Backlog Dialogues

This is it, the final minilog of the Kingdom Hearts era of Backlog Dialogues. Though looking at the file length, it's more of a megalog. In what could best be described as the weight of our sins and pinnacle of our hubris, we go deep in discussing Final Fantasy XIV for a second time, this time focusing on Shadowbringers and Endwalker, the two best stories in all of Final Fantasy. We dig in to the themes of anti-utopianism and hope that run deep through Natsuko Ishikawa's stories, and examine some of the most interesting characters and settings the Final Fantasy franchise has come up with, and even sort of answer the question - why did we do all this? What's the meaning to our struggle in creating a podcast?
We do it for their own sake, and no other reason.
Is that not so, Adventurer?

This is it! The final Kingdom Hearts episode! We made it! And since it's a recappy music game with only the tiniest sliver of story to hint at what's to come, we turn it in to a little postmortem on the series before getting a chance to call Nomura and the Fairy Godmother on their bullshit. It's been fun, so let's kick back and remember it!

We've finally made it to the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 - the kino packed extravaganza that is the Remind DLC! First we go over the secret reports, which contain hints of things to come in the series, and then we follow Future Sora as he revisits the events of Keyblademania to try to bring back Kairi. Getting to play as other characters, some extremely amazing cinematic battles, and even a few weird puzzles and minigames await. Then, it's time for optional bosses with Limitcut Episode and Secret Episode, as Riku plays a version of Data Sora to fight Data Real Organization XIII and Sora fights the extremely confusing Noctis expy Yozora in the Final World. 

This is it, the final act of the base game of Kingdom Hearts 3, and the biggest night in keyblade entertainment! We begin by following Sora claw his way out of the afterlife yet again this game, and then proceed to get in to way too many cage matches in the lead up to a lumberjack match with all the Xehanorts and chase the Bald Man himself to the memory of Scala Ad Caelum. Incredible spectacles await as we enter our biggest episode yet!

Our wrestling metaphor cup runneth over as Kingdom Hearts 3 crams its last bits of story in to the spaces between the end of the Disney Worlds and a fateful showdown in the Keyblade Graveyard, all to set up the biggest event in Keyblade Entertainment. We still need to fill out our card for the big match, so we venture to the Realm of Darkness and the Land of Departure to get back Aqua and Ventus, and then round things out with a bunch of character establishment and plot hooks. Donald casts Zettaflare, it kinda owns. Then everyone dies!

On the last stop of our final Disney world tour of Kingdom Hearts thus far, we visit San Fransokyo, a world of balloon robots and shugyo, a world of skyscrapers and weird blimp fans, a world... of heroes. Six heroes. Big Hero 6! Our own Keyblade Hero 3 (ignore the fact that only Sora has a keyblade) joins their cosmic level power with a collection of minor heroes that collectively amount to about one Iron Man in dealing with Heartless, Darkubes, and... Riku? Oh and we talk about Cereal because this world is kinda thin on plot.

It's time for John's favorite world in all of Kingdom Hearts, the open world high seas pirate adventure world The Caribbean! There's also a story here but who cares about that, we're here for Jack Sparrow made of crabs, a cool ship with super moves, and some of the coolest lucky emblems in the entire game! Let's have some fun!

It's time for John's least favorite world in Kingdom Hearts 3, the world where everything looks like Olaf and they keep knocking you off the mountain instead of interacting with the Disney characters. That's right, it's Arendelle! Join Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they continually fail to make friends with the characters we actually care about but do manage to ultimately recruit a massive snow golem (which is cool I guess?) At least Larxene is here, Larxene makes everything better.

We take a break from talking about Kingdom Hearts to get a whole bunch of Final Fantasy XIV talking out of our system! But because Final Fantasy XIV is huge, we decided we can't do it all at once. So we have the discussion of A Realm Reborn through Stormblood in the middle of the season while we save the best part for the end!
Join the Warrior of Light, chosen champion of Hydaelyn, as they are tasked to slay primals, push back an encroaching evil empire, end a thousand year long conflict between Catholic elves and dragons, and fight an Organization XIII-ass cloak club, the Ascians. You know, normal stuff. We blitz through these story points and more as we try to explain why the three of us play and enjoy the critically acclaimed MMORPG that is free to play through lev- ::is shot for meme crimes::
(Don't worry, Kingdom Hearts is back next week.)

This week, we visit Monstropolis for good times with Sully, Mike Wazowski, and Boo! Sora, Donald, and Goofy get adorable monster forms this time around, and less adorable monsters show up to make a connection to the emotional dark side of Kingdom Hearts, Vanitas and his Unversed! And then, after we deal with that pizza cutter, we take one last stop in the land of true existential horror, Hundred Acre Wood, as Merlin makes one final attempt to trap us in a charming stuffed animal world, now with a significant increase in the number of heffalumps.