I can’t say that I’m too surprised Baten Kaitos wasn’t a huge commercial success in the western world. Being a JRPG had historically been a bit of a hurdle in and of itself, but on top of that its world is unabashedly absurd and fantastical, it has a bizarre and unfamiliar looking battle system, a reputation for awful voice acting, and it doesn’t really help that it’s a GameCube exclusive.



On the other hand, it is precisely for it’s quirkiness that Baten Kaitos has become a beloved cult classic to its fans. The game has an earnest quality to it that I’ve rarely observed outside of the indie market in recent years. There’s no way that someone could sit down and try to make a game based on market trends and lowest common denominator appeal, yet wind up with Baten Kaitos. It feels very clear that the development team simply made the game they wanted to make and put it out there. Unfortunately, the series received little popular traction despite being well received by critics.



I’ll be up front, I love this game. At the same time, I’m reluctant to recommend it to just anybody. If you don’t mind your stories feeling a bit fairytale-ish, and if you’re comfortable with a game that is confidently slow in places, equally interested in telling it’s story as it is in being a game, then this is a very easy recommendation to make.



Story



For me, the story of this game is a net positive. If you look up a few early reviews of this game you’ll see some fairly polarized opinions of it, and I’m honestly unsure why. It has certainly soaked in plenty of JRPG tropes, but there are also several standout moments, surprising turns, and unique story beats to be had. At worst I would say that if you dislike JRPG stories in general, this game isn’t going to win you over, but I’m guessing that anyone who has managed to extract this analysis from the dankest bowels of the internet must not be such a person.



The majority of the story does feel like a fairly stock experience, but there are several moments that are truly memorable. When I played this game as a middle school student, I was absolutely floored by Kalas’ betrayal. It felt like the game was winding down, only to suddenly flip onto its head and triple in scope. Granted, I was young at the time, and the lead up to the twist may not be as subtle as it should, but I would still contend that this is one of the best plot twists in video game history. The way the game utilizes the player’s perspective to deceive them is reminiscent of BioShock, but unlike in BioShock, where the twist is purely narrative, the betrayal of Kallas has actual gameplay consequences. I don’t remember whether I was at all wary of the fact that a twist was imminent when I originally played the game, but even if I had been, deep down I hadn’t believed for one second that a game would have the balls to take away my main character and literally turn toward the camera to tell me that my game was over. It isn’t all that uncommon for a story to make decisions that I didn’t think it would, but it is incredibly rare for a game to truly surprise me. The only comparable moment that immediately springs to mind is the execution of Ned Stark in Game of Thrones. Even when the writing was on the wall, I didn’t expect the author to actually go there. It simply wasn’t something that was done. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Kalas’ betrayal is how personal it is. Kalas betrays you. He rides you like a faithful steed until he doesn’t need you anymore, then sends you off to the glue factory without a second thought.



Another standout moment is when Kallas tears out his wing and expels Malpercio from his being through sheer force of will. I didn’t really expect to get emotional during this replay, but there’s something about how the game’s themes, imagery, and character development all line up perfectly to make this a particularly striking moment.



Baten Kaitos also has one of the most thoughtful endings to a game that I’ve experienced. After evil has finally been defeated and your journey has come to an end, all of the characters you’ve come to know gather to personally bid you, the player, farewell. After everything you’ve been through, Kallas turns toward the screen to share his gratitude, and to ask you why you ever came to this world in the first place. Were you a lost and lonely soul like him? What were you looking for, and did you find it? It sparked a surprisingly introspective moment in me to close out the experience. The message the game leaves you with feels very personal. Even if you didn’t find what you were looking for in the same way that the party characters have, their struggles prove that no matter how lost you are, no matter what terrible things you’ve done, you will eventually find your way as long as you don’t give up.



A few hours into my replay, I found myself looking on as Kallas snapped a picture of a monster while yelling “Say cheeseburger!”, and was reminded of how I had complained about this sort of thing in my Fire Emblem Awakening analysis. There were occasional details in that game that felt very out of place and had a negative impact on my immersion, yet in the case of Baten Kaitos I was not bothered at all by the absurdity of moments like this. It forced me to question whether or not my analysis was being tainted by my own biases toward these games. To some extent this may be the case, but I think the difference between the two is that even though both series take place in fantasy worlds, Fire Emblem games are written to have a more grounded setting based largely on medieval Europe, with more of an emphasis on political drama and explicit conflicts. A Fire Emblem game often requires me to take its setting seriously in order for its drama to have impact, so the fact that Awakening seemed to be inconsistent at taking itself seriously at times, yet ask that I do take it seriously at others, was jarring.



Baten Kaitos on the other hand, is not remotely attempting to resemble a historical epic, or to represent itself as an analogue of any real world setting. Its setting is unapologetically fantastical from the beginning, and the tone of the work feels much more akin to that of a fairytale, so who’s to say that cheeseburgers and photographs shouldn’t exist there? When we are told a fairytale, we don’t stop to criticize the logistics of the situation. It doesn’t matter that no rabbit has ever decided to challenge a turtle to a race, or exhibited the kind of human arrogance required to lose said race. The entire premise of a fairytale is absurd, so we don’t care about it’s improbability. What we care about is whether the tale is symbolically true.



The same is true of Baten Kaitos. Is it a little bit crazy that somebody would doom the world to extinction just to fix an aesthetic deformity that he’s managed to cope with for his entire life? Sure. It’s also kind of crazy to think that a group would so casually forgive a person who betrayed them, left them to die, and was no doubt complicit in the deaths of hundreds of innocents. Never mind the fact that Xelha manages to still be in love with the psychopath we’ve described. Yet none of this feels bizarre in Baten Kaitos, and that’s due to its presentation as a fairy tale. What matters is that these story beats feel symbolically and thematically true, which they do.



Segueing into my take on this game’s theme, I spent part of the early game pondering out the common thread that seems to link each member of the party together. My first thought was that each of the characters is essentially parent-less and lost in life. Kallas never had parents, and suffered through the murder of his adoptive grandfather at a young age. Xelha, Lyude, and Gibari similarly lost their parents at a young age, and we even see Lyude struggle over the loss of Almarde, whom he believes to be his foster mother. Savyna was raised as a killing machine more so than a person, and even Melodia suffers from the loss of her parents. Of course, the Great Mizuti bucks this trend by having a loving relationship with her parents, although her backstory does hold a bit of a preoccupation with Mizuti’s relationship to her ancestors.



In any case, Mizuti forced me to re-frame my perspective somewhat. What I’ve ended up with is the idea that Baten Kaitos is primarily about the isolation of the heart, and the journey we must all go through to have our hearts be touched and strengthened by the hearts of the people we meet along the way. The setting encapsulates this by focusing on how each island exists in a vacuum of sorts, completely segregated from one another, and divorced from the natural world due to the absence of both ocean and earth. Each of the party characters also embodies this theme. At minimum, they are each seen as weirdos and misfits, and at maximum you have Kalas, whose character arc most directly emphasizes this theme.



From a lore perspective, Kalas is an inherently flawed person, and is thus more vulnerable to human vices and frailties than others. He is an orphan of sorts, and suffers through the destruction of the only family he has ever known. Melodia, herself alone and lost in the world, recognizes Kalas’ vulnerability and manipulates him into pursuing his own selfish goals at the expense of the rest of the world. Kalas believes that only by achieving perfection and becoming a whole being will he fill the emptiness inside, but through his experiences with the rest of the party recognizes that everyone has a hole to be filled, and that it is only through each other that it can be filled. Realizing his mistake, he expels Malpercio from his being and accepts his own imperfection. From this point onward he no longer fights on behalf of himself, but on behalf of everyone else, striving to repair the damage he has caused. Having finally freed himself from darkness, Kalas recognizes that Melodia is just like him and makes it his goal to save her in the same way that he was saved by his friends. The game ends with all of the characters having become stronger, more healthy individuals as a result of their experiences together, and with the world literally returning to its natural state of harmony and inter-connectivity as a result of the islands falling and the ocean returning.



As a whole, I wouldn’t say that the cast of characters in this game is among the strongest I’ve ever seen, but the main party members are pretty solidly done. Each has a distinct personality and goes through their own character journey by the end of the game. We learn a bit about the lives each character has led, and their struggles often touch upon the core themes of isolation and redemption. For the most part our heroes begin a little flat, but become much more endearing and three dimensional by the end. Something I found kind of interesting is that each character has a sort of conflict that helps to inform our perspective of Kalas’ betrayal and redemption, placing that conflict at center stage.



In Lyude, we have a character arc focused on a betrayal and its ensuing guilt. In Savyna, we see someone commit an act that many would call irredeemable, but come back from it and go on to have a positive effect on the world. Xelha serves as a counterpart to Kalas, someone who knows what it is to be lonely and to long for fulfillment. With Mizuti…uh… I suppose you could make the connection that Mizuti’s story is about not getting too arrogant and learning that you can lean on others for support, but I feel like I’m reaching a bit in order to force a connection, as it isn’t super clear that Mizuti even learns this lesson. We aren’t actually told a ton about Gibari’s background in this game, but if you take Origins into account you might say that Gibari is someone who knows what it is to run away from your responsibilities, and can relate that back to Kalas. I suppose what I’m saying is that each member of the party can relate to Kalas on some level, making their forgiveness feel more believable.



As far as the antagonists go, they are mostly generic JRPG goons, but serviceable enough as bad guys.



Giacomo isn’t a particularly remarkable character in terms of his personality or behavior, and he has tons of ‘villain unnecessarily spills the beans’ and ‘goofy evil laughter’ moments, but he is a very useful character to the plot in much the same way as the Black Knight is a very useful character to Path of Radiance’s story. Giacomo gives Kalas a personal goal that we can get behind and to help us empathize with our protagonist. Without this conflict, Kalas could very easily come off as amoral and unfeeling. Discovering more about his background and hunting down Giacomo’s crew seems to be Kalas’ primary motivation for sticking around in the early game, considering that he otherwise comes off as a bit self serving. Because Kalas already has a motivation for sticking around, it diverts attention from his hidden motive. Giacomo and his crew also provide a much needed directly antagonistic force, as Geldoblame and Melodia are more ‘behind the scenes’ type villains.



Geldoblame himself is as generically evil as they come, but having an obnoxiously evil emperor hogging the spotlight is useful for diverting attention away from the twist villain, Melodia. Again, Melodia is basically an evil psychopath, but she is interesting in the sense that she parallels Kalas and can relate to the same sense of emptiness. As much as I enjoy a lot of the imagery in this game, the whole Albino thing might have been a bit too conspicuous of a red flag as to Melodia’s true nature. Similarly, as much as I think her creepy little interludes are great chapter breaks, especially the one right at the beginning, having two of them occur in between meeting Melodia and the revelation of her true motives can partly ruin the twist, as her voice is quite distinct.



Something that I would like to commend is this game’s opening section. The opening scenes are quite bizarre, and perhaps even a little creepy on first viewing, which hooks your interest, and helps to foreshadow later revelations. Cebelrai is a very effective ‘first town’ area, with tons of info compacted into a brief piece of the game. Within a few minutes of Kalas waking up in Cebelrai we can learn a bit about Kalas and Georg, get an explanation of how wings of the heart supposedly represent a persons inner self, see an interaction in which a villager reacts awkwardly and apologetically when discovering Kallas only has one wing, and get snappy tutorials on what magnus are and how to interact with the church. Cebelrai is also a nice microcosm of the kinds of NPCs you’ll run into in Baten Kaitos. A surprising amount of effort has been put into giving many generic NPCs distinct personalities, and some even have rather insightful things to say. The old lady in the westernmost home sounds like she should work at a suicide hotline. She reminds Kalas that travelling in foreign lands is dangerous and that his family must be worried, so he should return to them. This prompts Kalas to explain that he doesn’t really have a home or people to return to. Everyone is gone now. The old woman’s reply is roughly this:



“Then keep your eyes open, because I know there’s someone in this world, someone that’s waiting for you. Someone who needs you, and someone that you will come to need. That someone, somewhere in this world, is living day by day, just as you are. Neither of you know how important you are to each other, yet in time you will come to know. Such is the way of the world.”



Obviously the game is talking about Xelha here, but still, it’s a reassuring thing to think about whenever you feel alone and useless, plus it tees off a major theme of the story. Not every faceless NPC is as insightful, but it is a nice early example of the care that’s gone into crafting the setting. Simply wandering around inspecting homes will yield plenty of insights into the lives and personalities of the everyday people that inhabit this world. Sadal Suud in general also has several side quests that are self contained within the island, which helps to prepare you for how quest magnus are going to be used throughout the game.



It’s kind of a poetic way to look at destiny when you think about how Malpercio’s sleeping mind was slowly manipulating the minds of those exposed to the end magnus, but that his soul was divided on what it wanted, resulting in both his resurrection and the creation of a being who could stand against him. Both Malpercio’s curse and Malpercio’s prayer come to fruition, and a climactic battle of good vs evil ensues. I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say on the subject, but I find it a neat way of working the motifs of natural equilibrium and good vs evil into the story. It isn’t quite as straightforward as this with what we learn in Origins, but I still like the idea of it.



I can’t help but feel a bit fired up during the endgame sequence when the plan to crack open the shield surrounding Cor Hydrae kicks into gear. It truly feels as if the entire world stands at rapt attention, fully invested in your actions. I have to admit though, it’s supremely dorky that characters are somehow conversing with each other and seeing what’s going on with each other despite being in completely different countries. If there was some kind of explanation for this, I must have missed it.



As I mentioned earlier, I’m happy to forgive some bizarreness in the plot of Baten Kaitos due it being presented as a sort of fairytale, but there are a couple of spots where the plot does sag a bit.



For one, why is Xelha even going around unsealing the End Magnus? The short answer is: ‘so we can have a plot.’, but seriously, why not simply take the Earth Pendant back to Wazn, a place that supposedly doesn’t even exist, or just destroy it. Unsealing the End Magnus actually makes things easier for Geldoblame, and it strikes me as a lot easier to conceal a single pendant than it is to keep five End Magnus in your sock drawer for the rest of eternity. The plan just doesn’t make sense. I suppose the counterargument might be that the empire would find some other way to unseal the End Magnus sooner or later, but there is no evidence that this is even possible.



The other thing that bugged me was the logistics of Georg’s cabin. First we’re told that Georg and Larikush left the empire with the intention of hiding in Mira, and supposedly it was during the escape that Kalas lost his memory, which justifies him not remembering Larikush. That all makes sense, but then we’re told that for some reason the gang made a random pit stop on a small island in the opposite direction of Mira, built a cabin, and allegedly stayed there for a few years before moving to Mira. Okayyyy… Sort of invalidates the reason for Kalas forgetting Larikush, since we know he was with them when they arrived in Mira, but whatever. Then we find out that some time later on in Mira Georg makes a winglet for Kalas, and promises to make him a better one someday. Presumably he accomplishes this at some point, but for some reason withholds it from his adopted son. Somehow, the winglet ends up back at the cabin, and for some reason it is hidden within a statue on the mantle. Somehow Larikush knows about it and is able to inform Kalas, despite the fact that he had already left long before it’s creation. Now, it isn’t logistically impossible for all of this to have occurred, but it is needlessly convoluted and no motive is ever provided for why Georg would handle it this way. It isn’t even clear how this winglet is superior to the old one. It bizarrely seems to overpower the very specific device that Giacomo brings to negate the spirit’s power, for some reason, but is otherwise inconsequential. It’s a strangely obtuse plot element considering how well most of the writing in Baten Kaitos gels together. It’s even kind of remarkable how well the game feels consistent with Origins, which was scarcely a twinkle in somebody’s eye when this game was in production, so it’s weird how nonsensical this sequence is.



This is a little nitpicky, but it’s narratively inconvenient that everybody can fly in this game. In one sequence Kalas and Xelha can fly well enough to catch up and board the Goldoba, but they can’t scoot over a bit of lava in the lava caves?



The Kalas/Xelha romance is perhaps a weaker story element as well. For most of the game I would say that it works for me, as it is very below the surface and implicit, but the epilogue requires it to quite suddenly be a more advanced and explicit relationship, which felt abrupt to me, although that may be subjective.



Overall, these complaints aren’t hugely consequential, and the stronger story moments easily offset the weaker ones.



Gameplay



I went back and read a few old reviews of this game out of curiosity, and I was utterly dumbfounded by what a couple of them had to say about the combat system. “More tedious and repetitive than other combat systems”, “poorly thought out”, ” The combos you need to win tougher battles are locked behind obtuse requirements”, “gets old fast”, “worst part of the game”.



I honestly could not believe it. I assume they just had a hard time with it, or didn’t play far enough into the game for the combat to open up. I’ve also heard the occasional complaint from trading card game enthusiasts that the magnus system is too simple, so I guess we’re looking at opposite ends of the spectrum here. My best guess is that the ‘combos’ the one guy referred to are the SP combos, which are not actually damage dealing combos, but recipes for creating new magnus. Honestly, I don’t even think I bothered trying to discover magnus recipes when I first played the game, and I finished it just fine. Sure, you can farm some useful magnus that way, but it’s more of a fun diversion to experiment with on the go than it is something integral to simply beating the game.



In any case, I would argue that the combat system is perhaps the greatest strength of this game. At bare minimum, it is at least something different for a JRPG, and is far pacier than traditional list-based battle menus. Furthermore, I’ve played this game to completion multiple times, and I can say with confidence that it is one of the few JRPG battle systems that hasn’t gotten old. Even in this most recent playthrough, my enjoyment of the combat remained consistent to the end. Once you really know what you’re doing you’ll likely be one-rounding late game enemies anyway, so I really can’t fathom how the combat could be more tedious than selecting ‘attack’ out of a menu.



That’s not a criticism of the difficulty curve, by the way. I actually think that aspect of the game is well done for only having one mode. If you’re new to the game and haven’t quite figured everything out you might run into a wall every now and then, but as someone who has played the game several times it was shockingly easy. I did manage to lose once, but that was more because I wasn’t prepared for the boss to hit me with paralysis over and over. A simple equipment change made round 2 a breeze. The issue is that they’ve created this great system with TONS of room for optimization, but no options for difficulty modulation. They’ve done an admirable job of walking a fine enough line to appeal to most players, but hardcore fans would’ve loved a hard mode. Believe it or not, people have actually beaten this game without ever leveling up by aggressively farming magnus and optimizing their decks for each boss, so there’s clearly enough room for additional difficulty settings.



At first glance you might be tempted to declare it a messy battle system, but it doesn’t take long to see that it is a deft blend of the best parts of several other systems elegantly interwoven. You’ve got the elemental mixing and matching, stat calculations, and attack/defend alternating of many other RPG’s, the number juggling of poker, the breakneck pace of Dutch Blitz, and the collection/deck building appeal of a light trading card game. Not only are all of these elements present in the combat system, you’ve got to actively juggle them simultaneously. On top of this, there is a huge degree of charm and fun to be had with the magnus aging and combining process. I cannot begin to imagine how this system would be improved by conversion into a more traditional battle system. I’m actually kind of mad at how ass-backwards those reviews are. To be fair, if you don’t like JRPG combat, you probably won’t like this one. It’s also true that this system is kind of elaborate, which is why it is more restrictive at the beginning of the game and gradually opens up to more and more possibilities as the game goes on. There’s actually a touch of skill involved rather than just selecting the best spell out of a list. At bare minimum, it was something fresh and different.



There are a few legitimate nitpicks that can be made, of course. Many find the process of maintaining six decks of cards to be tedious, for instance. It’s perhaps a bit more involved than an average JRPG, and it can be a bit daunting to look at, but once you get the hang of the sorting options it can actually be quite snappy. Besides, I actually like micro management, so I don’t necessarily view streamlining to be a universally positive concept.



I don’t consider there to be any significant issues with the combat system, but I will grant that classing up is a little weird. I don’t dislike the way class upgrades work per se, but sometimes they’re just a little too annoying to deal with immediately. Typically when you class up your maximum combo length will get a little longer and your hand will get a little larger. These are very good things, as they will make it easier to both deal higher base damage, and to increase your bonus damage through more complex poker-like number combinations. The trade off is that you’ll have less time to examine your hand before committing to an action, which I like, but you’ll also get stuck with a larger deck capacity. Essentially, you can fight longer without having to reshuffle your deck, but you’re also forced to periodically water down your deck with low tier cards in order to keep it filled up. If you happen to class up three or four characters at the same time, you might find yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel. Admittedly, I don’t know that there’s an elegant solution to this problem. If you were stuck with a thirty card deck all game it would be exceedingly easy to stack it with the best magnus available. Again, none of this is a complaint per se, just a mild and infrequent irritant.



Moving on from combat, the side content of Baten Kaitos feels somewhat reminiscent of how the Tales series handles side content. In short, the rewards are optional, but helpful, and completing the quests feels partly incidental to what you’re doing and where you’re going, which makes them all blend organically into the larger experience. There are several long term objectives for you to tinker with over the course of the game, and you’ll usually end up partially completing them incidentally, but have to go out of your way to fully complete them. There also tons of ‘figure out what I want and bring it to me’ fetch quests, but they oddly don’t feel as annoying as they sound. Often they serve as an incentive or reward for paying attention to your surroundings and learning about various cultures in the game. If nothing else, this type of quest structure kinda makes sense with the magnus concept.



The dungeon design in this game is fine, but not a particular strength. If you were to map out many of the dungeon puzzles on a sheet of paper you might find them conceptually similar to Zelda puzzles, but in reality they don’t play the same at all. Where Zelda puzzles usually require the physical manipulation of objects with diverse functions, Baten Kaitos’ puzzles are more abstract. You simply have to see the solution, collect the necessary item, and bring it where it needs to go. Rinse and repeat. You can’t really tinker with them the way you can in Zelda, so you either get it or don’t.



Occasionally you’ll encounter an area that is made more difficult purely through hindering the player’s ability to see what’s going on, as seen in Holo Holo jungle and the mirror dungeon beneath Duke Calbren’s estate. It isn’t too abrasive, but it strikes me as a bit of a lazy way to engineer difficulty.



There are also several gameplay change ups included for the sake of variety. At one point you’ll find yourself commanding the knights of Diadem, and at another you’ll be flying through space blasting enemies with your ship. Naturally these segments are fairly brief and aren’t very deep, but they serve their purpose as breather sections. The only ones that I actively dislike are the two one-on-one boss battles that have their own specific variant of the combat system. I’m talking about the battle Xelha has in Wazn, and the one Mizuti has in the basement of Zosma tower. I can’t say that I’ve ever lost these battles, so I don’t exactly find them irritating, but your success in those battles is 100% luck based, which is poor game design.



If there is one gameplay section that I do feel critical of, it’s the assault on the Goldoba at the beginning of disk two. Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoy playing this section, and the boss battle may be my favorite in the game, but it does have one design flaw. Once you board the Goldoba you can still save your game, but you cannot access the church in order to level up. What this means is that it’s actually possible for the player to get stuck here and be unable to finish the game, though it’s unlikely that the player will be in a truly unwinnable scenario. As I mentioned earlier there have been zero level up playthroughs of this game, but it is an unnecessarily brutal trap on the part of the developers. The boss battle here is in contention as one of the hardest in the game, and I found it to be a brick wall on my first playthrough. Simply allowing the player to go level up would prevent a potentially frustrating moment.



One last gameplay concept that I would like to note is the inclusion of dialogue options. If you’re expecting these to have the kind of narrative impact that dialogue options often have in western RPGs, you’ll likely disappointed. That’s not really why they were included here though. In fact, I’d be hesitant to qualify this as a gameplay mechanic at all, as your decisions don’t impact anything beyond Kalas’ immediate reaction. It is narratively useful however, as it is a subtle way of reminding the player that Kalas has agency independent of the player. It’s easy to feel like we’re actually playing as Kalas, when in fact we’re just along for the ride. Having these little interactions helps to make Kalas’ eventual betrayal feel fair, without dispelling the surprise.



Presentation



Let’s address the elephant in the room up front. The English dub is hilariously bad. Considering how great the rest of the presentation is, it’s a bit like seeing a beautiful woman with a smear of shit across her face. I’m not really the kind of guy that let’s something as superficial as voice acting take away from the things that a game does well, but out of all the meaningful criticisms I’ve heard concerning this game, the voice acting is the only aspect that I consider to be objectively bad. The writing itself is fairly solid, even verbose from time to time, but it’s sadly difficult to appreciate due to the performances.



It isn’t as damaging as it could’ve been, mind you. The option to turn off the voice acting does exist, and I think that most of the party characters (with the exception of Xelha) are at least endearingly mediocre. It’s primarily the NPCs that are embarrassingly bad, not to mention that the actual sound quality of the voiceover is poor. The cherry on top is that the guardian spirit can be named whatever you want, and the script makes little attempt to avoid addressing you directly, so there are conspicuous gaps in the voiceover where we are meant to pretend that our name is being said.



With that out of the way, the rest of this game’s visual and audio presentation is terrific. Some of the imagery is quite striking, and the sound track is top notch and memorable to the extent that I’d recommend giving it a listen even if you don’t want to actually play the game.



The visual style of Baten Kaitos is truly unique, and was stunning to see on the GameCube. If there’s any game that truly deserves an HD remaster, it’s gotta be Baten Kaitos. It’s almost kind of sad to see such a beautiful world trapped within the GameCube’s hardware limitations and stretched out over a fifty inch TV.



You’ll see a handful of stock JRPG locales on your journey, like fiery volcano’s, tropical jungles, wintry abodes, and farming hamlets, but there are several creative locales mixed in as well. One of the islands is caught drifting between dimensions, and has all sorts of crazy shit, like a village modeled after picture books, a town entirely built using sugar, and a mirage inducing garden. Beneath a layer of tainted clouds you’ll find the Children of the Earth, an isolated culture that has had to adapt to living with scarce resources and poor air quality, resulting in an entire civilization covered from head to toe in ceremonial robes and garish, exotic looking masks. In Diadem you’ll find a quaint castle town perched among the clouds, and there are several other locations where you can see that a lot of care has gone into making them feel distinct and picturesque.



Something that is fairly common in a lot of older JRPGs is the recycling of assets. Regular enemies often reappear later on in the game with a different coat of paint, and late game areas might reuse music from earlier locations. Baten Kaitos is no exception, in fact it does this sort of thing quite a lot by game’s end. It isn’t a huge issue, but considering how creative a lot of the creature designs are, and how unique the soundtrack is, I have to admit it’s a little disappointing that there wasn’t enough of a budget to stretch the quality into the late game.



It’s also true that some of the character animations are a little janky. This is a GameCube title after all. There are frequently odd little pauses in the conversation to allow a character to pivot or make a gesture. The game also has a habit of making sure to have each party member react to something sequentially when we’re mean to pretend that they happen simultaneously, which can sometimes feel a bit awkward and cheesy when all of the pauses are taken into account.



Miscellaneous Observations



I like that health doesn’t regenerate in between battles. In some games that mechanic makes sense, but it often feels like a purposeless epidemic. I like having to manage resources during a lengthy dungeon crawl, and it can occasionally give me a reason to cycle units off the bench that I wouldn’t otherwise use.



The loot system is another clever little idea. I like that even something as simple as collecting loot can be a tactical decision. I imagine it would be insanely easy to stack the deck with powerful magnus if the loot system wasn’t there to bottleneck the process.



The ice crystal buckle is out of balance for how early you can get it. I realize that there’s a penalty for using it, but it isn’t all that consequential, and it’ll be a looong time before you start seeing comparable equipment.



Mizuti has one of my favorite character entrances of all time. So bizarre.



Could of used a few more character portraits. There are a handful of scenes where the character portrait doesn’t quite seem to match the tone of the dialogue.



There are some truly janky evil laughs in this game.



There isn’t a ton of incentive to vary your party composition. Maybe it would’ve helped if attacks from behind reversed the party order?



It’s a nice touch that they actually changed Mizuti’s portrait and rerecorded all of her battle quotes specifically for the one battle she doesn’t have a mask.



This game just seems to keep going. There are a few points where I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that things are beginning to wind down, only to realize there’s still quite a bit of game left. Probably 45-50 hours for an average play through. Much longer if you’re a completionist.



I love how some of the locations in the game are supposedly a big secret that nobody really knows about, but practically every one of them has already been discovered by some random NPC or another by the time you get there.



What is up with that last minute epilogue battle against Geldoblame? I guess it sorta makes sense that he could Doctor Manhattan himself back together, considering that he bathed in the light of all five End Magnus before being melted in lava. It’s also a nice way to break up what would otherwise be a long epilogue sequence, but it’s so out of left field. Not really clear how poking him with a sharp stick would kill him at this point either. Not exactly a complaint, just a weird moment. I had completely forgotten that even happened. Feels sort of like if Udina randomly showed up to box Sheppard after destroying the reapers. Anticlimactic and kinda goofy.



Conclusion



In my heart of hearts, I am sorely tempted to give Baten Kaitos a five out of five. It is an excellent game with one obnoxious flaw. Aside from the voice acting issue, I feel as though the only complaints I have are small nitpicks that could’ve been easily fixed in a future iteration, if only the series hadn’t died. Even the voice acting isn’t something that particularly bothers me, though I can appreciate that it may be a deal breaker for some.



To sum up, the story is memorable, the world is beautiful, and the combat system is excellent. I suppose what I’ll say is that if this game ever receives an HD re-release with re dubbed voice acting and a hard mode, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d slap a five out five on it. As it is, maybe I can negotiate myself down to a reluctant 4.5.





