Baten kaitos is an excellent game. Anyone who enjoys RPGs will find something to like.
The combat system in Baten Kaitos is easily it’s most unique feature. Since the game was first displayed it was made known that it had a card-based combat system. This immediately turned several people off of the game, because it brought ideas of a combat system similar to that of a Pokemon or a YuGiOh. The combat system however is not like either of those games, and is actually quite unlike any combat system we have seen before. Combat takes place in a turn-based fashion, but instead of the standard attack/magic/item/defend menu used in most RPGs, you are presented with a ‘hand’ of cards. This hand starts at three cards, and as you increase your class level the amount of cards in your hand rises. These cards are taken from a ‘deck’ which you can change out cards from at any time from the camp screen. As your class increases not only does the number of cards you may have in your hand increase, but also the number of cards you can have in your deck and the number of cards you can use in each round of combat. The cards in the game consist of attack cards, defense cards, and item type cards. Each round you get to chose weither you want to attack an enemy or use items on your team.
The game starts things off easy to make sure you are able to pick up the mechanics before anything too difficult is thrown at you. Battle ends up being very fast paced, as when attacking you must be quick to choose successive cards or your attack chain will end, and on defense you are only given time to chose a defensive card while the enemy moves toward you to attack. The pace starts to pick up the farther you get into the game, as the timer you have to choose your first card becomes lower and lower as your class goes up. Elements play a huge role in the game, as almost every monster is weak or strong to specific elements, and uses attacks of specific elements. Knowing these elements will help you enhance your damage or reduce that taken greatly. To add to the depth of this combat system is also another system that can boost your attack or lower your damage taken. Each card has a number on it, and if you use cards in sequence to result in poker like hands (two pair, three of a kind, three card straight, and so on) a percentage will be added to the total damage done at the end of the round. This is an element that really comes into play as you set up your deck, organizing your cards in such a way as to maximize these ‘prizes’. As you progress further better cards become available that have numbers in more than one corner. With these cards you can tap the C-stick in the direction of the number you want to use to select the card rather than simply pressing the A button. All said, the combat is very fast, and requires a good deal of strategy and thinking on your feet. It also ends up feeling a lot less like a normal card-based battle system and much more like a normal active-turn battle system.
The level up system is also quite different than that seen in most other RPGs. Characters have both a normal level and a class level. The class level can be raised whenever a specific item is found to raise it. These items normally are found at the end of a boss fight. Normal levels can be raised whenever the specific level of experience can be reached. The strange thing about the system in Baten Kaitos is you must go to the church via a save point in order to increase either of these levels, they don’t increase automatically. This may seem a bit confusing, but it ends up being the exact same as any other game, but instead of automatic leveling you must go pray in the church first.
Another unique system in the game is the way you earn money. Enemies don’t drop money, instead you must use a camera card during your attack phase and take pictures of enemies to sell at the shops. This seems like it could be a little annoying, but ends up being a very small aspect of battle. If you simply put a camera card in one or two characters decks you are pretty much guaranteed to get a shot off every other battle. And since you end up receiving a large amount of your cards and items from battles, there ends up being little to actually buy, as each character only has one piece of equipment, which comes in the form of an equipment card.
The weakest element of Baten Kaitos is most likely it’s story. You play as a Guardian Spirit, and attach yourself at the beginning of the game to Kalas, the anti-hero set into action on a mission of revenge. Shortly after the beginning of the game you meet up with Xelha, The game’s story follows the standard RPG cliché, someone is going around the world, trying to find the five powerful ‘end magnus’ that will unlock an evil god of old. Your job obviously is to find them first, and stop said evil person from unleashing this horrific power on the world. To go along with the standard story is some really rough dialogue that will make you laugh at parts. If you only play RPGs for their stories, this will definitely turn you off of this game, although it does deliver in it’s other aspects. That aside, the story does seem to pick up quite a bit at about the half way mark (30-35 hours in) and progressively gets better as you go to completion.
The visuals are definitely a high point of the game. The pre-rendered backgrounds are beautiful, and the layover animations work extremely well to give the static world an immense breath of life. The character and enemy models are all very well done and animated to perfection. Most of the combat effects are very similar, but all extremely crisp and well done.
The sound is also well done. A lot of the music sounds relatively the same, but that is a good thing, as it is all great. The environmental sounds are also done very well, adding to the overall feel of the world. Combat sound effects are just alright, many things sound the same, and can get repetitive. All of the major characters have voice overs for most of their speech, unfortunately, a lot of the speech feels mistimed and poorly accentuated. Coupled with the low quality of the voice track at times and you will find yourself simply reading the text rather than waiting for the dialogue to finish. The characters also have a lot of speech they use during battle, and this is usually a good feature, and it again enriches the combat, but sometimes you will here the same line over and over again and it can get rather repetitive.
All in all the game is an excellent RPG, and anyone who enjoys RPGs could find something to like. The card combat system may turn a few people off, but if they try it out they will realize it works a lot better than they could have imagined. The game will provide a good deal of gameplay, probably about 55 hours to finish the main quest, and maybe 60-65 hours if you dabble in some of the characters’ side quests.