User Reviews (1 - 11 of 48)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Attack of the Stick Figure Opera

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: December 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I would like to start this review out with a simple, heartfelt lament in the line of Menelaeus (But slightly modernized): Oh Gack! Oh agony! Oh frantic card-flipping, endless-babbling GAME OF DOOM! Would that I were instead speared with a thousand horned-toads and cast upon an ocean of maltodextrin than EVER, EVER have to see this horrible game again!
That is to say - this game was not fun. Not even remotely fun. It almost made me quit playing RPGs - and I've played them for 18 years now.
How did they write the plot for this game? I think they took a bunch of Japanese teenagers and locked them in a room with an English-only script for Final Fantasy VIII (Not the good one, mind you!). I could see the Japanese doing that - they could put it on television as some kind of reality-humiliation event. After the first week without food, they start hallucinating about flying ballerinas worshipping space whales. There are numerous senseless fetch quests, alot of obnoxious, still-life pontificating, and altogether too much card-flipping (Tip: When the enemy dude has only THREE cards that he plays OVER AND OVER AGAIN, and you have to manage a deck of 40, with NO DISCARD, it's not exactly built for a cheery experience). And, when you beat the game, you are rewarded with nearly a HALF HOUR of little, tiny stick-figures of people talking and talking - FOR HALF AN HOUR. I think at that point the developers and writers were all just too tired and drunk to have the heart to finish the game off. So they sort of panned out and let it run for awhile while they slept it off.
I have played RPGs since before alot of the people that wrote reviews for this game were born. I have put up with alot of bad games - but this was honestly the most senseless waste of time I have experienced in a long time (And I'm including the Harry Potter movie in that list).
To me, the only plus was the voice-acting, because, frankly, I needed something to laugh about after spending 30 minutes traipsing around linear quests to reach another senseless cut-scene. I turned off the voices early because I 'didn't want to spoil the experience' - but you know, I soon realized that the only hope for this game was as a sort of B-movie. So I turned them back on - and you know, they did help. Maybe the people that do those Harry Potter movies could take a cue from this?

Alright, It's Not So Good ):'

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: October 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Baten Kaitos is a sucky game. It could've been great though. The storyline is very clever, especially the whole god thing. Namco could've gave the storyline a great game, but they didn't. Baten Kaitos tried to follow up to its great predesessor(I think that's how it's spelled) known as Tales of Symphonia, but nothing can ever reach that level of greatness(exept probably FF7, Ocarina of time, or Chrono Trigger). I'm sorry, but I have to jump on the bandwagon of saying that the voice acting is the worst thing to happen since 9/11.

Flawed But Highly Playable

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First, let's get the bashing out of the way.

Voice Acting: Horrendous. I found maybe 4 characters (Mizuti, Gibari, Savyna, and the NPC Queen of Anuenue) who had interesting/worth-listening-to voices, and the rest were fairly painful, particularly the 2 main characters with the most dialogue.

Magnus System: Confusing and frustrating. Without warning, healing items can rot and can damage you, weapons may become useless, and you have a limited time in which to play a hand you're not even sure of half the time. If you have a limited memory or attention span, this game's system is not for you.

Lack of FMVs: After as stunning an intro as this game had, this is nothing short of an atrocity.

That said, I'm enjoying this game immensely regardless. I can't comment on the story, as I haven't yet finished it, but so far the standard "Let's stop the evil god from awakening" cliché is being carried off nicely, and the "Guardian Spirit" aspect of your persona makes for a neat sense of involvement. Despite its flaws, the card system is a fresh and different approach to combat, and the graphics are nothing short of beautiful, lack of FMVs notwithstanding. Despite their voices, the characters are largely likable, if a little wooden. I'm hoping the further I go into the game, the deeper they'll get; it's already happening at my current point in the game with one or two.

I also greatly enjoy the music, which creates a problem with the voice actors. You can't just mute it or you miss out on some great melodies. So turn it down for the in-game scenes and turn it back up when they're over.

All in all, if you have a decent memory (and your TV has a volume control), there isn't much wrong with this game. Everyone with a GameCube should at least give it a try.

Only the hardcore need apply

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The Gamecube has had a serious lack of RPG's. Even the ones that are RPG's don't even get recognized. FF: Crystal Chronicles is a really fun game but having multiplayer being the best option it's a rather tedious way to play. Tales of Symphonia is ok but the battles do get annoying. And that voice acting, ugh. Paper Mario 2 is one of the better ones. With Baten Kaitos, it's one of those that just comes up short of being awesome. Really short.

Story: You are actually a guardian spirit but you control Kalas, who is interested in figuring out who killed his father and brother. He gets caught up in saving the world from a monster who wants to awaken another monster and rule the world. Standard RPG fare no?

Graphics: Absolutely.Stunning. Seriously, this is the best looking game since Crystal Chronicles or the Metroid games. The games are just so vivid and colorful that even inane looking places still look detailed.

Sound/Music: There's gonna be a pattern here. Story bad, graphics good so this area is bad. The music is great with the Pherkad music being stunning. But the voice acting is just horrible. Flat, wooden delivery and overacted at the same time too.

Gameplay: This isn't the good category but it's not bad. Basically your battle system is a card system, like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Phantasy Star Card Revolution. Every turn you have the option to pick an attack, defense or magic and other cards for your turns. Probably is they're random so you can get stuck looking for something really quickly. Also be prepared for a LOT of leveling up has enemies can come out of nowhere and demolish you.

If you're curious about the game, give it a rent but I really recommend try to see if you're into it.

A great story with great graphics, but gameplay/sound kinda stinks

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: September 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I found myself deciding between this game and some others, and I kinda wish I would have gotten one of the others, but overall, I'm not complaining.

When I first started playing this game I was like, wow, I can tell this is gonna be a really good game, just by the AMAZING opening cinema...turned out to be a "meh" game. Has its good points, has its bad points, but nothing to write home about.

Here's why I only gave it 3/5.

-Card battle system. If I wanted Yu-Gi-Oh, I would have bought it. If I wanted to play Magic: The Gathering, I would have bought that as well. The graphics on the cards are very well done, and some of the descriptions are funny, but still..its card battle and I hate that. I'd rather have a judgement wheel like Shadow hearts 2 or old school rpg action like Final Fantasy.
-Lack of cinemas. When I saw the opening video to this game while watching the title screen, I almost fell off my chair! I couldn't wait to get going and get into the story! However, after finishing disk 1 and getting 3/4 of the way through disk 2, I was incredibly dissapointed to find out there were NIL, NADA, ZERO, ZILCH FMVs. Thats not really a thing I look for in a game, but when they put a simply AWESOME opening intro fmv to the game, and not include those same fmvs in the actual game at critical plot points, it really sucks.
-Sound. I just had to turn off character voices. Not that they are done bad, just the people's voices they picked to do the characters are annoying and get to me. I really didn't like Kalas' character voice, Xhela's voice gets reeeeeeeaaallly annoying after hearing her name off all her spells as she fires them off in fights.
-Experience points, leveling up and acquiring money. Now I was kinda on the fence with this one. Its different from any other RPG I've played, so I can't decide if its good or bad. You technically kill monsters over and over for experience points till you level up like any other rpg, but in order to level up, you have to go to a church and pray to level up. There is no indicator how much xp till your next level either, so you just have to make periodic visits to the church to level your character up. You don't get money from monsters by killing them either like other rpgs, you have to take pictures with a camera (yes that's right there's a card that lets you take pictures of monsters), then you sell the pictures at stores for cash.

PROS:

-Simply AMAZING graphics. The opening cinema on the title screen had me hooked on this game, just waiting to learn the plot. The worlds are beautiful and something completely new to the rpg scene (everyone lives on floating islands, almost everyone has wings). Every character and monster and spell/special move has great graphics as well.
-In-depth and deep plot. Like I said, I don't like card battle rpgs, so I was forcing myself to keep playing the game (I hated the fights), but there are many plot twists and turns that keep you shocked and intrigued...::spoiler alert:: Most of the best plot stuff happens at the end of disc 1. The game setting was really well-done also..I loved the setting.

Other than the flaws I listed above this game could have been a SOLID 5/5 or even 6/5 had the creators made it not a crappy card rpg, got different actors for the voices (you'll see what I mean if you play this), and put in some FMVs to help the story at critical plot points. I would definitely not buy this game, this is more of a rental..but the game is so long and in-depth it may take you a few weeks to beat it :)

Waste of Time

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm an avid player of video games. It's not uncommon for me to play close to thirty hours per week. Sometimes more, depending on other things. Generally, I prefer RPGs and fighting games. These two types of games are my favorite.

I had high expectations for Baten Kaitos. After all, it was co-developed by Monolith Soft. This is the same company that developed the Xenosaga series for the PS2. Monolith and Tri-Crescendo developed Baten Kaitos for the Gamecube. Namco published the game.

This game is nothing at all like the Xenosaga series. Baten Kaitos does not have an epic story. There are very, very few cinematics in the entire game. The soundtrack works rather nicely with the mood of the game though. And if you have played Xenosaga, you may recognize some of the same voice actors and actresses. However, the dialogue (the lines) in Baten Kaitos is not nearly as good. And yes, even if the voice actors are the same, the acting is not as good.

All of that aside, what really bothered me about this game is the battle system. Please, don't get me wrong. I enjoy variety. Sometimes, the most unusual things are also the most interesting. Evidently, enough people liked this battle system to give it a good review. It is a very unique and unusual system, to be sure. Basically, what you have is a stack of cards, called Magnus. These cards contain weapons, defensive shields, healing items, stat boosters, and magic. Depending on your level, you may have a total of fifty cards on hand. During battle, the AI will "randomly" deal five cards to you. They can be any five cards from your stack. The cards will then be shown to you. The only actions you can take during battle are the ones depicted on the cards that you select. You can pick one or more cards from the five.

There are many types of Magnus. Battle Magnus are used during battles. There are also Blank Magnus, which you can use to carry items around. There are also Camp Magnus, which are items that you can use and consume whenever you are not in battle.

During battle, you are either attacking or defending. You have to pick from the cards that have been dealt to you. The object of the battle is to "play the hand that you were dealt". This is similar to a card game. Basically, luck is a very huge factor. Whatever fortune, or misfortune, you get, you have to make the best of it and play it well. There will be times when it is your turn to attack, but you don't have an attack card on hand. Each card has a number, or numbers. Playing the cards in numeric sequence (straight) will earn you a bonus. This system is not as cumbersome as you might think. You will learn how to use the system rather quickly. However, this makes even normal battles long and tedious. Thankfully, there are no random battles here. However, due to this unique system, battles end up being a chore. Yes, there is a lot of gameplay here, but it is not necessarily entertaining. The normal battles are actually very easy. There is little danger of your entire battle party getting killed. Most normal enemies do very little damage. Even so, some of these normal battle can easily last ten minutes. You're basically waiting for a good "hand" of cards that will allow you to damage the enemy. But, if you do not have a good hand, you cannot hurt the enemy. Elementals (Fire, Wind, etc.) play a part here. If the enemy is resistant to Fire, and all your cards are Fire attacks, well, you get the point. So you see how this can make a simple battle drag on forever. There is one battle that lasts almost an hour and a half! Yes, that's correct. There will be a long conversation at the end of the battle, and then the bad guys get back up and you have to start all over again. Now, I like gameplay, but this is just busy work. It's not at all fun or entertaining. The enemies attack with one combo after another, sometimes eash attack lasting close to thirty seconds. Now, after watching the same attack over and over again it gets tiresome.

A good portion of the game is devoted to sidequests. Basically, most of them involve a lot of backtracking. You will revisit many of the previous areas over and over. Basically, you will be going around in circles. You will be scavenging for numerous items. Unfortunately, you can only carry a few at a time. The idea here is to trap the item's "essence" into a Magnus card.

This game reminds me of Sony's PS2 classic rpg, The Legend of Dragoon. It has the same atmosphere. And the story is almost the same. And yes, you will also hunt down star fragments (stardust) in this game. Baten Kaitos plays almost like a classic Playstation game. It does not have the grand cinematics of the typical modern rpg.

Play this game if you like those classic Playstation RPGs, like The Legend of Dragoon. However, I recommend that you use some sort of Walkthrough or Strategy Guide. Not only will the battle system try your patience, but the numerous quests will also.

By the way, KOS-MOS appears in the game. In the form of an unplayable Magnus card titled "Rare Action Figure".

Falls short in many areas

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 29 / 33
Date: May 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Oh, Baten Kaitos. What a fantastic game you could have been. With a little more care in your design, and a completely different voice cast, you could have been a game of the year. Instead, you're already fading from memory.

GAMEPLAY: Good
Potential buyers should be aware that the gameplay in Baten Kaitos will initially strike them as highly weird. Some aspects of RPG battling will be familiar: battle is turn-based, and your characters line up across a battle area from a group of baddies. At this point, though, things start to go a little strange, as you don't use mana, or technique points, or even equipment. Instead you play "Magnus Cards" that contain your spells, weapons, armor, and healing items. In a given turn you will "play" these cards from your hand, determine damage, and then "draw" new ones from your deck. You get to play cards any time you attack or defend yourself. By linking these cards together in an order determined by their "Spirit Numbers" you can play several at a time and enhance their effects. Playing certain cards in combination will create new cards entirely. Over time, some cards even change: a bamboo shoot becomes a bamboo spear, then a fishing pole. Bananas go from green, to ripe, to black and spotty. These aging events can change a healing item into an offensive one, and back again.

As your characters progress, the battle turn will start to depend more on reflexes, with a timer that limits how long you can wait to choose your first card. The amount of time you have available to choose cards after the first will depend on how long the character takes to attack -- if you don't choose one in time, your turn will end. The character Savyna attacks very quickly, so you're likely to end several turns prematurely in this way if you play with her. Additionally, as you start to get cards with more than one spirit number, the c-stick will come into play as a method for choosing which you want.

This card-based system allows for some astonishingly deep combat, but there is a significant problem: there is no discard feature. Most defensive cards cannot be played on an offensive turn, and unless you are supremely confident you will usually have more defensive cards in your deck than you can hold in your hand. It is therefore not uncommon to encounter a situation where a character has a hand consisting entirely of defensive cards, and no way to get rid of them except to play them one at a time as failed attempts at offense. Perversely, the game seems to sense which character is in this predicament and stop attacking him or her. A multi-card discard capability would have been most welcome, and anyone who's lost a battle because one of his characters had to sit out turn after turn would probably argue that it was essential.

Attacks deal "physical" and "elemental" damage; certain enemies are weak against certain elements, so this adds another layer of strategy. However, damage dealt by opposing elements cancels out. This gets to be a major problem for spellcasters, who primarily deal elemental damage, but who will not be able to continue attack combos in most cases without drawing from opposing elements. An obvious remedy for this difficulty is to adjust the characters' decks based on the situation. This proves to be time-consuming, however, and is made more so by the fact that you cannot save a deck setup. Furthermore, some characters have tendencies to receive useless elements. Kalas, for instance, ends up with an arsenal of high-level Darkness and Chronos based weapons, but his best finishing moves are based on Light and Wind (the opposite of Chronos in Baten Kaitos), and most late enemies are strong or immune to Darkness, limiting his usefulness.

As usual, characters earn experience by engaging in battle, though the characters who don't take part in a particular fight (only 3 can battle) earn *much* less. This sets up a dilemma: shuffle your characters in and out between fights so that everyone earns a moderate level of experience, or focus improvement on one or two? I ended up keeping Kalas in the party almost all the time, and rotating everyone except Savyna through the other two slots.

Almost all the characters have wings, but gameplay virtually ignores this fact. Indeed, in some areas you will be forced to use blocks to bridge very narrow canals of water, or you will have to take a very roundabout route to get past a low ledge or a little gap. It's not clear why the characters don't just fly over these obstacles, but my guess is that it's because the designers spent all their creativity on the battle system and couldn't spare any to devise less pedestrian puzzles for their dungeons. With the exception of some interesting block problems in the Tower of Zosma, the puzzles in Baten Kaitos are universally lame; even the game's "labyrinth" is small and easily navigated.

Ignoring the wings is a particular loss in battles. The idea of flying heroes brings to mind images of furious, kinetic aerial battles that are just as much about positioning and trajectory as they are about your choice of attacks and defenses. None of that here, though; it's just the same "line up and fight" arena that's been around since Final Fantasy I. It's a disappointment, but a survivable one.

The game offers an interesting and strategically deep battle system which is sorely lacking one key feature. The few puzzles you encounter are generally boring, and often make no sense in the context of the game world. In the end, although it's definitely different, I have trouble saying that the card-based system is measurably better than any other RPG battle system, and in fact I'd have to say the real-time battle system of Tales of Symphonia (also by Namco) was superior. Even on its own terms the system here is not as good as it could or should be: aside from the discard problem, magic-users are occasionally hamstrung by the elemental system, and some characters are significantly harder to use without being any more effective in battle. Overall, good but not exceptional.

STORY: Excellent
The story centers around Kalas, who seems strangely uninterested in saving the world for a lead character in an RPG. He's more intent on avenging himself against the people who killed his grandfather and brother. You play a guardian spirit who advises him on his journey, though you've developed a case of amnesia. Kalas seemingly gets dragged into a quest to gather strange cards called End Magnus by a girl named Xelha, but a twist about halfway through the game will simultaneously explain almost everything and also give you quite a jolt. From there on the story is much more straightforward, though it continues to be nicely constructed. Themes of loyalty, duty, and regret are prominent, and for the most part reasonably well-played.

However, there are some glaring weaknesses. Lyude in particular is poorly written; noble protector one moment, sobbing wimp the next. Giacomo's motivations are obscure, and Melodia's lines are often just awful. Some of the other characters are glossed over -- Gibari's personality is mostly unexplained, and Savyna's backstory doesn't quite fit with the timeline for anyone else. A couple of important plot points receive painfully bad explanations, and the love story is pretty weak, too. These weaknesses are often exacerbated by the bad voice acting.

Overall, though, the story is entertaining and progresses believably. Game areas serve the plot, rather than vice-versa, so you never feel like the developers were suffering through story to string together dungeons.

AUDIO: Poor
Baten Kaitos has the worst voice acting and dialogue recording quality of any piece of media I have ever encountered in my life, and this includes the radio dramas I recorded on tape with my brother when I was ten. I cannot imagine how anyone at Namco approved this terrible, terrible audio track. The actors themselves often seem incapable of emoting through any means except growling and howling; in this regard Kalas is particularly bad. Almost every line is overplayed. Only Gibari is passable. Of course, even if the voice acting had been fantastic, the recording quality would have ruined it. There's a tinny resonant noise in every line of dialogue, as if each was recorded by having the voice actors shout into a microphone at the bottom of a coffee can. The only good thing about the dialogue is that everything the characters say is also printed on screen, so you can turn it off and lose nothing. The character voices will still be inflicted upon you in battle, however. The sound effects are forgettable, except for the "finishing move" prelude, which has a high-end whine that grates on my ears.

The music is fair overall, and very good in some cases ("Imperial Dynamics" has a great violin flair at the beginning, and "Temple of Celestial Flowers" is just all-around good). A few pieces, however, seem to be recycled... "Mystery Crystal" sounds very similar to the music that plays in Exire and Heimdall in Tales of Symphonia, for instance. However, the music does not make up for the wretched voices, in my opinion.

VISUALS: Excellent
The game has a full 3-D intro that looks astounding, but don't get your hopes up. Nothing in the rest of the game (save for the Magnus shopkeepers) looks quite like that. Nonetheless, the character renders (which you'll only see full-sized in battle scenes) are quite good, though one or two are too cluttered. The backgrounds are layered and feature a fair amount of animation, all very well drawn. However, the scale of these environments occasionally dwarfs the onscreen character, making it difficult to track motion. The variety and bizarre beauty of these environments tends to compensate, however. Some of the special attacks look fantastic, though a few are duds.

The game's repertoire of enemy creatures is actually fairly limited, falling firmly into the design category of using 10-15 models and painting them different colors so you'll think you're fighting something new. Additionally, some of these monsters move very oddly. However, the artists seem to have produced several interesting and original designs for bosses and larger monsters, including some fantastic Lovecraftian grotesquerie (the first fight against Geldoblame, for instance).

The game's graphical weak point is the portraits that accompany speech boxes on screen. Flat, cartoonish, and occasionally outright ugly, they substantially detract from the look of the game. It would have been better to replace these with 3-D renders of the heads.

REPLAY VALUE: Average
The story doesn't really have a whole lot of variability, so the only thing to look forward to in the replay is finding new Magnus cards and fine-tuning your skills with the game's battle system. While a number of the combination Magnus are interesting to create, very few of them really do anything fantastic. And because information about which Magnus you've collected cannot be transferred from one game to another, you're not likely to know whether you've truly encountered everything unless you write that information down by hand.

OVERALL: Enjoyable (74%)
Despite its numerous issues, Baten Kaitos really is pretty fun to play. The card-based system is weird at first, but once you're used to it the depth of strategy will definitely appeal to you. The battle system could have used some work, and the elemental system is a little rough. And, as mentioned, the voice acting is terrible. However, the story is good and the visuals are fantastic in many places. If you enjoy RPGs you'll find this game a fun way to pass a day or three, and if you really like card-based gameplay then you should definitely give it a try.

Very, Very Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Baten Kaitos (named after the center star in the Cetus (A.K.A. the Whale) constallation) is a definite buy. True, it does not have the same greatness that was Tales of Symphonia (another Namco game), yet it does bring a very, very good game.

The story I found to be somewhat lacking. Overall it was very interesting, yet I found that it could've been a bit more in-depth. Yet it still was definatly well done.

The battle system is the gem in this game. The story is very, very good, but the battle system was the most well done thing in this game. I've been playing RPGs for 13 years, and this is the best battle system I've ever played with. It's so interesting and fun. I played for hours just leveling up because the battle system was so much fun to use.

The music was very well done. It went very well with the game. However, the voices were absoloutly lacking. The voice acting done by the main characters was quite good, but everyone else talked too slow and without almost any emotion. But overally, it didn't really effect the game that much, so it's a minor problem.

Overall, I give this game a 8.0 out of 10. There were no cutscenes (only the intro which was absoloutly AMAZING), only in-game cutscenes, which really was annoying. But overall, a very good game, and I definatly reccomend it.

It's one of the best games I've ever played.

different

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a good game, but I have to say the rpg card battle system is not so great. it takes at least five minutes per battle. This can be very frustrating, but after a while I got used to it. The story line is well done, and it took me a while to beat. the game is very creative. If you like rpg's this game is for you.

A fun game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A lot of fun! Even though it is a card based fighting stlye, it's still a very good game! Plenty of characters, tons of weapons, plus a good story behind it.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 Next 

Actions