Baten Kaitos is a superbly crafted RPG developed by the makers of
Xenosaga, Monolith Soft. It’s also bound to help diminish the GCN’s reputation of having no significant RPGs of good calibre. The game starts off when one of the main characters, Kalas, appears to be resting in a semi-dream like state and hears a voice stating that a guardian spirit sees something in him and wants to bond with him. The little twist here is that that guardian spirit is you (insert your name here), the player, and in addition to battling and exploring using Kalas and his friends, your goal is to advise Kalas at certain intervals in the story. This is not just for show; the answers you give Kalas affect the amount of times he can summon you in battle. In other words, you play as the summon spirits found in many other RPGs. At any rate, Kalas wants revenge on a man named Giacomo for reasons that are not entirely clear, and in typical RPG-fashion he’ll meet several friends along the way who will help him for their own motives and agendas.
As your party progresses throughout the game world, you’ll naturally be expected to engage in a lot of battles. In a prevailing trend, enemies are visible on the world map so you can often choose when and where to engage in combat, but you’ll regret it if you avoid too many fights. The battle system is very unique. You play with a deck of cards known as Magnus. You can store up to 1000 cards in your main deck, and the amount of cards you can take for battle varies depending on your class (more on that later). Everything in the game is stored in Magnus—weapons, armour, healing wine, spells, etc. Some Magnus are universal to all party members, but many are exclusive to a specific character. For example, only Kalas can use sword Magnus. When in battle you’ll get a certain number of cards -- again depending on your class -- in your hand. The selection is random, so you never know what your hand will be comprised of from your personal deck, forcing you to choose your cards carefully before combat. When it’s your turn to fight, you’ll have an increasingly brief amount of time to choose from your hand. Choices that should be taken into consideration are the cards numbers (every card has a number(s) on it in addition to the type of card). If, for example, you have four sword cards and they are numbered 5, 6, 7, and 8 respectively, you’ll deal 45% more bonus damage. Hesitate to find which numbers you want in the right order for too long, however, and you’ll lose your turn. This forces you to always be an active participant in the battle. After an attack turn, you’ll get a defence turn, where you must use all your armour cards to defend against enemy attacks. There are other issues that take getting used to, such as avoiding conflicting elements in a single attack — like fire and water spells — which result in a heavy diluted attack against an enemy. Yes, if the battle system sounds overwhelming, it’s because, at first, it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s complicated. There are just a lot of little things to remember at first, and it should all be remembered with ease after some practice.
The levelling-up process has a small twist as well. Rather than instantly level up after beating a set amount of baddies, the game forces you to visit special blue warp flowers that magically transport you to a church. When you pray there, all the accumulated experience that you have gained is spent and it is then that you can level up. The purpose for this is initially unclear and cumbersome, but there is a logic to it. There are several areas in the game where tough boss battles await, with no blue flowers in sight. Thus, you are sometimes forced to figure out how to beat a boss almost completely on strategy, and not by powering up on enemies in the same area, as you won’t be able to level up until after the boss anyway. Another interesting mechanic of the level-up system is the important ability to class-up. By searching for certain character-specific artefacts that aren’t always that easy to find, a party member can raise his/her class. When this happens, the amount of cards they can hold in their personal deck, the size of his/her hand and the amount of cards he/she can play per hand are all increased. More cards mean more damage to the enemy, which is obviously a good thing. However, as you increase in class, the amount of time you’ll have to choose which cards in your hand to play decreases, meaning that in at least one context, the more powerful your character becomes, the more challenging the game can potentially be.
The graphics are very colourful and pastel-like, reflecting the varied environments you’ll come across. The settings take place in floating islands in the sky, so expect to pass through islands filled with clouds, rainbows, magical gardens, and a mysterious island that warps between dimensions. The only problem with the graphics is their lack of detail in towns and villages. Sometimes the layout by its graphical nature makes it easy to miss people to talk to and locations to visit. A case in point, in one area of the game there are a couple of poodles playing with two children, but it is difficult to tell the dogs and the children apart. Another more pertinent example is missed side-quest opportunities. Those who enjoy side-quests will find many to accomplish, almost to the point of it being overwhelming. A very major side-quest is to help a 100-year old man find all his relatives throughout the world for a grand family reunion, and this quest encompasses the entire game. But you’ll miss out on partaking on this mission if you pass by the door to the old man’s residence, which is concealed in the background not because the programmers wanted to make his location a secret, but simply because it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish openings to houses from walls. The musical score is epic and gorgeous. Some of the developers who worked on Chrono Cross also developed this game, and it shows in both the graphical style and the music. Many of the scores are great at inducing emotion and are very memorable (“a star-spangled journey” is this reviewer’s personal favourite).
One negative aspect of this game that bears mentioning is the poor voice talent. The actors are not passionate about their roles; they’re clearly just blandly reading from a script. The developers, as if aware of this, have implemented a nifty feature; you can turn off the voice clips and just read the text. When you combine just reading text with the graphical and musical style of the game, Baten Kaitos appears like a “spiritual successor” to the cult-hit Chrono Cross, which is a neat touch to fans of that game.
Overall, expect to be playing more than 70 hours of Baten Kaitos if you do all the side-quests, which means that this RPG has tremendous play value. The battle system takes some getting used to, but it’s also easy to pick up after practicing, as you’ll eventually just naturally remember all the factors in battle as they come. The voice talent isn’t that good, but can be turned off. Perhaps most important of all, however, is to consider the story before purchasing this game. Without giving too much away, I can say this: There is a plot-twist in this game that is so great that even the most hard-core RPG veterans won’t see it coming. Fans of RPGs definitely owe it to themselves to check this one out.
