Brilliant, creative original fun
| Platform | Presentation | Controls | Variety | Audio | Depth | Value & Fun | OVERALL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GameCube | 10.00 | 9.00 | 9.00 | 10.00 | 9.50 | 9.50 | 9.40 |
| General Information |
| This review is written from the perspective of someone who played Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (EWatLO). Thus, this review is slightly better suited for those else who have. However, Baten Kaitos Origins is so original that EWatLO has little to no impact on the scores or criticisms in this review. For context, my review score for Baten Kaitos Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean was 8.14/10. |
| Gameplay Description |
| Baten Kaitos Origins is a card-based Japanese RPG. A card system is used, but it is not a card game with a specific set of rules. Cards basically represent attacks in a normal RPG, only more varied and are drawn from a deck. It is a prequel to Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. The world is a fantasy world with emergent technology "machina" and items can be stored and carried in cards called "magnus". Continents float in the sky and people bear "Wings of the heart". In both games you play the role of a "guardian spirit", a spirit who is bound to the heart of another and provides wisdom and strength powerful enough to change the world. The main character, to whom you are bound, is Sagi, a teenage boy who is trying to make money for his mother and travels with his companion who looks like a "puppet" Guillo, who I just may consider the greatest character ever. |
| Dedication Meter | 95.00 |
| Baten Kaitos Orgins is very lengthy. Also, you have to be willing to take your time and talk to people if you're going to get the whole experience (and at times, advance in the game). However, it is very well paced with and save points are placed just where you need them. Where this game pushes the meter is the difficulty, particularly for the first half of the game. Deck building is a necessity and you have to learn the battle system through fighting and the instruction manual and not through a tutorial. | |
| Presentation | 10.00 |
| What blemishes could be found in the stunning style of EWatLO have been made into assets in Baten Kaitos Origins. The character models now stand out as extremely detailed with great animation while maintaining the outstanding hand-drawn backgrounds, which are the real story for those who didn't play the first game. While hand-drawn may cause one to assume a pixellated still background with some artistic touches, the worlds in Baten Kaitos Origins are vibrant and alive with animation and effects. All the artwork is also more richly coloured which is also an improvement. | |
| Controls | 9.00 |
|
There isn't any complex controls in the game, but what is necessary for the structure is done properly, and there are some very nice additions as well. Firstly, modifying your decks and managing your magnus is the same as in its predecessor, which was done right already. You can sort your magnus in many catagories, and in Origins you can create and carry many different decks (and you can reuse magnus in different decks, not having to take them out of another as you can only use one deck in battle). What would have been a nice addition here is a way to scroll through more magnus at a time, but it scrolls fairly quickly as it is. When wandering around comes the biggest improvement over EWatLO in that you can press B to do a "wing dash" which lets you use your wings of the heart to move more quickly for a limited period of time. Inside of cities this time is fairly lengthy, but in areas where there are enemies, it is much more limited to ensure you can't simply fly past everything. Another addition also regards wings in that doing actions that would have been slow climbing in EWatLO, Sagi merely uses his wings to fly up; it speeds up unnecessarily slow animations. In battle there are also little details that make everything work. You can now order your cards by pressing down to select a card and down again to move it; it's simple and very helpful as battles get more complex. And what everyone was clamouring for after EWatLO, you can discard cards by pressing B. You can discard more cards as you increase your class, which comes with experience; you can do this at blue save points, which are typically in cities and not in dangerous areas, although it does occur. Discarding magnus takes a delay before the character can make a move again; it's not a full turn, though, which is important. You can also switch between characters ready to move with the C-stick, which is infinitely useful; it also comes in handy to force a move even if magnus are available to continue a combo. |
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| Variety | 9.00 |
|
There is quitely simply a lot of game in Baten Kaitos Origins. As previously stated, it is very long, and I feel as though I missed plenty. There is over a thousand magnus in the game, and several different types including attack, attack equipment, defense, defense equipment, healing, and cards that defy classification. This is the most important to the game as it greatly affects the depth, which I'll address later. After each battle is finished, your party is fully healed and all characters revived. This creates an interesting situation in the game in which every battle has to pose the threat of defeat or else they pose absolutely no threat at all. The battles are indeed threatening, so that is good, but it still makes the game very boss-centric, which is only good if the bosses are challenging, properly set-up in the story and are varied; all of which they are. Bosses are incredibly varied and challenging and really make the game rewarding. On top of simply the story there are side-quests, a coliseum and an ongoing quest to restore a town. The side-quests are fairly simplified and almost entirely involve retrieving a certain magnus and getting it to a person for a magnus reward. For me these serve as things to remember should I come across a certain magnus during the story and not something to stop and do, but if you so choose to do so, there are plenty to go around. Fortunately, there is a handy list of quests with pertinent information in the menu. The coliseum is an area available at blue save points and allows you to rise through the ranks to become champion. This serves a couple purposes; the first is simply as a distraction, something else you can do (it also can become a quest). The other is that you gain experience in the battles which helps regulate the difficulty. The only problem with the coliseum is that it lacks clarity. It says how many coliseum points (from winning battles) you need to get to the next class but it doesn't seem to correlate, and then you have to complete a quest to move up a rank to get further, but they come at irregular times--I finished the game waiting for one (I assume I needed to win more battles). |
|
| Audio | 10.00 |
| Baten Kaitos Origins improves on the original in every way, and sound is no exception. The voice acting is very good, bordering on excellent, which is a huge change from the sub-par bordering on bad voice-acting of ETWatLO. There is definite emotion and expression in the voices and it never simply feels like someone reading. But just as with the first game, its the soundtrack that shines. Along with songs that are virtually the same as those in EWatLO (oddly redone, but extremely similar), there are some brilliant remixes and outstanding new tracks. The remix of what was Giacomo's theme in the prior game stands as one of those pieces of brilliance, and the track that plays during the final boss fight is without equal. | |
| Depth | 9.50 |
|
Even with the voice acting in the first Baten Kaitos game, its weakness was the depth of the battle system. Well, here's the improvement that makes this game such a magnificent success. The battle system manages to create such a balance of different types of cards that there are just so many ways I could see someone going about building his deck. This rectifies the problem of simply using the most powerful cards. But the depth in the system doesn't end in variety and use of different magnus, it carries over into battle where quick thinking and strategy becomes far more important. What to hold on to and what to discard becomes a tactic and not a hassle; tossing cards doesn't give up your turn as you aren't placed in line, it simply creates a longer delay before you can move, which is fair, and if you only discard one or two cards, the time is negligible anyway. When to heal becomes a strategy as there is no single character that you can make into a healer. And even when to do relay combos become something to keep in mind as occasionally you're better off attacking a different enemy (relay combos only work while attacking the same enemy as the character before it) or you're better off healing. It actually feels comparable to managing your suitcase in Resident Evil 4, only in real time. There's more to the game than what directly correlates to battle, though. There are also several new ways to attain magnus. Firstly there's magnus trading in which certain people will ask to trade with you. You select certain cards to trade with and as you select cards to trade, you can see possible cards you could get in return and from there you can negotiate. It's a fun little way to make use of cards you don't use. There's also the ability to upgrade your magnus at certain shops if you have the right quest magnus (the magna essence of objects that you get that aren't used in battle). You can also see which cards or cards you need to upgrade so you can find it if you don't have it. This leads to magna mixing, which creates a whole world of ways to go about this game. You can combine quest magnus in magna mixer cards to create new quest magnus. These could be used to finish a quest, used in an upgrade, or even help you in battle as certain quest magnus affect your stats in different areas. If you get into magna mixing, the time you spend with the game can be endless. |
|
| Value & Fun | 9.50 |
|
The first thing to say about Baten Kaitos Origins is that it's almost a tale of two discs. The first disc doesn't stand out; it lacks a tutorial making the very difficult bosses even tougher and the story, in an attempt to be mysterious, just doesn't seem to go very far. Even the game structure begins to repeat too much. The battle system is interesting, but the difficulty makes the learning of it a hassle instead of showcasing the enjoyability of it. As it were, the game struggles to keep up with EWatLO. What carries the first disc is the great writing and character dialog that manages to be quite funny at appropriate times and really generates a sense of personality in the characters. The game as a whole is also very lengthy as I said; I clocked in at 50:49:19 for my clear time, which places it in a virtual tie with Ogre Battle 64 for the longest single campaign I've played. Why the score? Firstly, the battle system is much improved. Baten Kaitos Origins employs a pseudo-turned-based battle system. While the characters don't all attack at the same time, you can take as long as you want to attack, but the enemies are attacking while you wait. After each move you have to wait a duration (depending on what you did) before you can move again. When you do choose a move, you are placed into a line-up behind whomever's move it is and anyone else who was waiting already. Three characters can enter battle, and all share a single deck. All characters use the same attack cards, but some equipment and items can only be used by certain characters, and all special attacks are character specific. The number system has been simplified and you merely choose cards from that are higher than the previous card you chose. With each card you play that doesn't use Magic Points (MP) -- these include special attacks and certain items -- you generate MP which raises levels to a maximum of 5, at which time you can do a "magnus burst". Magnus Burst allows you to play any cards you wish with disregard for MP for a certain period; I never found this useful, but I can see a select situation in which it may be practical. Attack equipment affects the element and ferocity of each character's attack while defense equipment affects any damage received for a certain period of time. And should you select a special attack with another character available to move and have a weak attack in your hand, you can perform a "Relay Combo" which becomes the most appealing part of the combat. Performing relay combos significantly improves your damage, but not so much that you must rely entirely on setting them up. Where in EWatLO, the Final Straights were the epitome of combat, a three-person relay combo finished with a special attack becomes the epitome of Origins' combat. The real story in Baten Kaitos Origins is the absolutely astounding disc 2. Absolutely everything that stands out as a problem on the first disc is more than rectified on the second. The story greatly picks up and start answering all the questions created and more. There is a grand sense of history in the storytelling and nothing comes off as cliched, obvious or self-indulgent. Everything to do with the story makes sense while remaining surprising, emotional, heartfelt and unforgettable. Furthermore, the story even manages to become topical and relevant. It's fair to say that every boss on the second disc is better than any on the first with all being more original and individualistic. Every battle becomes more grand and just feels more important. But perhaps the most telling part about the split between the two halves is that there's no doubt that what you remember about Baten Kaitos Origins is the second half, because it manages to create some wondrous and emotional moments. So, the 9.5? As a portion of a game, Baten Kaitos' second disc is arguably the best half of a game I've ever played, and it more than makes up for dragging its feet a bit in the first half. It's worth noting that there are some very original and entertaining sections on the first disc, but it's more comparable to ETWatLO in that it is unique but has its flaws. It's possible that everything I had a problem with on the first disc could have been inexperience with the battle system, but that falls on the developer's head for not including a tutorial. Concluding, a day later I can still feel the emotion of the end of Baten Kaitos Origins where I was still doing some serious deck-building, and being able to say both those things makes this one stellar game. |
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| Overall | 9.40 |
| While this game isn't for everyone, the genre itself isn't for everyone, so I feel those who liked the original are the kind of people who would push on through this game and get the most out of it, and hence would come to love it. What makes Baten Kaitos Origins truly amazing is that trying to choose the strongest point of the game is impossible--the visuals are excellent, the audio is astounding, the story is unforgettable, the characters near perfection and the battle system is stellar. | |
Posted by Ellyoda Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:00:00
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