Baten Kaitos with Free CD review:5 stars (Eternal Wings and the Lost Hours - plus a CD!) - I bought Baiten Kaitos simply because it looked interesting, and I wanted to try a card-based battle system to see if it was really as great/terrible as people keep saying. I must say that I was really quite impressed with this lovely little gem of a game.

Story: Above average. It's surprisingly coherent for a Japanese game (Final Fantasy players will know what I'm talking about)and the rather cliche and predictable plot is improved by several surprising twists. Playing as a Guardian Spirit rather than the main character is a nifty gimmick, but you're actually somewhat penalized if you don't agree with your "ward" all the time. The game is quite a long one, so naturally the story has to be extended over that length, but I never felt like it had outstayed its welcome.

Battle System: Not having played any other card-based games (at least none where you weren't actually playing a game of cards), it's hard for me to say how unique or innovative the system actually is. It is unusual for those of us who grew up on real-time combat or menu-based systems, but it's surprisingly easy to get used to. My biggest complaints are that as your character gains levels, you have less time to select your initial card (or "magnus") in the attack rounds, making it difficult to plan the long combos you need for the tougher bosses; and that you often need inhuman reflexes to pick a defensive magnus before the foe launches his first attack. The fact that damage isn't totalled until the end of the round helps offset this a bit, but I would still like a second to move my selection frame over the defensive card so I can choose it, thank you.

The fact that your cards change over time, while interesting, can be rather annoying at times. Say you have some Green Bananas, a weak attack item. After a few hours, they turn into normal yellow Bananas, a healing item. Fine and good. Then they turn into Blackened Bananas, another attack item a bit stronger than the green ones. Then they change AGAIN into Rotten Fruit, which can poison. All of this happens and they don't tell you, you actually have to open your Deck and look. You can get an item that tells you when stuff changes, but it goes away after 10 hours and there are some cards that change every 30 seconds or so, meaning that every time you open the menu you're informed that your Awful Fortune has yet again completed the cycle and returned to being an Awful Fortune.
And for those of you who are determined to collect every last one of the 1022 Magnus, you'd better be prepared to leave your GCN on all day for several days. One card takes 336 hours to change. That's two weeks.

Dialogue: This is probably the game's weakest point. The voice acting is, for the most part, fairly poor and unemotional, and also extremely slow. There are seconds-long pauses between sentences, and as has been mentioned repeatedly by others, everybody sounds like they're speaking through a cardboard tube. This isn't actually explained, though it could be written off as a side effect of hearing everything from two dimensions over (you're a Guardian Spirit, remember). It doesn't totally ruin it, but it's just one more thing that keeps this game from being perfect.
Also, heroes should NOT say "Say cheeseburger!" to ancient gods. I don't care HOW many pictures they take.

Music: Not too shabby. The music doesn't seem to suffer from transdimensional echoes. My only problem is with one boss battle song which is composed of incomprehensible lyrics, some of which sound like "feeling gay" over and over. I'm not saying that's what they ARE, that's just what they sound like.

Graphics: Ooh! Why?! Most of the graphics are really quite splendid, but I couldn't help but feel cheated at times. For one thing, your perspective doesn't really change much when you're in a town or dungeon. This means that people who are tiny specks in the distance STAY tiny specks in the distance when you run over to talk to them. Also, instead of animating many things (changes in the world, characters moving places) it simply transitions from one state to the next. Even the most impressive bosses don't, you know, explode in unholy radiance or whatever, they just kind of fade away. As I'm a firm believer in the death sequence as an art form, this was highly disappointing. Presumably the whole "talking-through-a-pipe" voice thing is a side effect of a memory-saving technique. So what, might I ask, did they use all that memory they saved for?
The opening movie on the first disc is really nice, though. Very, very nice indeed.

FINAL WORD:
Baten Kaitos is the first worthwhile RPG I've picked up in a long time. Give it a try, you'll be glad you did. This oceanless world holds a great epic adventure that'll keep you playing for hours.

The CD is okay, but it only has about seven songs on it. It is free, after all; you get what you pay for. 2 stars (Not a good RPG... trust me on this one.) - After playing the outstanding Tales of Symphonia, which is in my opinion one of the best games on the Gamecube, I really craved another great RPG for this system. I've followed Baten Kaitos for a long time, but was kind of put off by its card-based battle system. But, after reading a bunch of reviews, I decided I'd give it a shot. It was made by the same company that did ToS, after all, so it couldn't be that bad.

Man, was I wrong. What a waste of $30 this was. I'll do a pro/con list to simplify things.

PROS:
1. Locales in this game are awesome. They span from a normal fishing village to a trippy picture-book town. It really is neat to see all these different areas, most of which are truly unique to this game.

2. Music is pretty good. Although it could've used more tracks, the battle theme is catchy and has a nice remix during boss battles.

CONS:
1. Good Lord, the voice acting. I've played many games in my days, but none are as badly voice-acted as in this game. If anyone's ever played the excellent Symphony of the Night and thought that voice acting was laughably bad ("You steal men's souls... and make them your slaves!!!"), Baten Kaitos' is as bad, if not worse. Nothing makes you want to pull your hair out more than hearing Xelha say "Fire BURST! Light FLARE! Light FLARE!" over and over and freaking over in the same glass-shattering voice. The main character, Kalas' voice doesn't even fit him at all. It sounds like some 40 year old trying to sound young. Worse, though, is the sound quality- everthing sounds muffled, like they recorded the lines in Fisher-Price tape recorders. Luckily, the voices can be turned off. For some reason they cannot be turned off in the battles, though, which is where it is most desparately needed. ("Light FLARE!!" *cringe*)

2. Battle system. I have mixed feelings about this. I give it points because at least it tried to be unique. The thing is, its so luck-based, that it really isn't much fun. How well you do all depends upon the luck-of-the-draw, and I don't really like it. Its not strategic enough, in my opinion. I do like how there is no MP or anything like that, but overall the battle system is a letdown that leads to overly long battles. A single encounter with a normal enemy on the map can last 10 MINUTES. Yeah. Its too often that you sit there with all defensive items and you can't attack, or all offensive items and you can't defend.

3. Graphics. Okay, everyone says how great the graphics are, but I disagree completely. The animated prerendered backgrounds are nice but are completely unrealistic. Usually prerendered b.g.'s are made up for with superb character models and animations (a la Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero) but Baten Kaitos is lacking in that department. Character models are blocky and also look quite unrealistic. Animations are poor. Kalas looks like a robot when he runs or walks around.

4. Characters. They are all annoying. Every one. Kalas is the stereotypical protaganist- a fearless character with a sensitive past who only cares about himself but then comes around in the end. Xelha is your typical caring, worried female companion. Gibari is a direct rip-off of Wakka from FFX, minus the accent. Savyna is the quiet, mysterious character who hardly talks and is a deadly hunter, or something like that. Then of course there's the timid girly-man Lyude, and the quirky boy/spirit/thing named Mizuti. See what I mean? They're all stereotypes (save Mizuti, I guess), a trait that plagues RPG's in general these days.

So overall, if I haven't made the point already, this game is far from enjoyable. Trust me, I've played this for 30 hours now, and after the painful "I am your father!" moment, which of course completes the circle of this game's total lack of originality (except for the battle system), I couldn't stand it anymore. Don't waste your money. If you want an RPG and haven't played Tales of Symphonia, pick that up for $10 less. That is a wonderful game. Baten Kaitos isn't.5 stars (A Pleasant Surprise) - After playing Tales of Symphonia I was somewhat wary of trying out Baten Kaitos. Well, I thought Tales of Symphonia on one hand was visually attractive but the gameplay was just lackluster in my opinion. Moreover the storyline was very sweet but childish. I mean every character was in elementary school and at the same time fighting strange monsters! For goodness sakes!

So when I bought Baten Kaitos - a somewhat expensive venture - I thought I would probably be disappointed. Well simply I was not. The gameplay is quite fascinating since it is based on cards not unlike what you see in Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic the Gathering card games. I thought that this aspect would make it somewhat tricky, but the gameplay is intuitive enough so there is no trouble understanding how to play. Since this is an RPG card game it is turn based.

As far as the storyline goes it is not wholly enticing but the Japanese imagination still tends to fascinate. It is said that the graphics in this game are arguably the best among Game Cube titles. They are amazing but I have seen better graphics in titles such as Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil 4.

Overall I have enjoyed playing this game because of its appealing use of cards again not unlike Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic the Gathering. And honestly it is probably one of the best games that Game Cube has to offer.

Baten Kaitos with Free CD Features:
Video Games
Gamecube (Game Cube, Game-cube)

Baten Kaitos with Free CD is the Video Game version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 29.95USD.