Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

[Celisasu]

Ah, new RPGs.  I sure get these a lot nowadays.  I figure I'd better do this review today as Growlanser theoretically is coming in on Tuesday and I know when I get that I'm going to be distracted unless it turns out to be a pile of crap.  There's a lot of things to discuss about Baten Kaitos, both good and bad so I'll just go over them one at a time like I did with Nocturne and Third Age.  The game is made by Namco.  Hmm...they brought us Tales of Symphonia didn't they?


1. Graphics.  All I can say is WOW.  This game has some amazing graphics.  The backgrounds look beautiful and the monsters and characters look nice as well.  I have no complaints about the graphics and in fact have to compliment them here.  

2. Music.  Extremely good.  I really like the music in this game and I think if I ever see the soundtrack for sale I'll probably pick it up.  I haven't heard a single bad piece yet.  It has 58 tracks if I recall(you have a "collection" list that shows what cards you've found, what music you've heard, etc.)

3. Voices.  I hope they didn't pay these voice actors.  They're terrible.  Each and every one of them without exception.  I've never heard worse voice acting.  Most of the characters sound like they're reading directly from the script.  There's no emotion in their voices.  Sometimes it even sounds like Thundercats.  You know, with the whole taking five minutes to say a single sentence thing.   Please Namco, when you choose to use voice acting next time hire at least halfway competent voice actors...and I'll count the voice actors in Robotech(with English dubbed singing Minmay) as halfway competent compared to the nightmares that these voices gave me.  Yes, they were that bad.

4. Story.  Completely and utterly predictable.  This game has zero originality with the story.  Combined with the boring characters and terrible voice acting you're definately not playing this game for story whatsoever.

5. Battles.  On the other hand battles are fun.  Lots of fun.  The whole premise of the battles is that they play like a card game.  You have a deck fo cards and you use them for attack and defense.  The rules are very simple and even a CCG newbie will pick it up with ease.  Cards generally have an attack and/or defense value plus between one and four numbers in the corners.  Healing cards have their healing value in the "attack" column.  Later on a lot of cards also have secondary effects with a percentage chance of success such as poison, sleep, attack up, defense up, etc.  Battles force you to choose what card to use quickly out of a hand(and deck) that grows larger as you level up.  If you've used your entire deck(generally just against bosses) you might lose a turn to shuffling the deck(the enemy can lose turns to deck shuffling as well although later in the game this will happen less and less frequently).  The numbers in the corners further affect things as you can put cards in various orders(generally pairs or ascending or decending order) to enhance effects.  Like a real card game sometimes you'll get bad hands.  Such as all attack cards when you're defending or all defense cards when attacking.  Even if you've got your deck almost perfectly designed sometimes the draw will hurt you.  Overall though it's a lot of fun.


When it comes to purchasing this game I'd say if you're only in it for story and character development go somewhere else.  The game seriously lacks in these departments.  If you're more interested in fun battles that don't get old and also have that collecting urge the card based approach will really appeal to you.  


And my advice to people making decks.

1. Try not to include opposing elements in your deck.  Opposing elements tend to counter each other.  Fire and water, air and time, light and dark.  This means that you'll deal less damage or take more damage as you cancel out your own attack and/or defense.

2. Pay attention to weaknesses.  Especially bosses.  If you're in a fire area those fire cards in your deck are probably a bad idea while those water cards are a blessing.  

3. So far most Imperials I've fought are dark and fire element.  Aka they hate water and light.  

4. Poison sucks.  It never seems to work against bosses and non bosses die too fast for it to be of any real use.  

5. Try and get cards with similar(or exactly the same) numbers.  This increases the chance of getting combos.  Pairs are weaker than sequences but they're much easier to do.  If I could have my whole deck be all the same number I'd do so.  On the other hand as you get more numbers in the corner sequences get easier to pull off.  

6. Pay attention to where the cards say "combo" some cards can't be used until other cards are used.  They require a card to be used first or even a specific type of card.  Fire Yell for example isn't going to do you much good if you're only playing one other fire card in your deck.  Sometimes when you get a new character you're going to find dumb cards in your deck.  For example when I got Shayena or whatever her name is she had Water Yell(requires you to use a water card before it) and she only had two other water cards in her deck.  Completely wasted card slot.