gaming Let us take to the sky! A Raronoopan Review for Baten Kaitos

[Discordian 6,022]

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is a turn-based, card-based battle system RPG.

 

Developer: tri-Crescendo (Eternal Sonata) and Monolith Soft (Xenosaga and Xenoblade)

Publisher: Namco

Composer: Motoi Sakuraba

Platform(s): Nintendo Gamecube

 

Baten Kaitos isn't very well known except by hardcore Nintendo and RPG fans. It flew under a lot of radars when it was released in 2004, as did it's prequel Baten Kaitos Origins. It uses a card-based battle system and a combination of orchestral, synthetic and rock/metal theme songs throughout the game. It takes place in a world that lives in the sky, humans live on islands that float above the dark, poisonous clouds on the surface. They use a combination of machines and living animals to fly from island to island and some people even have wings that are not always visible but they can generate them and use them just like real wings. These wings also help the main characters in battle.

 

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Music #

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The music in this game, as previously said, is a mix of orchestral, synth and rock/metal music. Most of the music does a very good job of portraying a life living in the clouds and every island has a different culture and the music often portrays this very well. There are several different battle themes used for different situations. Important story themes often have a remix of the main battle theme in the game in metal anthem form but battles with the Empire (a military force from one of the islands) have their own orchestral theme that makes you feel as if you are up against a great, evil force.

 

There are also other themes for special bosses such as with a man named Giacamo who the main character, Kalas, has been hunting down since before the beginning of the game. These battles have a techno theme which fits rather well considering Giacomo is often accompanied by two partners that look as if they are ripped out of a Steampunk universe. Not totally unfitting to the game's setting, of course, since the island they are from is overrun with machines in a world that isn't totally overrun by technology.

 

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Setting #

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I've already explained much of the setting already but I'd like to make a note of the sheer diversity of each island and the cultures you find within them. The first island is split into two parts: Farmland and aristrocracy. The farmland is humble and grows food which is sent to the aristocratic city on the other side of the island which is where the leader of the island governs everything. The second island is more of a fisherman's paradise; many people who live here have a very close-knit community who have their own sets of superstitions such as when outsiders ride the fisherman's boats it supposedly causes a great calamity on the village. This island also has a castle and monarch to rule it and is known for it's great military (this is not the Empire, mind you) and in between is a road made of clouds that people can walk on to make their way back and forth between the two towns. This is just a small taste of the islands and communities you'll find in this game. There are many more diverse places to visit as you play through this game, all ruled by different people of different paths of life.

 

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Graphics #

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The graphics of Baten Kaitos are actually a mix of solid and plain. As weird as that sounds I suppose it's because of the limitations of the Gamecube and/or it's discs (since they are so small.) Environments are often well crafted and have a lot of attention to detail but it's easy to see that they are made more as paper-thin textures rather than full 3D models. The character models are more 3D but they are quite stiff and camera angles often keep you far enough away that you won't be able to see their faces very well, which is more or less a good thing since they didn't even bother to add facial expressions. They have faces that are merely painted-on and I almost think they didn't bother to put any detail into the faces and just sorta carved basic features in and left it at that.

 

That said, there are many fantastic character designs and there's no shortage of unique clothing and hairstyles throughout the world so even though the game doesn't have very much power in the graphics department they are very artistic in their vision so it's easier not to notice that the game is average at best as far as graphical power goes. (Getting a bit redundant here, aren't we?)

 

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Gameplay #

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The gameplay of this game is a mix of standard RPG fare and a bit of unique flair. Outside of battle you have empty cards that you can collect the "essence" of objects around you to give to people or use on other objects (such as putting out a fire with water or giving a person a banana) and this has both main and side quest uses. You'll often find yourself getting through dungeons using regular items you can only find in a specific place at that point in the game such as water to get through a desert or a flower you need to get past a door but it expires and disappears in a very short amount of time so you have to rush to get through the door.

 

In battle you have your card system. Everything in the game is based around these cards, even the people of the world refer to the cards (known as Magnus) when they ask things of you for sidequests or in general conversation. Battles are no different. Battles are turn-based but when you get so far into the game you will have a time limit to make up your mind as to what cards you want to use. If you don't decide in time it skips that person's turn. On your turn you have to choose from a hand of cards pulled from the deck. These cards will have weapons, armor and shields on them. On your turn you want to use weapons. Using an item that has no effect as an attack essentially ends your turn and discards that card (so no shields on offensive turns unless they say they have an attack power.) Weapons range in power and elements to make your battles easier. Every enemy has a weakness and a strength to specific elements and different percentages at which it will affect them. This works the same on defense turns when the enemy attacks where you can use armor and shields (sometimes weapons too) to defend yourself and lessen the damage. These also have elements so it's possible to cause the amount of damage you take to drop to 0. There are also healing items but be careful: if you use a healing item while targeting an enemy, it will heal them. There are also special attack cards that can only be used by specific characters and are only useable after you've used a few attack cards beforehand. These are where you real damage are going to come from in most cases but only if you draw them from your deck! As you use cards up, new ones get drawn from your deck. If you run out of cards, you have to take a turn to shuffle your deck so be careful about when and how you use your cards so you aren't stuck doing nothing for a turn where you might need to heal or defend.

 

Here's where things get tricky. There are six elements in the game, not including the neutral non-element. Each element has one opposite, when opposing elements are used they cause extra damage when an enemy is weak to it. If an enemy (or yourself) defends using the opposite element then it weakens it as well but this only counts for opposing elements. You can't use water to defend against dark, it will take the normal amount of damage. On top of elemental damage there is also physical, non-elemented damage that is calculated differently from elements. Every attack will do some amount of physical damage regardless of how the enemy defends with elements. Using the same element to defend against an attacking element results in no defense at all so try not to defend with fire against fire. This works on enemies too but keep in mind they have elemental defenses so you may take no damage at all regardless of whether they can defend or not. Of course, every defense item has their own physical damage regardless of elemental damage as well so even if you block all elemental damage you may still take damage from physical attacks if the difference between attack and defense isn't big enough. This works for you as well, not just your enemies. It's a little complicated to explain but it's very simple when you actually do it.

 

I also mentioned wings earlier but there is no actual gameplay element used for them. They are purely aesthetic and for story. (Baten Kaitos Origins, the prequel, changes this a little but only outside of battle where it allows you to move a little faster when you hold down the B button)

 

Ah and I almost forgot the save and leveling systems. It's a little unique in the sense that when you get experience you don't level up on the field. You have to find a blue flower (blue and red flowers are save points) that will allow you to travel to the church where you can pray and it will use all the experience you have to level you up. You can also raise your class level here which allows for bigger decks and more cards in your hand in battle.

 

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Overall #

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Overall Baten Kaitos tries to be a little inventive with it's battle system and setting but may leave you feeling like you've played it before. It's story is fairly unique but it's also got many twists and turns that I'd rather not spoil so I won't go into it. It's also one of the very few multi-disc Gamecube games. The game might have one of two affects on you:

 

A) You might come away with it pretty satisfied but not feeling like it was anything groundbreaking.

You'll be somewhat disappointed by the fact that even though there is much attention to detail as far as graphics, gameplay and settings go, it does have a bit of a clunky feeling at some points that makes it feel a little less polished than it could be. Animations are a bit slow at times and this can bog down your experience sometimes.

 

The voice acting in this game is tolerable if you are tolerant to voice acting but will probably leave you cringing if you aren't. Good thing is that all voices can be shut off since the entire game has text in it so you don't have to miss anything without voices. Voices often have this echo to them as if the people are speaking into, as aptly put by a friend of mine, an empty jar.

 

Regardless of it's unpolished feel I would still recommend this game to anyone because as a whole it's got that great RPG feel to it that isn't so innovative it falls short because of too much innovation or too oldschool to the point it feels boring and grindy.

 

Sup, my peeps. It's Discordian/Raronoopa. Haven't been around in a while, was taking a MLP break until the new season started (haven't seen the season premiere yet) and thought I'd come back with a bang and a review! Last time I was here was way back in August so some newer members probably won't know me.