Baten Kaitos is JRPG that came out on Game Cube only and it was released in NA on November 2004. It has been co-developed by Monolyth Soft and Tri-Crescendo and published by Namco. This is a game that I wanted to play for a long time. I remember I bought this game to my younger brother for Christmas some years ago and for some reason, I didn't bought one for me. So the reason why years later I decided to buy and try it is... because I listened to the music. I like to browse video game music on the internet, and someday I heard a combat music that kicked my ass and I knew who made that music just by the style of it. Can you guest? Damn right! It is Motoi Sakuraba, again. (Did you know I can listen up to 8 hours of his music when I work at job). So by knowing it was him who has done the soundtrack, I bought the game.
Story :
This is a typical JRPG story where a Evil God seek to awake again after 1000 years and you try to stop it with you crew who are most different from one another. You have the weird one, the girl almost nude, the big guy, the one who just look like a girl, the young girl and the teenager hero... So nothing new in there and I was not much impress by it. I never really got linked with them and some even pissed me off sometime.
Game play :
This is where Baten Kaitos differs from other RPG. It is in his combat system. The battle system work with card, called magnus. Their is all kind of magnus, you have the one to attack, to defend, to heal, to boost and other that does almost nothing. So when the combat begin, you have limited time to use the cards from your deck. Each cards have number on them and the things is to try to do a straight (like on poker) to boost the attack damage. But you have to be careful not to use weapon that can be the same element has the enemy. (Fire sword against immune to fire, you see the thing?).
It is a cool idea in some part of it. You can get hundred of magnus card so there lots of possibility, but the thing I dislike about that is often, you have to recheck and update you deck. So when you have all the character, it can take up to 1 hour to do so. For me it's just time lost. Also the combat can be slow. When in the end you can play up to 9 cards, it's begin to be long watching the character doing is attack animation each time.
Graphic :
There are some pretty graphics in this game, especially for some backgrounds and environment. There is lots of different places to explore, from a candt village to a desert one. But, we cannot say the same for the characters design. I think they lack something in each of them. None of them have charisma and I didn't connect to any of them. Oh and if you look closely to the high rez image on the booklet, you can see how ugly Xelha can be.(No really, look at her head, it's look like a big plastic head. And I don't talk about their facial expression...). All in all, they made a good job even if I think there is a little to much type of environments.
Music and Sound :
It's god damn Motoi Sakuraba. Sure the music is good. It is mainly because of the combat theme that I wanted to do this game.
One thing, and it's the most horrible thing in the game, are the voice over. It's been a while that I heard such bad voice over in a game.
Overall :
It was a 'OK' game but a little to long, or it seemed to long. And I must admit it, I didn't fully finished it at this date. I'm at the last boss and I need to grind a little more to beat it, but I'm just to tired to play it anymore for now... (50 hours so far).
Awesome :
Intriguing Combat System
Music
Background Graphic
Meih... :
The voice over
Long combat animation over time
Here a Gameplay video by bloodlap18 :
