Genre: RPG
Publisher: Namco
Developer: Monolith
Release Date: November 16, 2004

Buy 'BATEN KAITOS': GameCube

About two years ago, Namco announced a duo of RPGs as Gamecube exclusives. These two games, Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, are not only very different from each other. They are different from almost any other RPG out there. Tales of Symphonia is driven by a frantic action-based battle system and fantastic cel-shaded graphics. Baten Kaitos, on the other hand, is given a more traditional RPG presentation, with pre-rendered backgrounds propped up behind polygonal characters. But the battle system is why the anticipation over the game came to a boil among RPG-starved Nintendo fans. A fresh take on a card-based battle system seemed exciting for once, and thus the game managed to escape the incessant comparisons to Yu-Gi-Oh that Sonic Team braved with their off the wall sequel, Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution.

Now that Baten Kaitos is finally here, a verdict driven not by anticipation, but by gameplay, can finally be asserted. And while this game definitely lives up to expectations, it is not exactly what many gamers were expecting. The story is not of the highest quality, the clichéd snooze that it is, which is contrary to what some hoped would develop based upon the very original concepts that were communicated by the screenshots and videos. But the rest of the game makes up for this. The exceptionally beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds are almost always designed to contain great artistic value – the kind that is usually missing in releases of this type. And then there is the star of the game: The card-based battle system. Getting started is extremely simple (unlike PSO Episode III) though the game contains a startling amount of depth. And contrary to most people's expectations, each conflict is very fast-paced, unlike most other battle systems that sit on cards as their backbone.

The gameplay and the storyline of Baten Kaitos both revolve around "Magnus," the name for the cards that players make use of in battle. The cards basically make the large inventory held by so many RPG characters actually believable, since everything in the game, be it magic, a health rejuvenating item, or random hefty objects that you decide to pick up, is "absorbed" into Magnus.

Baten Kaitos has a fairly vanilla story in Japanese RPG terms. The evil Malpercio had, in the past, destroyed the world, forcing the people of the earth to live on what was left: Skies of Arcadia-esque floating chunks of land. As with many of these overbearingly evil antagonists, he was long ago sealed away "forever" by a set of destined heroes.

Of course, we would not have a game if all of that wasn't for naught! Fast forward to an unspecified chunk of time in the distant future. Kalas, the refreshingly jerky-but-not-broody hero of Baten Kaitos, accidentally lets Malpercio loose upon the world, along with a girl he meets named Xelha. Kalas is left for dead by his aggressor, while Xelha is kidnapped. It seems as though only the oldest members of the current society even know who Malpercio is, never mind the depth of the oncoming threat, so no one, including the player, really knows of the onslaught that could take place at any moment. Kalas messes up, the world is in big trouble, the girl is kidnapped… you know the drill.

While the setup and progress of the story are decidedly weak, the game makes up for it in terms of gameplay, of course. Or, specifically, the battle system. This Magnus-driven affair is the star of the game, bar-none. Battles begin by running into enemies in dungeon/battle-prone sections of the game. That's right, no random battles here – many can be avoided, with a good enough sense of timing. Each card has a number, one through eight, listed at the top. While these numbers can be ignored completely (a plus for RPG gamers who just want to get into the fray), they add a great level of depth to the game, especially in terms of deck building. With a bit of luck and good deck building skills, you can execute special attacks by lining up certain combinations of numbers. The basic patterns are successive – one number after the other, and reverse order counts, too – or having all numbers be the same. Once again, a lot of luck is involved in this to some extent, so the strictest of strategies cannot be employed, but that is part of the fun of Baten Kaitos; you will rarely have the same battle twice, especially when you get further into the game and amass more and more of the 1,000 available cards in the game.

Some of the gameplay features are a bit irritating, however, even if the good intentions on the part of the developer are obvious. The most arbitrary and annoying of these implementations is the fact that level-ups and class-ups do not happen on the fly. Players must go to a certain type of save point and teleport to a church where they can pray on their experiences, and only then can they reap any of the benefits. There is not really any reason for this, and going to the church to pray feels like nothing more than busy work.

Another problem is the fact that later in the game, large, complex combos are required in order to progress adequately. To obtain the Magnus required for this, players must search everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Every person must be talked to, every object must be looked at. Most of the thing people have to say are completely worthless, as with most RPGs. Requiring this sort of busywork (there goes that word again…) feels like a ploy to stretch out the playtime of the game. Hopefully, in the recently announced DS version of this game, there will be more focus on battling, less on running around and talking to random foolish townspeople who have absolutely nothing important to say.

Baten Kaitos is mostly a joy to play, though tedious. The game's graphical prowess, however, is largely debatable. The pre-rendered backgrounds are of great artistic value. Their compositions are almost always a pleasure to take in, and many of the more creative scenes, such as one area that many gamers compared to the board game Candy Land after viewing, are breathtaking. The polygonal characters, however, are not. Their animations are smooth enough, but they suffer from the lazy "RPG-effect" that makes them move like robots – oiled, smoothly moving robots, but robots nevertheless. And a massive problem that relates to the gameplay is in the camera. Many of the angles chosen are pretty to look at, but a nightmare to play on all but the largest of television sets, since the camera is pulled so far back from the action. On a smaller TV set, I actually had trouble finding where Kalas was on the screen.

Sound is the biggest flaw in this game. Generic RPG music is not exactly a negative, though it is anything but thought-provoking. The big problem is in the voice acting. As usual, Namco Hometek ported over another voice-heavy release with absolutely no effort put towards directing the voice actors. Everyone but Kalas and a few other characters emote like stage actors, except there is no reason for them to act in such ways – they are on my TV set, I'm not watching them from a balcony 300 feet away! And the quality of the vocals is flawed on a technical level, too. It is clear that compression methods were used, giving certain voices a "tin-can" sort of quality. Thankfully, the voice option can be turned off. This is a blessing, as the game can honestly be much more enjoyable without having to listen to the grating voiceovers.

Baten Kaitos is not the best RPG on the Gamecube. Though it has little competition, most gamers would prefer to give that crown to more polished efforts like Skies of Arcadia: Legends or Tales of Symphonia, both of which present a better sense of pacing, intuition, and overall design. And this game somehow manages to have the least interesting story of the three aforementioned RPGs, which is a massive negative considering how vapid Tales and Skies were in that regard. Yet the battle system still makes up for most of the flaws in terms of sheer fun, and nothing here is really bad enough to cause a gamer to throw his controller at his system (although I'm sure most people who play this game will run to the options menu to turn off the voice acting ASAP). But for fans of card-based battling, and especially for people looking for an extremely unique take on Japanese RPG battling, Baten Kaitos is the best game to pick up, on any platform.

Score: 8.0/10