Baten Kaitos // review

[Eric.]

This is a review for the RPG Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings & The Lost Ocean I wrote awhile back. If you'd like, Naruto, you can use it for content on DarkGamer.

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title // Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings & The Lost Ocean
developer // Monolith Soft
console // Nintendo Gamecube
reviewed by // Eric Fredrickson


Introduction

The Nintendo GameCube was RPG starved. Namco is one of the best when it comes to creating RPG games. They came together and brought us Tales of Symphonia, one of the greatest RPG's ever in many peoples opinion. Then there was Monolith Soft, who are responsible for epic Xenosaga RPG series.

Now, they have brought us Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings & The Lost Ocean. Baten Kaitos means 'belly of the whale' in arabic. That relates to the story how? Because one of the mysterys of this game is how the how the ocean and whales of the the worl dissappeared. From Kalas's perspective, he just wants to avenge the death of his uncle and grandfather, who were killed by Giacomo. Although this sounds corny, this game is possibly the most beatiful game ever. If you enjoyed Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals, Xenosaga, or Tales Of Symphonia, this game is for you. Baten Kaitos is a match made in heaven for RPG gamers.


Gameplay

You are a spirit. You make decisions for Kalas, and guide him through your adventure, whom you will control throughout Baten Kaitos. It is essential that you make good decisions, because Kalas will rely on you to choose the best one. The gameplay is based on cards. These cards are holders for Magnus, which is a Magna Essence. You will use these to not only battle, but to assist people with by capturing the essence of things such as mountain apples, explosives, to weapons, armor, and spells. When in a battle, each character has there own deck. Kalas may have different cards than Lyude for example though, so make sure you have the characters with the strongest deck of cards in your battle lineup. In battle, cards are selected at random. This is one of the things that factor into making the battles more difficult. At times, when it's your turn to attack, the cards you can choose from are all defensive, making it impossible to do damage to the opponent during that turn. Sometimes it can be a good thing though, because it can give you an excuse to use your turn to increase the HP of one of your players, without missing an opportunity to damage the opponent. Depending on what class you are at, you can only do a certain number of attacks at once. After a stretch of battling, you can go to the church and up your level which will increase you HP points, and the amount of cards you can have in your deck. To up your class, which increases the amount of cards that can be used at once, which is effective if you want to do some serious damage with some combos, you must first aquire a magnus designated to upping that characters class.

Free rome is similar to the Pokemon series for the Gameboy. You can do side-tasks to get extra magnus, and you will need to talk to a lot of people throughout the game, as they will contain a lot of valuable information. Many times it is neccesarry that you talk to someone before you move on in the game.


Graphics

Baten Kaitos is exotic, colorful, and detailed to the fullest. Each city has it's own special attributes that make it special. This has everything to do with the graphics. Everything looks so smooth. You see the flowes slowly moving with the wind, the pink smoke thrusting through the air, the blue waterfalls raging into the rivers. Characters are designed well too. There outfits are similar to the wardrobes of the the midevil times, only with a mystical feel to them. Anime fans will enjoy the characters too. The only thing is, while you engage in conversation, lets say Kalas turns to speak to someone, it looks like he his moon walking, or floating in a way. This is not a major issue though. Graphics are superb, and to those who took the time to design the game, I commend you.


Sound

The music in Baten Kaitos is even more exotic than the graphics. It contains violins, strings, each song to fit the mood of the area you are in. While in battle, an up tempo song or beat will play. Voice clips could have been improved though. Some children's voices are very high pitched, and they seem to have an echo to them, which is slightly annoying. It's mainly the children though, and a couple of other random people. As for characters, there voices are fine. Battle sound effects are very realistic. For each attack, there is a sound that fits it to perfection. When using a sword you can hear the blade making contact with the enemy. No suprise there, though. You hear just about every aspect of the game. Each footstep Kalas takes, you will hear it. When you encouter rivers, you can here them rushing along, splashing. Overall the sounds are amazing, especially the music.


Lifespan

Replay value is good, depending on what kind of person you are. If you have the ability to read a book twice, and still enjoy it, than it will still be enjoyable for you to play Baten Kaitos for the second time. There are thousands of magnus you can collect, and there are a countless amount of creatures you can battle to increase your levels.

There are two discs to Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings & The Lost Ocean. At first, I thought the second disk was just extras, a video of Baten Kaitos or something along the lines of 'making the game'. But it turned out, that it the game is so long, it needs two disks. Thus, alone, giving you hours and hours of gameplay. So it will be awhile before you even need to consider replaying it.

Overall

This game is one of the few I have consistantly enjoyed. There is constantly new twists, keeping you glued to the game. It takes about an hour for you to get into it, but there are several, and I mean several hours after that first one that you will enjoy. Even when you encounter your first battles in Mongule Forest, it will still seem a bit of a bore because you havent caught on to what your objective is, or what the storyline is. There are no major flaws in Baten Kaitos. The graphics are some of the best I've seen, mainly because of the environments. The battle system is very similar to the Final Fantasy games, so I strongly recommend any fans of FF to give a shot at Baten Kaitos. If you are an RPG fan in general, I strongly recommend this game to you.

[ShadowyOne]

Nice review, but what would you rate it out of 10?

Anyway, I heard the voice acting sucked in BK, but I still want to try it out. Unfortunately, Blockbuster doesn't have it up for rental, so I'm thinking of just taking a chance and buying it.

And I never play RPG's twice, so what would a one-time playthrough last? 70 hours? Tales of Symphonia lasted me 95 hours. =P

[CD]

SO, its by the same people as ToS


I just bought this today. I agree the voices suck, and for being a card game base, its damn good. ToS was labeled on box at 80 hours. IT took you 95. This is labeled as 60 or 50 hours, so 58 to 72 or so. Its also two disk, and battle entrances are the same style.

[Eric.]

Well, Baten Kaitos has 2 disks, so it would take more. If you spend your money on the game, you will have a lot of time to spend on it aswell, it's worth the money.

[Eric.]

Oh, and I didn't include my number ratings with the review, didn't feel like getting them. But overall I rated it a 9.2.

[ShadowyOne]

ToS was two discs, also. So is Resident Evil 4, but I doubt that's going to be as long as 90+ hours.

Anyway, it sounds good, so I think I might buy it the next time I see it, depending on the price.

[CD]

I got it for $30 at Target. Should be around $25 at Wal-Mart.

[Aaron]

Can I add this review to DarkGamer?

[CD]

Read the second line Naruto. XD

[Aaron]

Oh XD