself, like, I think I made a mistake. I love the opening of this game so much. Those like big stained glass stages that Sora's falling through and the voice talking to him and the, you know. get to pick your own strength. Such a cool opening to a game. Like still to this day, it's one of my favorite. I don't know, it takes like what, like 15 minutes to get through that. It's a tutorial, but it's like, it's awesome. Yeah. And you get to fight the giant beast thing or whatever. I don't remember its name, but, then it comes back at the end of the game too. Yeah. It comes back at the end of Destiny Island. It also comes back later, I think. Don't you have to fight two of them? At the same time, yeah, I think. Yeah. I have a question actually. don't know if it's actually beat him. There's a part where you have to fight Leon. Is that even winnable or can or does he just straight up just win? you're just bad. Everything was two shotting me, man. I don't know. I was like, ⁓ okay. Because like he beat me and it just went on. It's like, okay. Yeah. I don't know if it's just the 1.5 remix, but it's a little bit harder than I remember. I remember like smashing this game as a, as a, as a teen. it was just, was not hard at all. Like I just would dog walk Leon by accident. I mean, was having fun. down. in charge of the group now. I was, but like, it's really like time consuming because it's like, you have to learn the bosses and I don't know, maybe it would be easy for me now that I finally got the dodge roll, but like, I was having a hard time. Dodge roll is life in this game. Like you get hit and you're just, you don't run away. like dodge roll, dodge roll, dodge roll, dodge roll. The I frames in the PlayStation game were obscene. They nerfed them in the 1.5 remake. But the I frames on the dodge roll were totally nuts. ⁓ They were so nuts that they took it out of the second game. What? What's the point of rolling then? You get a different ability. It's like dash or something. But with no I frames. So if you position yourself bad, you can't get out of it. But yeah, I do need to go back and play the second one. I played it in high school when it first released and I burnt myself out on it and never finished it. But I remember some of the stages in there were pretty neat. You had a Mulan stage. You had a Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. Lion King. The boss fight in the Pirates of the Caribbean stage is neat. You have to get him under the moonlight. Just like in the movie. Yeah, and you have like two different drives or something. It's like different modes. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to go through the Kingdom Hearts series, but like I didn't realize how many games there were. So it's like, I don't know how many I would actually get through before like getting bored. that's like, isn't our last episode. We're just going to be a Kingdom Hearts podcast. One game per month. If you walk away, Disney. Wee! And we didn't even really talk about Riku yet. So like you have a friend on, the Island. wouldn't call him a friend. kind of just seems like a better Sora like to me. Well, he's not what I've gathered. I don't know much about him. Older brother style, like tough love older brother. It's just a dink, but he's just, I don't know. Well, if you're, if the only people you get to hang out with him, one of them's a frigging clown the whole time. Sora is not referring to Waka. He is not Waka's friend. See, he's just, you know, there's only five kids on the island to be friends with and he's friends with like exactly one of them. Yeah. The only girl worth talking to. There's a Chad. It's Chad. What was the fruit like the papaya fruit or something or whatever was called? The pout poo fruit. Yeah. It's like, that's the early 2000s. Egg and Sora on in the race is like, I want to give this to Kyrie when I did you beat him in the race, Dan? ⁓ yeah. Like barely, but I did. was like, gross. Suck it. And then he was like, ⁓ he's after just he's using the zip line and I'm just like, nah, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna jump on these mushrooms. Cause if I try and jump on this zip line, I know I'm going to miss it somehow. Don that made me think of your highness. Okay. When him and his brother, they win the fight or whatever and they go doing the jerk off motion for everyone who can't see it because it's an audio program. But can you imagine Sora doing that? The like happy go lucky half Disney fight Sora just. The late nineties suck it to Riku. Throw the V up for Riku. After he wins the race Just one of these Then you beat him and he's like man, and he never forgives you for it. Well, so like he's like kind of a fan He's like, please like lay off man. It's just a race like don't take it so seriously You started it and I beat you in that fight before he's the best. He's the best of farm a tape or whatever points technical points on what in the beginning? Yep Yeah, just don't do it. Is there another part where you fight him or is it just the destiny island? It's that if you if you clash with him, you get points. There are guides out there on how to hit like level 100 before you leave destiny island. takes like 35 hours. don't recommend it. Wow. That's crazy. Oh my God. Just walk all over the game. I don't understand. Yeah. Well, there were like special challenges where people were trying to get level 100 inside the first Mako reactor in seven and it took the dude like three years or something. I remember that. years? I remember that. And his game was like crashing out like at some points too, or not like crashing out, like it was like having a hard time keeping up because the game was on so long, like the game just couldn't like compute it. Well, I mean, he would save it, but yeah. Yeah, well, he it on original hardware. What an No, no, no, he did. I think he did it on Steam. And as soon as he hit max level, the game immediately crashed because it flagged like an achievement. And since the game was on so long that like that achievement like just. And they chronicled it. It was like this whole like thing where he had a locked thread on the Final Fantasy seven board on game FAQs and people were always like messaging, what's your progress now? Where are you at? And it was like a long thread. That was like a big thing. No one is broken in the way that square fans are broken. Yeah, fair. So you, you, you and Riku set off to the, like the, Island gets torn apart. I don't know exactly why there's like a weird door inside of a like cave under the waterfall and it opens and all the darkness floods in the total chaos. You and Riku set out to save Kyrie, but doing it your own way. Riku puts all his trust in the weird adults that are around the crystal ball to try and save Kyrie and get home. you just put your trust in the dog and anthropomorphic dog to get home. I did over-trust. the choice between the two. I'd probably go with the duck and the dog too. Maybe they have a crystal ball. It seems pretty helpful. mean Maleficent's a little weird, but ⁓ yeah. Well, they give you a cool suit. No, cool oblivion keyblade. Yeah. I like that, ⁓ you fight all of these villains at different times and I like that depending on who they are, they survive into the second game. Like Hades survives because he's a god. Like you can't, you can't kill him. just beat him in the Coliseum, but you can't, can't kill him. sense. But like Maleficent's not in the second game. He definitely killed her. She's wasted. That dragon was a cool fight. Yeah. It was hard. Yeah. I think, think one of the harder fights in the game and it all builds up to the end of the game where you fight. What is it like four forms of Ansem I think is the final boss. He's like a spaceship. Yeah, he is. So he's, he's a guy on a beach first. And he's got that thing behind him and he counterattacks you. then I forget what his second form looks like. Is that spaceship already? Is it only two forms? think the spaceship's two forms. Yeah, the spaceship itself. So you like fly, you fight him flying in a void. Yeah, like in Neverland where you learn how to fly. The darkness. There's even post game content. So there's a couple of secret bosses that you can find that give you extra magic. think you get. higher magic for beating them. So you don't encounter all of the spells going, going through the game. You'd have to do extra boss fights. there's Phantom, who's like a death from Castlevania flying around the Neverland tower. It's just like a hooded robed invisible specter. But you fight him flying his fights kind of unique. He's immune to all damage except for whatever his body is showing you basically. He's flashing you under his cape, different colors and ⁓ Based on the color. That's how you remont how you remont them. then there's Kurt Zisa who's actually got a really cool design. For all the effort they didn't put into Phantom, they stuck it into Kurt Zisa. And then they remembered they had another boss to make or something like that. But like, he's like a multi-armed Shiva like monster boss thing. yeah. I'm looking at it now. He's very hard. And in my opinion, he's the hardest fight that's not maybe ice Titan and Sephiroth. Maybe ice Titan and Sephiroth are harder than him. He'll mess you up. think Kart Sisa is harder than ice Titan. Yeah, probably got a lot less health though. And in the 1.5 remix game, they added another boss. So we, the story in Kingdom Hearts one is weird, but at least it's self-contained. You could have back in the day played the PS2 version, played through the story and you could be satisfied with. the beginning, middle and end of it. And you could be like, Oh, that's it. was, great. that there was a cliffhanger at the end. What was the cliffhanger at the end? Well, Mickey gets away. You still have to find him. Yeah. I That's the only thing that I would, I would say is like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it definitely was open to sequels, but it wasn't like, I don't think it was like the problem wasn't solved. Like. Well, you also don't think Ansem is like it, right? You open Kingdom Hearts and there's light and all of those shadow beasts are like rising up and everything. just, it was left on like a cliffhanger. Yeah. Well, I felt satisfied by it, but the story from there gets real weird. Like Ansem is not Ansem. He's some kind of like shadow of the real Ansem and the real Ansem is like another entity. think. He's like called like Xehanort or something like that. He's like the real villain. Almost nobody cares about that. It gets like so, it goes so, so over the top. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know anything about any of the other ones really. don't remember. So this, this is all to say that they, in the 1.5 version, they retconned in a fight that you can fight in the Hollow Bastion level. And he's like a hooded figure, like the, I think they're called Organization 13 or something like that. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. ⁓ he's one of those and he comes at you with like two, what I can only describe as lightsabers and this guy will mess you up if you fight him as soon as you can. Like I did. And I fought, must've fought him like 12 times to beat him. And there's like a way you can beat him with like gravity and stuff, but he feels like a fight from one of the later games. He moves much faster than, than all the other enemies do. And I think he demands more of you, the player, like that trick I said, were you castle crashers that shit and you short hot you. You cannot, cannot, cannot hit him standing on the ground. have, you absolutely have to know to do that to beat him. There's just no way. you less mobile in the air though or no? Not really. Cause you get flight later. Yeah, you get flight. Okay. Sora glides really fast. He like spiral glides down. Man, that must be sick. And then there's the post game content in the arena where there's secret bosses. Or you can fight the earth Titan from Hercules, the ice Titan from Hercules. And last but certainly not least is Sephiroth himself, the bad boys. Who has, he just has like giant screen wide attacks. has his big stupid sword, which can hit you like a football field away. And he's, he flies around like a maniac and he even has like a rage meter basically where. He has five health bars and the first health bar just doesn't move for the longest time while you beat on him until eventually it does. And then it's a normal fight, but like his, that is to say his health extends beyond the fifth health bar. Like it's like, here's the health bar, but his health is really like off screen somewhere. But, ⁓ he hasn't, he has a lot of his attacks from the game or at least interpretations of them like sin harvest. So that attack. He just, he has so much to him as a boss. Like I remember sitting with, ⁓ that with one of my friends from high school watching him fight Sephiroth and beat him for the first time. And that's all we did for like two hours is I watched him run at Sephiroth and lose and lose and lose and get a little further and lose and get a little further and lose. Like Sephiroth has so many alterations to his style of fighting that it was just like, you fight a new boss. Like he has faces. Should have came to my house. I whooped his ass. The first time. Yeah. You must've been over leveled bro. Cause he, he's tough. Even like, like level 70 he's, he's tough. No, mean, honestly, maybe, an hour. Maybe I tried to fight him at level 50. No, but I'm very hard. You need to know that fight and not get hit. But it's hard. It's still, it's still hard not to get hit. Like Sephiroth walks around the battlefield like Michael Myers. Yeah, for his first form he doesn't run he just walks just constantly stalking but then he'll just like Fly forward and swing a couple times. He just like slaps you with that sword. Yeah But then when he gets pissed off he notably starts running and you're like, ⁓ no He had he's got that move that brings you to one health and then harvest yeah one held and no magic notably it drains your magic Right. would just time Megalixir. Yeah. Yeah. And he immediately follows up with teleporting next to you and slapping you. So if that Sin Harvest thing, it appears over your head. It's like a halo. Your options are locate him now with the crappy camera and try to hit him out of it because you can stun him out of doing that or like Steve said, queue up and an elixir in the in the animation. If you time it right, Sin Harvest will go off. The elixir will heal you and then you'll probably get slapped in the ass with the sword but not die But Sephiroth after that thing blows up he immediately goes goes for the kill. That's the ruthlessness of this box Yeah, yeah, there's a one wing and angel play as you're fighting. Yes. Yes a very good version. ⁓ yeah, dude Yeah, completely orchestrated vocalized version of it. Yeah, I would love to just like sit down and just like play all these You know the whole series but like ⁓ I just can't keep up with all these games, man. It's kind of depressing. be depressed. Just play more games. it's just like, does I want to play this? I want to play that. I want to play this. just say, don't know. You have a retirement plan. Maybe my next project will be playing my entire game room of games. Yeah. That could be cool. On your backlog or just playing everything you have. Yeah. Playing, playing everything I have. I bought a game room during COVID. Now I'm going to play it. I don't know. There's a lot to say about this game. There's so much to explore and you're doing it through these Disney worlds. If you have any love of Disney at all, I'd say a little less. So if you're into just final fantasy and not Disney, I don't think there's as much meat on the bone for final fantasy fans, but there's a lot of characters in it, but you won't see any like the story beats of final fantasy like you see in Disney. So if you're a Disney fan at all, you should be playing kingdom hearts. It's awesome. Yeah, I don't know. Do you guys have anything else to kind of add to it? Just I don't know. It's a fun game. if you're into like, you know, action RPGs, I feel like this was right up there. All the bosses are fun to fight. Like I've only fought a handful of them, but like I could just I could already tell just by getting like, you know, just a little bit of taste of what I did, like the other bosses are probably hell of a lot more fun than the ones that I even thought. But yeah, I mean. I don't know, I just got a whole wave of nostalgia playing this whole game and it just, it made me think of like, damn, I actually kind of want to go through this series. I just didn't realize how much, like how many games there actually are. How many are there? Like nine of them. Yeah, but like three or four of them are not as long as this one. Like some of them are handheld games and like, chain of memories is really short. Like I knew there was a fair amount of them. just didn't realize it was that many. Like they just slipped under the radar for me. was like, ⁓ man. Dude, dream drop distance would have been so much better if they didn't add the time limit. I don't have a problem with the time limit. actually still like it. I don't want a time limit. It gives you enough of a time limit to get through plenty of the objectives. And it's not like it sends you back. You pick right up from where you left off. Yeah. But then you got to play as Sora again when you wanted to play as Riku. Sometimes I got to play as Riku again when I want to play as Sora. don't know. It depends on whose story is heating up at the time. they have a game that's just like base? Just only saw Riku? Probably not. There's Riku mode in Chain of Memories. of Memories. That's cool. Although Riku mode's kind of like. Boston mode? No. No. It's kind of like shitty mode. Yeah. So not to get like super into it, but I remember you get like a card, a deck of 30 cards. And if. It doesn't matter which ones you have in your hand as Riku. If you hit both shoulder buttons, they like combine the card to do a special attack and it's just really powerful. So you just combine all your cards and you just win that way. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't do it that way. did a Rikus Rikus deck is more about the counter attacks in that one. So you want to use this high because his cards have high numbers on them. So you want to wait till the enemy attacks and their card is on screen and you like bump their card off screen and then you start wailing on them. Yeah. I played the game like. Yeah. 20 something years ago. Only once on GBA. Yeah. But Sora actually earns cards through his playthrough and you can edit his deck. can't edit Riku's deck. Riku's deck is what it is and it changes based on the world you're in. So yeah. Anyway, chain of memories. It's his own thing. Yeah. So I feel like that is Kingdom Hearts or at least the gateway to it. Play it. Keyhole. Have fun. Keyhole. You guys ready to get into our review of it? Yeah, let's do it. ⁓ This is the part of the show that I let Steve host because he does a better job than I do at it. Steve, take it away. Host review. Host preview. So during this portion of the show, we have five different sections that we will be grading the game on. Yeah. Five sections. ⁓ we've got presentation, which is how the game looks, how the game sounds. Is it something that is delightful to the senses? Then we have gameplay. Is the gameplay fluid? Is it not? Is it rigid? Is it fun to play? Then we have pacing, which is, the systems too clunky or does everything flow well? Does the story move along at a pace that's not grueling or is it a slot fest? Then we have playability. Is it playable in 2026? Is it easy to play, pick up? Does it hold up to games nowadays? That kind of deal. And then the last section that we have is our choice specs, is just that is there something special about this game that makes you want to play it or something different about it than other games that you've played that kind of make it stand out? Who wants to start on presentation of Kingdom Hearts? Yeah, I mean, I can start. And I like. Like if you're into Disney and whatnot, even at all, like Square, like it has all like the core characters in there, the art style that they went with this game, like it looks exactly how they do like in the cartoons and stuff. like, if you want any sort of nostalgia trip, like that's one way, one reason to play it there. ⁓ the music, you know, again, it just could be just like a huge nostalgia trip. If you want to listen to like the Disney music throughout the various titles. Uh, then they got that one track in the, beginning of the game and the intro. What's it called? Simple and clean. Simple and clean. Yeah. I know a lot of people love that theme. I remember hearing that. I think that was like on the commercial back in the day too. It has a dance version. Oh my God. Get out of here. were playing this at the club. Remember how I said Kingdom Hearts is like a rave that, that, that I went to once, but I've walked through a window ever since. It's like that. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. I don't know. It's like, I just love the way the game looks. And I think it's, I think it's a lot of nostalgia triggering, triggering it for me. But I just, I don't know, man. I, as far as like just presentation with the music and how the game looks, I would give this a five out of five. If I could just walk around a candlelit street in real life to the, to the Traverse Town music, that would just be like. Yeah. Or all the different worlds too. Like that it's, ⁓ my God, Nostalgia. So the presentation, I think for all the reasons that Dan said is strong. And I think for the time, you can tell they really put a lot of effort into it. They really tried, but even in the 1.5 remix, I don't think it's aged entirely well. And I think it suffers a little bit from that early 3D era, just like some of the characters faces. I think this game definitely would look better on a CRT for sure. Like Sora's face is okay. And probably pretty good for the time in terms of facial facial expressions. like, I'm talking about like Hades, like his face literally just does not move. There's just a lot of that. Like he looks like Hades, but his mouth isn't moving when he talks and Jeannie is similar thing. And it's just a little wooden by today's standards and it's, it's aged a little bit. So I'm to give it a four. If I'm grading it in 2026. I'm with Dawn. I think it's great, but it. It's aged just a little bit on the presentation. Not in the audio. really tried. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. No, nothing, nothing against their effort, but the PS2 is an old system and a lot of the graphical things in the PS2 did not hold up to today's Whereas pixel art kind of gets a pass on some things because it's timeless or cell shading. Yeah, exactly. Like, like Wind Waker still looks really good and like Wind Waker because of the design choice, right? Don, you want to start on game play? I'm honestly going to give it a five. The fact that I've beat it probably four five times in my life and there's still different ways that I haven't played. And there's proud mode. If you want a real challenge, if you're a veteran of the game, there's new bosses, there's, you know, there's just a lot to this game. There's a good amount of exploration. There's crafting. Yeah. You can, you can get your mileage out of here and I think you'll, you'll enjoy it. The enemies are really dynamic. We already talked about that too. Like you have to pick the enemies apart when you, when you fight them for the most part. And that's a good feeling, I think, as opposed to just like mowing enemies down and just pressing the attack button over and over again. Yeah, I'm in same way, but I think I'm going to give it a four just on the sole fact that like, I wish you could change the controls just even a little bit. To me, like pressing B to jump and A to attack, like, I wish I could just like swap things slightly. The targeting is a little kind of janky, I feel like, where it's like, you have to hit like one button to target. And then like, I wish I could just use like the directional buttons to like tab through them, but you actually have to hit a shoulder button, a different shoulder button. to tap through the enemies. Um, it's something that you can get used to, but like, you know, in 2026, I wish I could just have like, you know, a lot of games just have it like down pat. And I understand it's just the product of its time, but you know, I w I was hoping with the remix that like you could, you know, go into the menus and like swap it around, but you can't. know what? You're right. Lock on does suck. Put me down to four. But that down to four. The lock on is supremely underdeveloped. They fixed the camera. You used to have to adjust the camera with the shoulder buttons. But they didn't fix the lock on in any way at all. You're right. The lock on caused me a lot of issues during my playthrough. Yeah. Four for me. Yeah. I'm also on a four. Pretty much what you guys said is my sentiments too. Dan, you want to start on pacing? Can you? Reasonably give this a pacing score only having been to the I mean world. I guess not not withstanding mister I picked proud mode the first time yeah, I know like I like Take it from my two cents like it you guys was review on this will be better than mine obviously But yes, I did pick proud mode in the beginning and I absolutely did get humbled But ⁓ like I like to just like be a completionist. So like on destiny island I like actually tried to do everything so was like I tried to fight You know, T to this walk a selfie and then they all come at you all at the same time. I'm like, I was stuck on that for a good while. Let's get them. Yeah. And then again, then you can fight Riku and I was stuck on him for a bit. But like, as far as like, you know, I'd imagine if you're just playing normally, like that, that part just goes like swimmingly. Like you just, maybe you'd get stuck on. the, you know, the trio fight for a little bit, but not that long. And then like, there's a little bit of exploration you can do on the island itself, where it's like, you got to find materials to build a raft and then you there's like racing to like through obstacles with Riku. And so there's like just in the beginning of the game, they they throw a bunch of little stuff at you, like, basically telling you this is what you're going to expect from this game going forward. And it's all like on Destiny Island. Which I thought was a cool, it was was a very nice tutorial to the game. ⁓ and I can only imagine it just gets better from there on out. And then like, obviously you have like the gummy ship sections too, where like, it's like a mini game with that. So I don't know. Deep existential questions in the beginning too, right? Like, what do you fear most living too long or getting older and you're like, ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. I forgot about that part too. Like right in the beginning, where you get to like. the questions and then it tells you like what kind of fighting style you enjoy and we have to like forgo like forgo one and stuff like that. was, I remember telling Steve, I was like, this going to affect my, my save in any way? Like, am I not just going to have magic? Like, yes. But yeah, up until the point that I played, I thought the pacing was great, but I just loved to a tutorial island. I would probably give this a five, think. Okay. Two. I I would give this a five if not. for my disdain for Wonderland. Why do you hate Wonderland? It's fine. I never liked it. Okay. It's like a, it's like this weird fever dream place like Alice in Wonderland. It's supposed to be, but I don't like it. I feel like it could right up your alley. I thought it was kind of neat where it's like you have to be like big to push the bed out of the way so he could like, then he had to be small again to like go into the hole. It's like the dreams that I have when I'm sick. And you're like upside down. Yeah, it's like the dreams I have when I'm sick and I don't like it. Sorry, it's getting a four for me. right. Yeah, it's your, it's your, it's your score. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. Everything else is cool. And the, other thing is I'm not a fan of, ⁓ a fan of showing up at the Coliseum and not getting to go and like explore Olympus. Wish I don't like that they have a whole world. That's like just an arena. ⁓ is that really? That's all there is in that? Yeah. I wish, I wish. ⁓ No, it's not like it's this huge deal, but they do it again in the second one where they take you had this really cool area in Atlantis and then they make it a stupid music mini game. That's because Ursula is dead. There's nothing to worry about in that planet. It doesn't matter. I don't like that. Look, dude, the only threat got smoked. They're just happy now. You go there, you show up, you eat, you dance and that's it. I don't like Monstro. So pacing gets a four. It's your turn, Don. I don't want any back. I do. I do agree with you on the, on the monstro thing, but I'm actually going to give it a four for the reason that I think the destiny Island shit goes on way too long. Like, yeah, there's so much backtracking and shit. You've got to go get the stupid fucking fish and fucking coconuts and everything. Yeah, no, it's just, it's whatever. And, and then they give you Traverse town and I feel like Traverse town is a little bit of a, of a tutorial too. They should have just combined. That place was a maze at first for me. I'm like, I don't know where the hell I'm going. And it's kind of a maze going back to it too. It took me a minute to be like, ⁓ I forget exactly how to trigger the next, the next event. does take a little bit of effort and. God, I'm bumping myself down to a three. Yeah. I just, I just think that the early part of the game is glacial. Yeah. You know what? Give me a four actually. Give me a four. It's like, it's like the movies that like, you know, like a horror movie where it's like 50 minutes before you see like the real monster or the threat and you're like, tick, talk, like, let's get to the meat of the game here. There's one part where like you're with squall and he like runs off. It's like, yeah, we have to get to the Leon. Leon. He's like, we have to fight the main baddie. And he runs off and it's like, you don't even know. Like he runs into a direction, but you don't actually see where he goes. And you're like, did he go through this door? Like, that my clue? Like where did you go dude? And then you find them in like the first district just standing there and I'm like, I don't know where I'm going. I thought it was following you bro. did you run into the secret monkeys in, in Traverse Town? Secret monkey? I don't think so. ⁓ yeah. There's like, there's like a secret monkey enemy that sometimes spawns. And if you hit him, a bunch of other monkeys spawn and they will f*** you up. But they draw a lot of money, right? Yeah, but they, they shoot these rocks at you. That'll just one shot you at that, at that point in the game. Beautiful. And there's no getting away from them. Like they're like, there's Donald just drop, drive by goofy. All right. Who's starting on playability? I'll go. Okay. It's, it's a five. It's perfectly playable in, in 2026, even, even recommendable. you, not all the series that we've played on this show. Including like Mega Man Battle Network like I would recommend you start at the first game But Kingdom Hearts it definitely definitely would recommend you start at the first game and I think it's I think because of the remake it's perfectly playable. It's fine It's a little rough around targeting but it's It's on Steam. It's available They have a whole collection on ps4 which is playable on a ps5 as well. Like it's easily accessible Yeah, if you want a challenge you can play proud mode. It's yeah fun for all ages. Yeah That's actually, you know, ups my score too. Like when you can just actually play the damn game, you know, like a lot of like games in their early, like just earlier games in general, sometimes are a pain to find a way to play it. So the fact that like you got all like all these like HD remakes with all like the like packages, we can play all the games like. Yeah. And the battle system is not that bad considering like for how old it is. It's like we said, it's very playable. So yeah, I'll give it a five. Yeah, and the fight with Riku is fucking sweet. Yeah, the second time. ⁓ the second. Yeah, the destiny island. No, the destiny island one's not sweet. All right, so I guess I'll start with choice specs. I think I'm just gonna give it a five because where the hell are you gonna get a crossover like this? I think yeah crossovers in general, man. Like it's almost like an instant five. I would give it like an eight if we could go up that high. Like I would make up for the other points with it. Like this game could be several shades shittier and I would still play it because if the mood strikes me, like there's just no substitute. Yeah. Even if the story is like, super subpar, it's like the fact that like all these characters from Disney and 22, you know what I mean? It's just like, it's hard to like not be interested in it and want to at least try it. you know, like I'm probably, you know, in the minority, like I didn't really touch Kingdom Hearts, but I always knew about it. And I always knew that those Disney characters and stuff and the square characters and. But yeah, I mean, just crossover in general, it's like a five for me. our friend in high school, Mike would say, it for the Kingdom. Kingdom Hearts. All right. So that gives us. A. Sixty six. Twenty one points for Steve. 23 points for Dan and 22 points for myself. That's a 66 out of 75, which is an overall percentage of 88%. Not bad. I'm going to look up where it sits in reviews. It sits at an 85 % on Metacritic. And the MFAQs. GameSpot. We are right on the money. Damn dude. 85%. Pretty good. Now on to our outro. Fellas, we made it 71 episodes. feel like that's pretty good. I feel like that's more prod, more than a lot of projects like these get. Yeah. I didn't think we're going to get it this far. Honestly. Like I just, yeah. 70, that's a big number. feel like, especially over the course of two weeks, only doing like one episode every two weeks and getting up to 71. Yeah. We've been doing the Cabel Club like three years now. What did we learn? A lot actually. If I know, just don't know to do it again. Burn after reading such a good movie. right. So what this means for you, dear listener is that, ⁓ I can tell you for sure, because I'm paying for some of this stuff that the website is definitely closing. That won't be there anymore. If we close our hosting service through Riverside, which is the platform that we use to record, I am not sure. At the backlog of episodes will be available on the podcast services. However, I have no intention of taking the YouTube channel down. So the episodes will definitely still be available on YouTube. So they will be findable. As of this moment, the merch store is going to stay open. We'll provide the link for that in the description of this video. So we did commit to that a hundred dollar goal, ⁓ to, ⁓ extra life. So that's one of the key ways that. that we're raising money. any purchase through the merch store will go toward our Extra Life campaign. And you can see them in the description of the items, how much it actually donates. So definitely go check that out, especially if you participated in last year's league. I thought the league was fun, guys. I don't know if you did. it was. It was. Yeah. I had fun putting the games into the tiers and debating about which ones were better than the others. That was definitely fun. Yeah. There were a lot of good games that we got to play, and I do appreciate everybody bringing some of their favorites in. Absolutely. even their underappreciated ones like JJ Squawkers. Who appears on a lot of our merch, by the way. So if you want the one and only JJ Squawkers shirt to ever exist, you can only get it at our merch store. no idea. As of right now, we're intending to keep the discord open. think we all agree whether or not we like doing this show still, ⁓ that, ⁓ you know, we like the community that's kind of sprung up around it a little bit. It consists of new people that we've met. You know, looking at you, people like JMo from the Switcheroo and Mike and of course, you know, Jordan and Brad from, from Arcadiology and you know, thinking of like Hapny who I didn't know before that Steve knew. It's just been really cool to kind of get everybody together as well as some old friends who have come out of the woodwork for this thing and for us. So, you know, we're hoping that Discord kind of stays the central hub for that. We're discussing some stuff around keeping that going as a community. So. Maybe continuing to do things like question of the week to drive conversation. Maybe we'll play like, I don't know, maybe we'll play like a monthly game or something like that over there that we can spin like a random from a random list, something multiplayer lobbies will stay open. You know, so hopefully people just continue to join and, you know, stay in touch because that's really what this exercise was all about to begin with. I like to consider it a break or I mean, like, and breaks can be healthy. Maybe we'll come back with a new new idea, fresh idea in the future. You know, I mean, I'm open to it, like, but like, I feel like breaks are definitely a good thing to have. Yeah. The Facebook will also remain open. I'm not sure how much we'll post on there. It just kind of depends on what we decide to do with the discord, but I think our Facebook will still stay there. So if you keep in touch with us there, that's where you'll get updates and things. And, yeah, I think that's kind of the breakdown that we're looking at right now. Obviously all of that subject to change and up in the air and based on our own schedules and things going on in our life. yeah. So I wanted to ask before we sign off guys, maybe we can just kind of go around the table and talk about some of the things. out of this podcasting exercise that surprised us, whether they were games that we played or, you know, just experiences we had doing it. for me, it's like just the sheer number of games that I would play in a year. think skyrocketed. Yeah, we played a ton. Going like just playing, like just to just doing this podcast. Like, like I didn't even realize it, but like I, when I would sit back and like think about all the games that we played and all the games I actually beat and stuff, was like, Holy crap. beat like 30 games this year. Yeah, that was definitely out of the norm for me, for sure. Like I think on average, I mean, it all depends. It's like a year by year thing, but like I think on average, I would say probably be like anywhere from like five to 10 games a year, depending on what I'm playing. And like, you know, the podcast just like shattered that. Well, yeah, retro games are generally shorter than newer. stuff. So it's even not just beating it, just like the sheer number of volumes of just playing a game in general. Yeah, it's just specifically, will like never forget Chrono Trigger. I did not play that game before this show. And this was all the, all the use I needed. ⁓ my God is that game. think, I think paper Mario was mine. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. I love paper Mario. I also loved all the experimentation we did. love watching Dan lose all of his lives in the Mario. Mario. Mario Castle. Dude, I was destroying that game. I was manhandling that game until that last level, dude. I had like 20 something lives and stuff I was cruising. That was like our short that went as close to viral as possibly could. Yeah. I don't know what happened. I just, I just, I don't know. I fumbled it, dude. Who knows that that little. Kitty Gameboy game is home to the most vicious game over imaginable. beat that game in the second grade. You lose screw you and we're deleting the save. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember that like the, game over screen just shows all your coins, all your hard earned hard earned coins that from, you get from the boss and just completely disappear. Yeah. You gotta go back and do it again. Yeah. It's like really like that's traumatizing as a kid. Just like fun. fun stuff like that. I think I'm surprised with how not fondly I look upon gold and silver. I didn't expect to really be so harsh on it. You guys have a hard take on that game. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is, but like, I still think that game's like top tier. I don't know. I just haven't played it as much as you guys, but like still, like I just, for a Game Boy game dude, like two full islands, like. Yeah, it's true for a Game Boy game is really good. It's just, I wasn't into it relative to all the other games. All the existing Pokemon from the first game you could get in the second game. I thought back in the day, I felt like that was unheard of. was like, really? Oh, it definitely was lit back. So some hot shit. Yeah. I'd say that my favorite thing was getting to play multiplayer on things like, um, castle crashers, Diablo, Smash. Yeah. Starcraft, we didn't play any multiplayer on Starcraft, it would have been fun too. But just all the games that we got to play together with the community too. You know, know a bunch of us played Slay the Spire too when it came out and you know, that kind of thing. That was my favorite part is getting to play games with everybody. Yeah. It's fun when you also see like the discord popping off too with like whatever game is we're playing at the time too. You know, seeing the engagement. I love some of the hidden gems that we've played that I found Samson little Samson. Yeah. that is like gun neck. That was such a fun episode and like, uh, Shatter hand dude. Oh yeah. Shatter hand is awesome. Come on, Steve. know you're laughing. Yeah. What about a sword sword sage or what was that game? Oh man. Oh God. What is that game? Was that Eric? Was that Eric's? No, no, no. was, it was random. It was like a crafting game, something like sword craft. Sword craft hero. Was that what it was? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I think so. But it was like, it was fine until the translation went off the rails. was like they fired the guy translating it and hired a new one. Then it was just like completely bonkers. And I was like, oh, now the game is. Yeah, I beat that. was a of fun. Battle network, dude. We played battle network three. We were doing battles again. I couldn't, I was on an emulator and you guys were playing on the switch or something. Yeah, yeah, we all bought the collection. 100 % of the third game. That's when we covered it. Oh, You got like the five stars. You brought the Faridade and shit. Yeah, yeah. It brought back so many memories when you're getting all those stars again. I swear, like, when it comes to Battle Network 3, like when it says like how long you spent on the game and you save it, it caps out like 99 hours. I swear, I easily tripled that like back in the day when we were all playing it. competitively. Yeah. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah. Cause my save was at 99 for like a long time. Yeah. It was good. Yeah. A lot of good times, a lot of fun memories to look back on. You know, they were definitely it had its ups and downs, but I definitely had fun playing with everybody. Yes. Yeah. The multiplayer aspect, like when we got games and we could play with each other, I think those were like the best parts too. Or like hanging out and watching each other play. Yeah. ⁓ That was such a good time. The pipe and the hammer. Legendary. Yeah. That magical moment of getting messed with on the elevator. Yeah. When like you went up and down on the floors and then the fourth button appeared and I was like, wait, was there a fourth button before? Like we were all getting messed with? Yeah. I had fun with Parasite Eve. That was like a sleeper hit, I feel like. Like for real. No, I just for real. Like that was the walk. Yeah. Yeah. I actually beat that. I don't know if you guys did, but I did, but I liked like horror games. So like that's, that's like kind of like at my alley. So I bought it because I liked it so much. And I also bought the second one. I actually owned both copies. I beat my first Fire Emblem game because of the podcast. I beat my first Zelda game because of the podcast. I beat my first Paper Mario because of this podcast. are two, there are three worth beating arguably. And don't forget the game that started it all, Splatterhouse 3. Boy, if you know, we really never knew what, what we were doing, but we definitely didn't know what we were doing back then. Yeah. I liked our Colosseum episodes. Even though they were really hard to do. It was really hard to play two games. And they were ambitious for sure. I also liked our original format the most where the two players had to convince the one player had to convince the one person that that their game was better. I wish I wish we stuck with that. Well, episodes are just so long after Friday, a whole week of work and what did we put up against Castlevania something something on I was that Metroid Metroid and it was that that was a banger episode. I beat both those games to legendary games. Hit make forcing you guys to play banjo kazooie. Don still you guys neither of you have beaten it still terrible terrible for the monster mansion things I really take some I'll be honest with you. I've I don't know I've always I've gravitated away from just not playing like like the collect the thon 3d Like platformers, I just ⁓ yeah instead you're gonna play a game collect thon like what? like Red Dead Redemption God of War. that's more of my, that's more of my Mario Odyssey, I guess. I don't want to hear about what's up your alley. Red Dead Redemption is good. Like the story is really good. Yeah, well Banjo-Kazooie's story is There's that. By child does she mean awesome? Listen, how many games you ever play where a witch wants to steal this child to steal her, beauty. The child's a bear and so is her brother. So in she she's downright grizzly. Grunt. We all can't forget the best game that we had though was Mega Man seven. Which is worse, alright? Mega Man X7 or Mega Man Soccer? Mega Man Soccer Soccer's gross, dude. bad. I feel like if you're a hardcore Mega Man fan, like Mega Man X fan, I think it's one playthrough at least. But for the first 30 minutes, Mega Man Soccer's better than Mega Man X7. For the first 30 minutes. How about Ore No Uri? This is all that was fun. I like that game. Yeah, I love that game. That game is that game's lit. Yeah, I got to play the music was great to Minecraft and we beat the ender dragon and that was ⁓ yeah That was another multiplayer game that we played together. That was good. Good stuff. No comment So he's salty that he didn't ⁓ my god kill the ender dragon with us. Okay. Well twisted metal versus vigilante eight I love twisted metal the music in that game slaps hard I like the idea of vigilante eight. The execution was real bad. Like twist the metals, like in general is like just so late nineties. just screams late nineties. And chef Doug came over while, while we were doing that and he and I beat it. It was awesome. Yeah, it was good. Minion. It was like, I think that was another reed knuckles versus a. Super Mario World. Yep. Playing Streets of Rage together. Streets of Rage should have beaten Turtles of Time. Stop it. should have. should have. You guys even admitted it after. No, dude. Come on. Like the Ninja Turtles. Like, ugh. Cowabunga, dude. I think you would have had a lot better argument if you did Streets of Rage 2 versus that one. If Streets of Rage 2... Okay. I personally like the first one more, but a Streets of Rage 2 with its hype and its notoriety did not beat Turtles in time. We should have just quit then. well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think we should have done too, but it is what it is. I thought it would have been unfair. Because remember the point was to get two games that were close. So isn't Sonic 3 versus Super Mario World? If I remember correctly, the scores are pretty close though. Well, that's because you've got to pick. Yeah, because you're a hardcore Sonic fan. I'm not so much. I'm Mario 100%. Dude, me too. Almost always. 2.0 Knuckles is so good though. It is though. Yeah, Super Mario World This might be a hot take, but I actually prefer like 1 and 2 over 3. just like... Get the fuck out of here with don't like the layouts. Sonic 1 is bad. No, it's not bad. Sonic 1 is I will die on that hill. It's only six chaos emeralds. What the hell are we doing? Like the third game it's like you're fucking going backwardsly and you're going up and backwards a lot like a lot of times if you get lost. it's called playing a game. Sonic 1 has- Go right, championship edition. Not even just that. Labyrinth Zone? Disgusting. Spring Yard Zone? Disgusting. Death Egg Zone? Or not Death Egg Zone, Scrap Brain Zone? Disgusting. to labyrinth zone. Yeah, no, it's bad. We have like- to any zone, but we took you back to labyrinth zone. So green hills is fine. Could be nostalgic And marble zone is fine. And starlight zone is fine. Everything else, not good. Marble zone is like the crest of the shit slide though. It's the head of the shit coming out. Like you know, if you're going up a roller coaster and you're getting pretty excited, right? It's the turtle head poop. And that's and that's green green hill zone, right? But then you reach the top of the hill of the roller coaster and you realize it's gonna drown you in sewer water. That's The feeling that you get when you're playing through the Marvel zone. Yeah, because it's not a fast level. It's a lot of stopping level Yeah There's a lot of verticality in the third game I feel like Where you're just climbing up and up and up and then sometimes you're going backwards and then Sonic games are the multi level level design So the idea is that if you, you go up, that's the fastest route. And if you're good, you can stay up. But if you're bad, you fall down, but instead of just killing you. Like in a death pit, the way a lot of games do sends you on the slow, slow track. So I tell you, suck. also makes the game highly replayable because you'll see different routes every time you go through, which is also great. Like chemical plant zone, like the song. The theme song for that dude. Just that theme alone makes it the goat. Ice cap zone though. No, no dude. I do like ice caps. Over chemical plant zone. No way. No idea what you're talking about. Ice cap zone is fucking lit. Hydro city is fucking lit too. Hydro city is still lit too. Yeah. So Sonic 3, like if we're looking at the levels in my opinions, like first level is great. Second level is great. Third level, not great. Fourth level, not great. Fifth level, great. Six level not great. I'm not a fan of the final stage Of sonic 3 yeah, not a big fan So like half of the levels are great and half the levels are not so great in sonic 2 I like pretty much everything except for fucking metropolis zone. That's the only one I'm not a fan of To each to each their own I guess I feel like that's the most similar characters the big epic adventures I feel like that alternate routes like I don't know I feel like that one's like the most similar to like the third game like that level layout The storytelling in Sonic 3 and Knuckles is also really great. That like silent storytelling telling you things that are happening the way the world is changing. ⁓ yeah. Sonic 3 and Knuckles, you don't get a lot of that with the Mario game. Mario is just Mario, but I'm not shitting on it it's a great game, but it's just like, you know, it doesn't have the character that Sonic had. They weren't really going for it. It's just a chill, chill game. It turned into a... rehash of some of our arena episodes. Anyway, before this goes on too long, game over fellas? Game over. Game over. Screw the credits. Game over. ⁓