S6E18 – How He Got So Small (Union χ Part 5)

The current Kingdom Hearts ends here! We're talking about the Melody of Memory cutscenes, then the trailers for Missing Link and KH4. We get to see a lovingly rendered 3D Brain! Lucky us! Missing Link will truly be Game of the Year 2023. Anyway, thanks for listening to our podcast! We'll be back when more Kingdom Hearts exists or when we feel like talking about something else first. For now, feel free to (Re)connect (Kingdom Hearts) with us via the (Missing) links below! Sam | Drew | Bluesky | Discord

Ah jeez! Uh oh! It's the end of Dark Road, and the game started with a flash-forward to a cemetery, and that can only mean one thing: it's time for a bloodless bloodbath! If you've ever wondered why Xehanort and Eraqus seemed to be the only keyblade masters around in the Birth by Sleep times, well...! Let's all say goodbye to our dear friends. We hardly knew ye! Sam | Drew | Bluesky

After toggling their active quest, Xehanort and friends have apparently decided to go to Agrabah, and so has Eraqus I guess! We've got some irrelevant Jafar shenanigans to deal with and then the plot of Dark Road starts. Vidar and Baldr have been up to a lot of stuff offscreen (why does it feel like most of the plot of this game happened before the game started?) and we're going to hear about it. These mobile games sure love killing kids, huh? Sam | Drew | Bluesky

Things in Dark Road are starting to start to get interesting, as we (now halfway through the game) get some characterization for Xehanort's friends and a whole lot of screen time for the Magic Mirror from Snow White. We also meet a few of the upperclassmen, one of whom is a total freak. Don't forget our Z-plot: will Urd marry the Beast from Beauty and the Beast?! No, obviously not! Sam | Drew | Bluesky

We're back in the chibi mines with Kingdom Hearts Union χ Dark Road, a mobile gacha game about what Xehanort and Eraqus were getting up to as teenagers when they weren't playing chess! We've got a new cast of characters with Norse mythology names, all of which will be pronounced incorrectly by us. Hermod, Bragi, Vor, Urd, and Baldr are their names. I'm spelling them out here mainly so nobody tries to have a laugh about "vore". None of these losers are especially well-defined at this point, but one thing is for sure: they do run around in Wonderland! Sam | Drew | Bluesky

We pushed through the Re Mind Re Hash last week, and it's all new stuff from here! Sora is exploring Scala ad Caelum and doing some evil activities Xehanort set up for him. That's nice, I think! After that, we've got some genuinely cool stuff with the Guardians of Light and especially our beloved Epic Mickey. Lastly, we're talking about the Limitcut Episode, in which Data-Sora (not that one) fights 14 extra-hard bosses, culminating in one of the weirdest twists in the series so far! Sam | Drew | Bluesky

Remember the act 3 boss rush from Kingdom Hearts 3 that a lot of people hate for the breakneck pace at which it wraps up a dozen or so character arcs? Well, here it is again, but this time with a small handful of short new cutscenes that add almost nothing and one big weird new cutscene that also adds almost nothing but is kind of cool. If we imagine Re Mind as a trilogy, which it isn't, this is arguably its sophomore slump, which it isn't. There's a lot of "hey remember this scene? Well, moving on," this week, which is fine because it means we have more time to Dive to the Wiki and stare at an oil painting of Christian Bale. Sam | Drew | Bluesky

The true Kingdom Hearts 3 begins here? We're beginning our discussion of the KH3 DLC, Re Mind, with an assortment of cutscenes that we've already seen, flashbacks to conversations about things we already knew, and teenage Xehanort getting hilariously dunked on over and over. It's not bad, but it's definitely weird. After that, we Dive to the Wiki for some extremely questionable Cartoon Network character parallels! Sam | Drew | Bluesky

It wouldn't be a Kingdom Hearts game without a totally bonkers ending, and KHUX has got that thoroughly covered! Twice the data! Twice the Brains! More flashbacks! Baby Xehanort, from the Baby Xehanort spinoff! Many characters crying, and perhaps a host as well...? And just imagine how much more emotional it would be if it didn't look like that! Sam | Drew | Bluesky

Three hundred games into Kingdom Hearts, we're finally going to learn what darkness is! In this week's extremely eventful installment of KHUX, we've got some lengthy Master of Masters lore dumps... some twists... maybe some turns? "That all sounds great," you say, "but will there be gratuitous logistical discussions about who gets in which pod?" You better believe it!! Sam | Drew | Bluesky