Backlog Dialogues

Ventus's journey takes him to the Badlands and Radiant Garden this week! In the badlands, he gets in a fight with a very annoying afterimage spamming jerk, Vanitas, and makes friends with everyone's favorite cartoon mouse. Then, in Radiant Garden, he gets tickets to disney town and meets a bunch of pre-nobodied Organization XIII members, even making a few more friends! And also learns angst.

New character route time, it's Ventus! Join this game's very good boy on his first foray in to Disney worlds and his numerous encounters with sidekicks. We play a very stupid game of hide and seek with the seven dwarves in their woodlands. John introduces new jargon, Sillevil, to describe the absolutely bonkers adventure in Castle of Dreams, where Ventus is shrunk to rodent size and must fight Lucifer (the cat, not the prince of darkness.)(Is there a difference? - Jared) Then Ventus goes hero mode alongside ditzy fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather to take the fight to Maleficent's castle in the Enchanted Dominion and retrieve Aurora's heart.

The tragic conclusion of Terra's route has arrived! We go through Terra's fateful decision to grant the power of the keyblade to a young Riku, confront Eraqus as he seemingly readies to kill Ventus, and have the fateful final battle with Xehanort. Throughout we have seen Terra's hopelessly manipulated path, but we still know of his determination, which explains how Terra's Will began to linger in his armor to create one of the strongest blocks of gameplay driven story Kingdom Hearts has to offer

It's time for Terra's second speedrun of Disney worlds, with visits to Disneytown, Olympus Coliseum, Deep Space, and Neverland! In Disneytown we take our first dip in to Pete's backstory (and his secret history of playing both a heel and a face) along with Rumble Racing, the worst kart racer ever. In Olympus Coliseum, Hades is the next villain to pick up on the fact that Terra is an easy mark, but is disappointed when Terra doesn't really DO anything and so enlists Final Fantasy cameo Zack instead. In Deep Space, Terra befriends the ornery Experiment 626 and manages to see past Jumba Jookiba's admittedly weak deception skills. And in Neverland, Terra finally manages to get one up on his deceivers... but only after Hook tricks him in to fighting Peter Pan first.

Terra visits Radiant Garden, eventually. First he has to stop in to talk to various old keyblade masters in the Mysterious Tower and the Badlands, yet he doesn't manage to learn anything. Lots of discussion about Star Wars interweaves throughout as we dig in to how much Terra's arc resembles Anakin's from the prequels and how Braig and Xehanort totally pull a Count Dooku gambit to draw out the darkness in him. Also we begin to put together a theory of how sketchy Merlin actually is. Spoiler: Its pretty darn sketchy.

Let's start Terra's story in Birth By Sleep! After breaking down the specific character controls, we get right to the core of our new bad decisions man, here just in time to replace Riku. Terra fumbles his way through Enchanted Dominion, Castle of Dreams, and the Dwarf Woodland, being picked out as an easy mark by every card-carrying villain Disney has to offer, and some new ones too! John has a hard time telling the difference between Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Many tangents are had. Xehanort looks like a nice guy.