Sounds About Light

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...

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....

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 | Bl...

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...

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) fight...

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 a...

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 cha...

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 | Dr...

Things are really starting to pop off in this weird game for phones! A boss from Chain of Memories just had an offscreen boss fight against a boss from Kingdom Hearts 1, and the winner has claimed a victory pod to travel through data to get into the real victory pod and travel through time. That's not even the main thing that happens this week. We're mostly dealing with some Capital-D Darkness and...

The Kingdom Hearts murder mystery continues! Our brainy union leaders are hard at work trying to find some answers (which is to say, Brain is looking into it) while Dennis is hard at work doing the plot of Wreck-It Ralph offscreen and will be back next week. We've got some challenging Master of Masters dialogue to discuss, and our reward is some severely bonkers Maleficent plot. Why is she here ag...

He's called Brain for a reason. Unrelated, happy 69th episode! We're back in Daybreak Town for some more KHUX. Our favorite little chibi anime boys are investigating a little chibi anime murder, while the player goes to investigate a Disney movie. We've got several uninterrupted minutes of Chirithy narration in this one. In order to understand the stakes of Kingdom Hearts Union χ, one must first u...

Okay, now we finished Kingdom Hearts 3! In our 13th (nice) episode about this game, we discussed the 13 (nice) secret reports and the secret cutscene. The game might be over, but it's not done throwing new story hooks at us! Who is Subject X? How do you pronounce that most ancient letter? Is Japan real? Kingdom Hearts is going in some weird directions, if you can believe it, and we're cautiously e...

We finished the dang game! More or less! In our not-final episode on Kingdom Hearts 3, we're discussing the lengthy final battle with Xehanort and the equally lengthy series of endings upon endings. We've gotten all the logistics out of the way and it's time to enjoy some emotional payoffs! More bad chess! Twists! Turns! What more could you want from a game? Journal entries to read? Those will be...

On this week's episode, Sora mostly runs around killing people. I've got his kill tally up to 22 at this point, but that number has become extremely muddled and I'm no longer sure what death even is in this universe. Anyway, moving away from that existential headache, let's get to the relevant existential headaches of the week! What is the soul? What is the identity of a man created by combining t...

This week, Sora doesn't visit the final world of Kingdom Hearts 3, but he does visit the Final World of Kingdom Hearts 3! It's one of those weeks. After some bad stuff happens, he opens a sleeping keyhole or he doesn't and visits a sleeping world or he doesn't. Nobody can agree on much about what's going on in this part of the game, so we'll be taking a very even-handed approach called "being...

The true Kingdom Hearts 3 begins here! We've finished the Disney worlds and we're heading to the Realm of Darkness to do story stuff. I don't want to spoil anything here, so I'll just say that we've got our first legit Crackpot Corner in a while and also Mickey Mouse looks very depressed at one point and it's funny. They also let Haley Joel Osment do sicko voice again! This is a good game! Sam | D...

We've reached the final Disney world of Kingdom Hearts 3: San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6! We both watched the movie this time and it turns out it's great! That's not what we're talking about this week though. Instead, we've got funny original Baymax antics (original antics, not original Baymax) and an evil little Riku. Hopefully Sora can figure out the analogy of Baymax to Roxas in time to save him...

Yo ho, yo ho, the Pirates in KH3 This week, we went to the Caribbean We didn't like it, yo ho The cutscenes were boring and we were snoring Wake up, me hearties, yo ho Yo ho, yo ho, the Pirates in KH3 Luxord was there and he tried to parley For the Master's black box, yo ho Jack gave it away, Sora's notice delayed It was kind of funny, yo ho Yo ho, yo ho, the Pirates in KH3 And then it was time fo...

Frozen is a movie about a girl with ice powers losing control and freezing her kingdom in the summer. This is why it's funny that we're talking about Arendelle in July! We did it on purpose! A lot of people say this is an all-time low for the series. It's not very good, but it still has its moments in between trips up and down the mountain. They fixed Elsa's hair, at least! Sam | Drew | Twitter |...

We're back from a short internet-problems break to talk about Monstropolis, a world in which Sora and friends walk forward through a series of hallways! Fortunately, the hallways are occupied by our favorite scary guys from our favorite scary company to keep us scary company. All things considered, it's pretty good, and someone gets comically hucked through a door! Uh oh! This episode starts with...

Welcome to Kingdom Hearts Untangled, our Tangled recap recap podcast where we recap a recap of Tangled! All things considered, it's still a pretty fun world despite very literally being "Sora, Donald, and Goofy watch a Disney movie." Even one of the least interesting villains in the series can't drag this one down! Sam | Drew | Twitter | Cohost

It's a great week for Kingdom Hearts 3! We're heading to one of the best worlds in the series: Toy Box! We're missing a lot of the Toy Story toys, for reasons that will be explained/stupid, but that's okay. We've got everything we could possibly want: Woody roasting Xehanort, Rex being a gamer, Sora piloting a mech, and the army guys being slightly too real. Also, a commercial for the game that No...

In this bistro-centric episode, we're returning to Twilight Town, the chillest town in the Realm Between, and catching up with the Other Sea Salt Trio: Hayner, Pence, and Olette! So much has happened with these three in the past [???] days or weeks or months, and Sora can truly relate to them now that he has a phone. Scrooge is also here, and he's got an Unnamed Rat in his employ! This looks like...