Shuu in Socks

AceOfSpades · Magician socks

What? You have no idea how to say that? Neither did I for a pretty long time, to be honest.

*ahem* Yes, Ace is making another video game topic. Why for BK? Because the prequel, Baten Kaitos Origins, came out recently and Ace is waiting for the chance to get it and start playing it (probably for her birthday though). She has also started a new game on the first BK game so that she can remember the whole storyline and have enough to say about it.

Now enough third person and onto the review. (It's text-heavy, sorry about that)

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I'd say that the neatest thing about Baten Kaitos is the battle system. It's card-based, but don't neglect the game because of that. I'm not talking about the style of those traditional card games, I mean like... well, it's a bit hard to explain, but I've read other reviews of the game and seen the battle style best described as being like a game of poker (but with... swords and magic and pain and killing...).

See, you get this deck of cards to serve as your inventory. Why cards? Because in the BK world, you rarely ever carry around your own items. Instead, you keep the essence in a card, so you can carry lots of items at a time and summon them when needed. So you have this deck of cards. Some of them are weapons, some are armor, some are food, etc. Now at the beginning of each battle, or when you use up all of your cards, the deck is shuffled and you get to draw the first... five or so cards to use at a time. Anyone who complains about the randomized card system obviously doesn't understand basic probability. I mean if you seem to not be able to attack often enough, add more weapon cards to your deck! Though I will admit that I have frequently done enough combos during boss battles to use up all of my weapon cards or defend enough to use up my armor and be forced to use weak item cards until I have to skip a turn to let the deck shuffle again. Combos? Yes. This is where the poker thing comes in.

First, you have oh... 15-30 seconds or so to pick your first card of the few that appear from the deck. After that, you can link other cards to it to form combo attacks. Now the cards have numbers on them. You get extra damage points (or more hp recovery if you're using a healing item) for getting 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, etc. and whatnot. There are some other special ones that I can't remember right now besides the Sunrise (getting 1-9 on your cards) and the Sunset (9-1). The other thing to look out for is the suit of the card you're using. Each item in the game is either wind, earth, fire, water, light, or dark based. You know, the cliche RPG elements. The thing is in BK, if you try to do a combo with cards that are against each other (such as a fire card and a water card), the effect is reduced.

The length of the combo a character can do depends on his or her rank. Rank 1 can use up to two cards (if my memory serves me right), Rank 2 can use three, and so on, until your character can use 9 cards at a time.

The other cool thing in the game is that some of the item cards (called "magnus") change over time. For instance, Green Bananas become Ripe Bananas which later become Rotten Bananas. Each form of the card has a different effect. The amount of time needed to change an item varies, and some items can only be created during battles. For a basic example, if you use fire magic on the same turn as using raw meat, you get cooked meat. =)

Now if I'm not mistaken, Baten Kaitos was made by the same crew who did Tales of Symphonia. But I might be wrong on that. At any rate the two games are pretty similar, and like ToS, Baten Kaitos is a two-disc game that will take a very long time to finish.

As far as characters in the game, it stars a dude named Kalas, who is pretty much the opposite of every other RPG hero in that he couldn't care less about what happens to the world and has to be forced by his companions to do anything useful. As far as other characters in the game are concerned, I'm sad to say that they're pretty cliche.

Now what most people who have played this game will complain about is the *ahem* not so good voice acting. Seriously, I highly recommend turning off the voices as soon as possible. For one thing, half of the characters don't even have voices that fit them (my favorite example is the little girl in this one town who sounds like a middle-aged man), and as far as the actual acting goes, well, I laughed during one of the most serious events of the game. =/

Generally speaking, Baten Kaitos is pretty cool, but the artistic style is very different from most games, and I never really got used to it. Then again, if you're open-minded you won't have a brain implosion when you get to the island of Mira. In my opinion, the developers were on crack when they made that place.

Lessee... what haven't I covered...
Oh, yeah, the humor. The game is full of it. I'd recommend reading the description of every item you get, because whoever wrote those is a genious. There are also some other things throughout the game that made me chuckle, and some stuff that made me wonder if the developers meant it that way. 0_o

The storyline is... Interesting to say the least. I'd highly recommend that you be open-minded about it. Some of it will seem cliche, but there are plot twists in there that keep it interesting.

The whole game takes place from the perspective of Kalas's Guardian Spirit (you), and pretty much you follow Kalas around and let the other party members gawk at you and talk about how weird your name is. Anyway it takes place in this world where this destructive god screwed over the humans, so they fought back and sealed away his power into a powerful something or other. Then the humans were all like "yo, our planet is screwed over. Let's go live in the sky." So they all sprouted wings and left to live on floating islands. Though not everyone has wings. There's one country that doesn't believe in using them because they're all about machines and technology. ...And the emporer is a nutjob.

The first half of the game is kind of confusing, and a lot of stuff won't be fully explained until the end, so you need to bear with it.

My only major complaint about the game besides the voice acting and weirded-out style is the lack of FMVs. Now I know FMVs aren't that important, but I seriously got bored reading walls of text and endless dialogue between characters. There's really just one FMV in the whole game, and that's everything between the intro credits and the title screen. =/ It's a beautiful FMV, mind you, but I wanted to see more of that kind of effort during cutscenes.

In my opinion, it's not the best game/RPG out there, but it's pretty good.

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Now then, I praise anyone who was willing to read my review. ^_^; We can talk about the game in a conversation now.

clowezra · Rainbow socks

The storyline was amazingly beautiful, typical Namco, but the problem I had was the battle system. It made it so boring...and above all, I was bored whilst struggling. Wasn't my cup of tea.

PrettyKitty · Rainbow socks

I'm still trying to beat it. The ice and fire doggies are bugging the shit outta me. And they're easy tooo! I just can't win. ._. Cus I mainly loose track of my health meters then one dies and the rest follow. Sad

AceOfSpades · Magician socks

The first boss on disc 2 is one of my least favorite bosses in the whole freaking game. ~_~

...And you know Lyude owns everyone. Him and his insturment cards. =P

Shuuichi · Angel in socks

Blah blah blah...
I don't feel like reading all that right now, sorry. xP
If it's by Namco though, I'm sure it's good.
And I've actually heard of it before! O:
Is it an RPG or what?
I think I've read a review on it before in Game Informer...

AceOfSpades · Magician socks

Yeah I type too much. XD No wonder people never post in my topics right away.

Yeah it's an RPG.

Shuuichi · Angel in socks

The best kind. :3

AceOfSpades · Magician socks

Mrmph... I forgot how many little sidequests this game had... @_@ Stupid NPCs.

PrettyKitty · Rainbow socks

There aren't very many side quests. I can really only remember the Collecting animals for Wazn. >.> If that's how it's spelt.

AceOfSpades · Magician socks

There's getting the constellations for the starmap if you consider that a sidequest. And then there's something with that family of NPCs with bracelets... I never did that one but my brother did...
And then of course you have to go and find crap for people all the time...

Shuuichi · Angel in socks

Argh, I still need to finish this one. Icon_hissyfit