N-Philes

Baten Kaitos

Posted by Victor Chaves.

Hey everyone! Victor's back to give you a review on a Gamecube title that got a bit of hype as the next "great RPG for the 'Cube", but died off without a word. The game here is Baten Kaitos by Namco. Through this game, I had learned another thing about videogames that I find to be a detrimental in showing me how to make a good game, especially an RPG. For starters, I'll explain the story, the combat, and then give my opinions; having the opinions make up for most of the article.

The story is about you and Kalas, a one winged wanderer trying to find the killer of his grandfather, and his cousin Fee. He joins up with Xelha, another winged person who is trying to stop Geldoblame, the leader of another nation, from gathering all the End Magnus's and taking over all the floating islands. In this world, all the islands are floating above the poisonous ground, with people taking airships to transport. Why don't they fly? Well their "Wings of the Heart" aren't strong enough, so flight is impossible, even though everyone has a pair of wings; and some people can't even show theirs.

Battle is done by cards, or by what the game calls them, magnus. A magnus traps the essence of the item, and allows for the item to be carried around in a card like fashion, ready to be summoned anytime. Decks for a character can include attack cards, defense cards, healing items, and status effects. Some cards can also be used defensively, even if they serve another purpose, such as Kalas can have a short sword that does 8 damage, but use it to defend against an enemy for 4 defense. However, instead of having a choice of what cards come out in order, the cards are randomly drawn for every card you use. You start out with only having 20 cards in a deck, and you can only do two attacks at a time. However, by getting specific items, you can go to class up at the church for the ability to hold more cards at a time, and the allowance of being able to use more cards per turn. You level up and class up at churches, which are accesible via blue flowers.

Now that you have the story and the battle done and over with, it's here that I can explain what I have learned. In a RPG, the game has two story modes; the story and the battle progress you make in the game. If the battle doesn't help, then the game gets boring, no matter how good the story. This holds extremely true for Baten Kaitos, as the game keeps up extremely as far as story goes. The story is wonderful, with awesome twists, great characterization, and an awesome ending to wrap it all up. I can definetly say that this story is better than Tales of Symphonia. But I can't say the same about the battle system. The battle system, although sorta deep, gets surprisingly boring at or around the 20th hour of gameplay. I seriously was having an awesome time with the battle at the 19th hour, 59th minute, and 59th second. But when 20 hit, I was dragging my feet through, trying my damndest to keep playing for the sake of seeing what happens next in the story. It was here even that one of the games' biggest events in story happens, to the point of where I had to drop the controller and think about what happened, it was that big of a plot twist! Even then, playing the game at that point was like reading a book that took twenty to thirty minutes to turn the page. Around the last five hours, the battle picked up a little bit, to where it was tolerable and playing the game didn't feel like a chore. So at least it picks up the ball in the end.

A couple of complaints I have about the battle system, which heavily contributed to the annoying factor of the game are as follows: this game can be hard as heck, or easy as pie, depending on your luck. What I saw is that, because of the cards being randomly drawn to your characters, if they are not being attacked at all, but you have defense cards put in them to make sure they're prepared, you end up with a character that can't fight, or do anything but waste a card each turn in order to get one attack card to use against the boss, but end up getting more defense cards. It's a real pain, and destroys the idea of getting a strategy going during a fight, because what you are expecting to come up, doesn't, and leaves you in the wrath of the enemy. Therefore, the only strategy you have, is what the odds are that the card you want will come up, and probability is something in math that I always hated. But the biggest thing I hated was that at the 20th hour, nobody's classes were growing, character battle progression was slow, and fighting strategy was almost always the same. It got to the point that I would get a card for a character every hour, slowly making better decks, but dang it was slow! In the beginning, you had to pay careful attention to how you wanted your party to grow (like in FFX). But the later part just hit aroad where speed bumps are going for miles, and they all hit the bottom of your car.

Some things I liked though, were the elementals, where an enemy was strong against fire, you would use water against them to have an extra percentage of damage dealt to them and vice versa. I found this to be a very appealing aspect of the game, where I would constantly assume what type of boss was in the area, and enjoy beating them with elements they don't like. Also, it seems that there were a lot of action sequences that seprated itself from regualr gameplay. What was good is that there were plenty. Bad part was, it's hit or miss. Some were fun, some were boring. (A special against an Ice Queen had my tolerance level hitting the peak at one try per sitting.)

Characters that you meet and join with you are a little sketchy. About half of the characters you meet are annoying and unlikable. Thankfully, Kalas is one of the rare few that isn't, as are Xelha and Lyude (he attacks with wind instruments! that rocks!). The other three are just boring, and I didn't care at all to what situations that they were put, their history, it was all boring as hell. What was nice is that all the characters use different kinds of weapons (except for the two magicians), and those weapons all lead to some nice finishers that you can get into (I imitated Lyudes' finishers at least a hundred times, they were great!).

One big thing to mention that everyone talks about, is the visual experience. Wow. These have to have some of the most talented artists to come up with some of the beautiful scenery that you find here. I can't stress the eye candy that you see here, and the fact that the story works so well, helps make this world of sky islands seem even more life-like. A big mention is the continent of Mira. This place that lies on the lines between dimensions, has had cities where I just had to put down the controller, and just admire, and be shocked at how imaginative and crazy the locations were. It was incredible. Art students need to play this game.

Another good thing about the game were the sounds. Music was incredible, great memorable tracks all over the game. Once again, Mira had this overworld track where I would pause the game to listen to the theme, while browsing the internet. It was that good. HOWEVER! It seems that Namco had a small choice of songs in Baten Kaitos, so you will find that Mira track at least once on every continent, sometimes thrice! And the voice acting! Oh man, was it terrible. Not only were more than 4/5ths of the lines just stupid, but they all sounded like they were in a booth. Start speaking in a small room with less than two fee of space around you, and you know what all characters in the game sound like. BUT!! Thank you Namco!! They have provided us with the option to turn off all voicing in the game, except for battles, but most are just "Hyah!". Some programmer must've heard the voices, and thought, "Wow, that really sucks, better have the option then.". Some one give that man head programmer position.

This game gets an N-Philes score of C-.

After playing this game, I have to say that it was a really well done. A true effort was made into making this game great. However, the fact that it was a card battle game, it could only hold attention for so long to where the system got repetitive, and fighting was a drag after the halfway point. This is the epitome of videogame card battling, too bad it was longer than it had to be. Clocking me in at 45 hours, with getting every important card in the game, I feel that Baten Kaitos is only good for a rental, and a maximum of twenty hours of gameplay. After that, return the game, and look up online for the story so you can at least know what happened.

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