IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name, Nintendo Gamecube Review of Namco's Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean 2005...

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IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name, Nintendo Gamecube Review of
Namco's Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean 2004

Now, for some damn reason, I've always had this sort of gullible weakness of an affinity for any sort of Japanese RPG...

... but even though it's been sitting in my collection for quite some time now? I just never had the urge to pick up Baten Kaitos and finally pop it into my Gamecube...

One, stupidly enough, was the name... because the name of Baten Kaitos is just so stupid sounding, that it actually is kinda funny...

I'm a Maverick really, rebelling against goddam card games of any form of geeky nature...

I've never been into Magic. And I've never gotten into any other type of Western card game crap when I was growing up either...

So how the hell could I have ever predicted, that I would enjoy Baten Kaitos so damn much in the goddam end?...

I mean, a card RPG... a card RPG?... an RPG where you don't have definitive attack, defense, and magic options?...

Instead, you're given a pack of cards. You can select which cards you want to bring into battle with you, whether they be offensive, defensive, healing, or just plain magical... But during battle, card selection is random. The hand you hold is completely different from the order of cards in your deck... And once you use up every card in the deck? The game reshuffles everything, and the dice are rolled yet again...

I put 56 hours into this game. Fifty-six fucking hours of my life into an RPG...

That's not to say that I loved Baten Kaitos, as strange as that sounds... The game definitely had its fair share of countless flaws, most of them unforgivable (which explains my score), which I'll get into a little later on...

But nonetheless, I just love my Japanese RPGs, for some damn reason... especially those made by Namco...

Baten Kaitos was the second and perhaps last RPG that Namco will ever release for the Nintendo Gamecube...

First, I'll get the combat flaws out of the way... because there was a hell of a lot of them...

WTF is up with the difficulty in this game? Baten Kaitos was perhaps the hardest RPG I've played in years, battle wise at least. I can't even begin to recall how many times I died in this game... The first time was from that spider thing near the start though. I remember that at least... I also remember thinking that Guocomo (or whatever his name was) on the ship was one of those invincible bosses you can't beat or something. Until after he finally beat my ass down, and the game actually told me fucking game over... WTF?...

It wasn't just that battles were extremely damn hard in Baten Kaitos, but that they took so damn long to finish in the end as well... Thanks to the random nature of the deck shuffles and everything, I would be stuck with a completely defensive hand for about three or four turns in a row sometimes. I wouldn't be able to attack the enemy whatsoever, all because I had no damn offensive cards to use... And thanks to this? Battles raged on for so damn long, that I literally just left my controller lying on the floor, bored as hell because there was nothing I could really do while the enemy was attacking... I remember getting so damn pissed after losing that first battle with Guocomo, Ayme, and that other guy, all at once. And why?... because I had spent a goddam half an hour on that one battle alone, only to be goddam killed because the damn dice didn't roll my way... WTF?...

Uggh... this was the hardest RPG I've played in years, bar none... Sure, I remember having to level up at times in Tales of Symphonia, since some bosses there were a challenge. But Baten Kaitos was the first RPG in a very long time, where I would level up ten levels or something on the side, just to make sure that I was at the damn boss' experience level when I finally end up meeting them... And yet I still managed to lose a ton of battles! Fatass Geldoblame kicked my ass with his damn instant kill move. And I don't even want to begin on Fedroh, or whatever that asshole's name was... I got my ass kicked so damn badly by him, that I left and leveled up experience for four damn hours, just to get ready to face him again... and yet he still managed to kick my ass the second time around... WTF?...

With that said though, battles in Baten Kaitos were surprisingly refreshing. And refreshingly rewarding, actually... Yes, sometimes lady luck doesn't favour me, and I end up with horrible hands with no offensive cards whatsoever. But there were also those times, where fortune favours the bold, and I end up pulling off 9-hit combos, searing off as much as 3000HP from an enemy thanks to all the poker combinations of straights and pairs... Now, I wish that Namco had implemented some real poker shit, like straight flushes or even straights that didn't have to go numerically in order. But even with just the simple pairs and triples and straights that they've included in Baten Kaitos, it's amazing what kind of extra strategy is brought forth into the game, by just the little numbers on the tops of the cards you play...

And for the most part, I just loved the art direction and enemy designs in Baten Kaitos. A ton of the bosses were cool as hell to battle against, as Geldoblame looked like a giant jello monster, and Fedroh ended up looking like everyone's favourite Cyclops... A ton of the regular enemies had stunning designs, the kinds of which you'll never be able to find in a Western RPG, even to this day. I mean, take the giant boars or brutes or whatever in the Cor Hydrae area for example, as their fire breathing designs are simply too kickass to possibly ignore...

Sure, I got bored of constantly watching the same damn magical animations play out in every battle, making bosses last more than half a goddam hour at times. But there's no denying that Baten Kaitos is an absolutely beautiful game, perhaps even more stunning than Namco's own Tales of Symphonia at times... The magical effects are sharp and crisp and bright and beautiful, the kind of which that puts almost every RPG on the PS2 to shame. And the backgrounds, while admittingly static, are just jaw-dropping to witness whenever there's a waterfall or a lush garden ripe for the pickings of that apple in your eye... Yeah, I admit that most of the overworld characters weren't designed very well on screen, and their animations are no more fluid than they would be on the SNES. But some characters didn't turn out so bad (Kalas and Melodia, for example), especially when they're soaring high on wings in 3D battle sequences...

Now, sound is a bit iffy... On the one hand, we had the most horrible voice acting I've heard in years. I mean, this is the kind of shit you'd expect from a bad Playstation game, really... Every voice sounded tinny, as if the game was still too large for a 2-disc Gamecube DVD set. And even worse yet, none of the voices really adhered to their roles... Kalas sounded bored and constipated most of the time. And Xelha was oddly both a dumb blonde bombshell, and a fucking bitch with a man's voice for good measure... Gibari had some of the worst scripted "cocky man" lines I have ever heard in an RPG. Lyude offered nothing special, except grating my ears with his "I don't deserve love" speech on the ghost ship. And Savyna had somehow even more of a man's voice than Xelha did (although this time, I suppose it was intentional)...

But Melodia was alright though. She was kinda sexy actually, with her completely whacked out taunting and maniacal laughs, followed by hot and horny disappointment and despair all the time. But that's besides the point... And the Great Mizuti? Well, at least she had some good script writing, and a voice that matched the mask. But two out of seven main characters, ain't exactly considered a success story...

What is a success story however, is the music. I was absolutely shocked by Baten Kaitos, as it has possibly one of the best overall soundtracks that I've ever experienced this entire generation of gaming... The battle music is campy and cheesy, but gets in your head after a while. Boss battles may not sound epic, but they worked the charm when it came to pumping me up for a long fight... And obviously, the main Baten Kaitos theme was just so orchestratingly wonderful, that it still sends a few chills down my spine. Sure, the tune was pretty much copied by Jade Empire later on, so the originality of it did feel a bit compromised, but...

If anything? Baten Kaitos just had that same kind of brilliant Asian charm, that the Shenmue series managed with its music. And considering I still hum the Shenmue theme song to this very day?... then yeah, well...

Short story short, every Japanese RPG is really just a mixture of three damn things...

... massive spoilers... for those actually willing to give Baten Kaitos a fighting chance...

The thing is, I knew a plot twist was coming. I saw it a mile ahead in Tales of Symphonia, and I thought I saw it coming here...

I mean, I knew Melodia would turn on me. That creepy, bitch of a voice during the narratives just sounded so much like hers, that it couldn't have just been a Metal Gear Solid coincidence...

But Kalas turning out to be the main enemy? My damn main character turning on me?... No, I didn't see that one coming. Otherwise, I wouldn't have overloaded him with all my good armour and equipment at the time of the goddam betrayal... goddammit...

I must say that up to that point, the plotline to the story was rather conventional for a Japanese RPG. But it was done extremely well, all things considered, even compared to the generic standards...

Kalas and his guardian spirit brought a sense of closeness to the character, that wouldn't have been possible if there weren't any chances to talk with the guy. Of course, none of the choices we got to make mattered in the end, but it still felt like a decent gesture nonetheless...

Now, his story at the beginning was simple and straight-forward, Shenmue-style, as all he seemed to want was revenge for his father's murder. But then we learned that he was a pawn of Melpercio, tricked into wanting power and freeing the ancient God from imprisonment. That part was cool... But after that? Uggh... we got shit about him being the chosen one, born from nothing but Magnus. We learned that he has his brother, the divine child, up his ass somewhere... And fucknabbit, he chose Xelha in the end? Goddammit, Melodia was always much hotter than that other bitch will ever be...

I hated Xelha. I hated, I hated, I fucking hated that bitch... Not only did her high pitched, whiny man's voice grate on the nerves. But the damn blonde never really contributed to the story either... So what if she was the Ice Queen of Wazn? Besides getting me the white dragon to ride on, all she did was pout that Kalas was evil, and refuse to kill the son of a bitch when she had the chance with the Ocean's Mirror... And then at the end of the game, amidst a completely pointless battle when Geldoblame returned, we learned that she's the lost ocean. And then she suicides herself like any good Japanese would... And then she just comes back from the ocean, from a fucking seashell? WTF?...

At least Melodia had a cute voice... So what if she had died before, and was brought back to life as a sexy, horny zombie follower of Melpercio or whatever? So what if she was utterly clueless most of the time, just laughing it up as I kept whooping Melpercio's ass over and over again without taking a hit?... The thing is, I'd hit it. Melodia and not Melpercio, I mean... She had that kind of baby, butter face that just screams out that she's a screamer. And she did scream a lot in this game... my only complaint with her storyline of pure evil, was that she wasn't pure evil. I mean, after giving up her soul to Melpercio to fully revitalize the god? Then she became a baby bitch in his womb, and eventually came back out with blue hair and a holy soul? WTF?... I was looking so damn forward throughout the game, of either fucking her in battle, or fucking her in bed. And then I didn't get the chance at either? WTF?...

Rounding out the rest of the cast... Gibari's rivalry with that other guy was a joke. Their fishing together was just lame, thanks to the complete ineptness of the script writing in that scene... Lyude was decent, remaining mostly quiet about his inner workings, until his goddam awful "love" speech on the goddam Ghost ship. I wish I had never gone there, and fucking burst a blood vessel from all the bad writing...

Savyna had one good moment: when she turned on the team, yet didn't really turn on the team. I had fun kicking her ass then, but that was about her only moment to shine... And the Great Mizuti? Eh, her voice was appropriate for a girl behind the mask, but all her lines were definitely not. Every single damn time Kalas or somebody made a comment about teamwork, the rest of the entire damn team would chime in a damn line. Especially Mizuti... wasting hours upon hours of gameplay clock ticking, thanks to just pressing the damn A button to continue goddam reading...

Right up to the Geldoblame battle in the volcano, the plotline wasn't bad. We had met a new character each step of the way, and the storyline was rather simple... Sure, I admit that it was hurting my brain like hell, to watch the damn team be stupid enough to collect all the End Magnuses for the enemy, and then tie it all in one neat little package for them. I mean seriously, have they never played an RPG before?... But then I was pleasantly surprised at the plot twist, as to why Kalas seemed to be doing all the enemy's work for them...

... but then that's when the storyline really became schizophrenically convoluted...

First, why on earth did each member of the team act as a lock to open up the gates for Melpercio? And why the hell did Kalas have to go back to the light side of the force, fucking falling in love with Xelha of all bitches?... Then that whole divine child thing came up, absolutely ruining Kalas' origins thanks to all the Matrix-like bullshit. And of course, then we got a running storyline of all the nations working together to break the shield around Cor Hydrae. Followed by some CG or whatever sequence, that took up an entire damn hour of my time...

Melodia wasn't a bad villain, but Melpercio was just damn embarrassing. I mean, how many damn times did I beat the motherfucker until Melodia finally wised up?... Ironically, for such a hard game, I never lost against Melpercio once. Not even in the final battle (although he was just about to kill one of my three characters before I kicked his ass...)... The storyline of the five gods wasn't bad, simply because I loved the art design and the musical soundtrack when it came to those shadows... But seriously, how the hell were we ever supposed to take them and Melpercio as a threat, when all he did was just stand there, laugh out "MWAHAHA", and get his ass kicked three damn times in a row?...

... end massive spoilers... not that anyone will ever play this game, mind you... if the NPD sales data shows anything, that is...

The plot in Baten Kaitos suffered a hell of a lot, mainly from bad dialogue, horrible voice acting, and a script that wouldn't make it past a high school Engrish teacher... I suppose that translation errors were also rampant, as Namco just didn't really give a damn about bringing Baten Kaitos over to North America... especially after such lacklustre Japanese sales and whatnot...

The game definitely had its fair share of flaws, even by RPG standards. I mean, boss battles took forever. And I felt fucked as hell whenever the cards in my hand didn't turn out in my favour... And WTF was with all the backtracking? Take the time right after the big betrayal for example, as I had to literally face a ton of old areas all over again with Xelha alone, wasting hours of my time fighting bad guys in goddam Celestial Trees, that no longer gave any goddam meaningful experience whatsoever...

But then I also remember such breath-taking sights as the Celestial Tree, the Cor Hyrae fortress, or even the damn ducks all sprawling across the innocent town of Celebrai or whatever... The thing is, Baten Kaitos was beautiful, in so many damn ways...

I never really gave the game a chance... It was a card game afterall. A motherfucking card game... How good could it possibly be?...

Tales of Symphonia still manages to outshine it. But still, there's really no godly shadow of a doubt...

... that even though there ain't much competition on the system to gauge it by?... still...

... and ranks right up there with the best RPGs I've ever played this entire generation of gaming, on any system really...

It's a shame Baten will never really turn into a successful series. It's a shame we may never get a true sequel on a Nintendo system either...

Sure, I will readily admit that Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean may have had a ton of glaring flaws...

... but still, it's just that?... if only more Mavericks and gamers like me had just given it a fighting chance?...