Long ago, the ocean disappeared and humans became creatures of the sky, developing wings and living on floating islands. Although this world is mostly peaceful, the Empire of Alfard seeks to unseal an ancient dark power. Caught up in the struggle to stop them is Kalas, a young man out to avenge the murder of his family.
Baten Kaitos was one of those games that passed me by when it first released. I genuinely believed the people who told me it was an excellent game, I just never seemed to find time in my schedule to try it for myself. By the time I actually came to play it, I had convinced myself that it must be a true classic, a hidden gem that I would unreservedly love.
Of course, letting expectations get so high is always a recipe for disappointment. Baten Kaitos is certainly a solid game, and overall one I’m glad to have experienced, but it’s not without its issues.
The game begins with a glimpse of our hero, Kalas, meeting his Guardian Spirit – essentially the player. Yes, you as the player become a character in the story, an incorporeal entity that the hero will consult with from time to time. It’s an interesting approach to breaking the fourth wall, and one that takes a bit of getting used to.
The next thing we know, Kalas is waking up in a Typical RPG Starting Village, where he decides to ignore the villagers’ advice to avoid the nearby Typical RPG Starting Forest. Heading into the forest, he meets up with Xelha, a young woman who is exploring the forest for her own reasons. Together they confront a boss, and accidentally release one of the five “End Magnus” that sealed away an ancient evil god. Cue a race around the world in an attempt to claim the other four End Magnus before the evil Empire can get their hands on them.
The framework for the story is all very standard JRPG, and yet much is made of Baten Kaitos’ unique plot twists. I won’t spoil the details here, but having now experienced those twists for myself, I can’t say I’m massively impressed. Rather than feeling like cleverly foreshadowed story points, the twists feel like they were thrown in for the sake of it, with some explanation at the end that feels entirely unsatisfying. Even after I’d seen everything, I felt like I must have missed some key piece of information that would tie everything together. Instead, it just came across as “these characters happened to meet in this place, and for whatever reason they agreed to work together”.
Gameplay
When you’re not watching cutscenes and advancing the story, the lifeblood of any JRPG experience is the battles. Baten Kaitos clearly shows its pedigree as an early Monolithsoft game – like Chrono Cross, where and how you use elemental magic is very important, while the early hints of Eternal Sonata’s increasingly time-limited turns are in evidence here. Nonetheless, Baten Kaitos still stands on its own, adopting more of a CCG mechanic for its gameplay.
In the world of Baten Kaitos, the essence of every object – known as Magnus – can be extracted and put into cards. It’s decks of such cards that you’ll take into battle, comprising of attack cards, defence cards, and various healing items. Everything you do in battle is via these cards – even running away requires you to draw and play an Escape card from your deck.
At the highest level, the idea is to play attack or healing cards during your own turn, and defence cards during the enemy’s turn. Of course, that’s just the bare bones – there’s much more to be considered. Each card has one or more numbers on it, which, if chained together to make poker-style hands such as pairs, triples or straights, can greatly enhance the damage dealt. Elemental attacks also come into play – for example, if you play a fire attack and a water attack in the same turn, they will pretty much cancel each other out. And, as the game progresses, you get less time to even make your turn – at the highest levels, that amounts to just five seconds to choose your first card (and then however long that action takes to choose the next one, etc). So not only do you have to carefully consider how to construct a chain of cards that will do the most damage, but you have to think fast.
With all this to consider, Baten Kaitos isn’t really a game you can brute force – carefully planning your attacks and optimising your deck is the difference between doing a paltry 100 damage per turn, and pulling off an amazing combo that will knock off a few thousand HP from your enemy. Unfortunately, given that you’re implicitly encouraged to adjust your deck to account for different enemy strengths and weaknesses, it’s annoying that you can’t save multiple deck configurations per character – if you heavily customise a deck to face a particular boss, you’ll have to manually change it back again afterwards.
You might think that the above is enough to think about already, but Baten Kaitos has more in store. Some items will change form over time – in particular, healing items tend to ripen and rot. While it’s fun to watch milk mature into yoghurt and cheese within your inventory, it’s important to keep an eye on this, as you could well end up going into a boss battle only to find that all your top quality healing items have turned into a noxious pile of rotting mush.
If you’re fully on top of the battle system, then for the most part, you’ll be equal to whatever challenges Baten Kaitos throw at you. However, do be warned – there are a few bosses throughout the game that represent a real difficulty spike. There’s a battle with a trio of tough enemies, one of whom gets two consecutive turns each round. Later on, you fight an enemy who can randomly buff himself to do more than double his usual damage, and take twice as many turns – it’s really up to the RNG as to whether he does this late enough in the battle that you can still defeat him, or on the very first turn. Other bosses will start using powerful attacks to drain your HP, ensuring that all your hard-earned progress is lost. When you add in the fact that the card-based gameplay and long battle animations make the pace of battle very slow, these difficult battles can feel very frustrating – unless you reset the game, you can’t even lose quickly!
As with any JRPG worth its salt, Baten Kaitos also comes with its own set of sidequests and minigames. During the course of the main story, you’ll end up in a top-down shooter, a recreation of The Tower of Druaga, and of course the obligatory block puzzles. Sidequests largely rely on the fact that you can capture items in cards and transport them to other people, allowing for a multitude of fetch quests. There’s also an entire quest dedicated to filling out a family tree with members from across the world, and another that involves finding rare constellation cards. For completionists, there is also the option to collect every card in the game – this includes cards obtained by ageing items (which can take 100+ hours), photographs of enemies snapped in battle, and cards made by playing specific combos in battle. Given that the world record 100% speedrun for this game clocks in at over 300 hours, if you decide to go down this route, you’ll be at it for a long time!
Finally, it’s worth noting that levelling up in Baten Kaitos is not something that happens automatically – instead, you must visit a church that’s only accessible from certain save points. If you like to power level in dungeons before facing a boss, you’ll find yourself having to backtrack every time you want to actually cash in your experience. However, it does mean that you can attempt to beat the game at Level 1 if you so desire.
Characters
Towards the end of the game, Baten Kaitos does try to flesh out its characters a little, but until then, they come across as flat JRPG stereotypes. Let’s examine the roster of playable characters.
Kalas: Our reluctant hero, Kalas is the typical sword-wielding all-rounder – decent in all stats but not exceptional in any of them. You don’t have to have him in your party at all times, but it does help. Early in the game, his elemental affinities tend towards light and dark, but later on he’ll get a decent amount of sword attacks for every element.
Personality-wise, Kalas is a real jerk – he cares only about avenging his brother and grandfather, and has to be physically dragged into saving the world at the same time.
Xelha: The main female character, Xelha is a bit low on the HP and defence side, but in compensation she is a powerful mage. I’m a big fan of her elemental magic, and tend to have her in the party a lot.
For much of the game, Xelha’s background remains a mystery – it’s only later on that we get some insights into her origins.
Gibari: A former knight who now hangs out on his fishing boat or in the local pub. Gibari is the “old man” of the team at the positively decrepit age of 34. As you might expect, he’s a bit of a tank, with an affinity for wind and water attacks.
Gibari’s agility is low, which means he’s usually last to take a turn, but I found myself relying on him quite a lot.
Lyude: A disgraced ambassador from the Empire, Lyude’s strong moral compass causes him to betray his loyalties and join the party. He has a strained relationship with his family.
In battle, Lyude’s stats aren’t outstanding, but his array of light and dark attacks can make him useful – bosses, for example, are frequently weak against light. His weapon is some sort of gun/brass instrument hybrid, perhaps foreshadowing Eternal Sonata.
Although it’s widely accepted that Lyude is a useful character, I never managed him to use him to his full potential.
Savyna: A former Imperial agent, Savyna is now a freelance hunter hoping to make up for her troubled past. She fights with fists and claw weapons, and has a splendid set of peacock wings. Her elemental affinities are fire and water, and while she’s a bit weaker than the other physical attackers, she is very fast.
I liked Savyna a lot at first, but like Lyude, she soon fell behind the Kalas/Xelha/Gibari dream team. One annoyance of her attacks being very fast is that you often have insufficient time to choose your next card before the turn is over.
Mizuti: A masked “Child of the Earth”, Mizuti is a youthful mage who ostentatiously refers to herself as “the Great Mizuti”. Apart from having some neutral finishing moves, she basically has access to the same set of spells as Xelha, but she joins later and has slightly lower HP. Her lack of uniqueness meant that I never really bothered using her.
Audiovisual
These days, Baten Kaitos may not look great to our HD-accustomed eyes, but visually it’s pretty respectable for the era. Backgrounds are pre-rendered and have a decent amount of detail, while spell attacks are aesthetically pleasing. Character designs are detailed, although I can’t say I was a big fan of any of the main character designs – in fact, this game is a rare occasion where I don’t feel at all inspired to draw fanart of any of the characters.
The music is composed by the ever-talented Motoi Sakuraba, and his familiar style will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has heard it before. The stirring battle theme is along the same lines as those of Eternal Sonata and Star Ocean 3; other tracks are less memorable but still strong. Much is made of how terrible the voice acting is in this game, and while I admit it isn’t great, I was able to get through the entire game without wanting to switch it off.
Final Thoughts
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Baten Kaitos an incredible hidden gem that everyone should play, but overall I had enough fun with the game to spend 50 hours on it. Some elements may seem a bit pedestrian, and a few boss battles will have you tearing your hair out in frustration, but if you’ve ever dabbled in or enjoyed other MonolithSoft titles, it’s worth giving this one a look.
