"Baten Kaitos is a huge letdown"

Well, the game had a great opening FMV, I'll give it that....

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, the final Gamecube RPG from Namco, opens with an FMV preview of several big events in the game. This FMV looks amazing, is extremely well-directed, is very exciting, and portrays an epic and action-packed game that the final product doesn't even seem to attempt to deliver. My first big disappointment with Baten Kaitos was that this FMV-styled storytelling, which was used by Namco to promote the game, isn't in the game itself. The presentation in the game, once you get past the start menu and actually begin playing, is extremely slow, dull, outdated, and very much the opposite of this very misleading opening FMV. Had the entire game been as exciting and action-packed as was portrayed to us then it easily would have been one of the best RPG's this console generation. Instead, it turns out to be among the more forgettable. I'd rate the opening FMV a 9/10 (one point deducted for the awful voice acting, which is unfortunately present in the game as well,) but how about the game?

Once you actually select "New Game," Baten Kaitos starts out with a completely confusing, poorly directed cutscene, and I was lost immediately. After it, the main character, Kalas, wakes up in a hospital in a small farming village. He then ventures into the woods nearby, where me meets a girl, and they find out that a Wicked God (that's what the game calls it,) named Malpercio is hidden beneath the islands, and is ready to be awakened. The evil emperor is planning on awakening him to use him to make his empire more powerful. (Why he wants to do this when his Empire's clearly already the most powerful in the game is beyond me,) ...and the plot....well....that's it. Oh yeah, also, the main character's father and brother were killed, and he wants revenge.

That's not just a vague summary for the sake of being vague, that's literally the plot for nearly half of Baten Kaitos. It's easily the most cliche'd, "play it safe," plot I've encountered in an RPG in a while. Not only does it take 15 hours of game time for even this uninspired plot to begin to take shape, but even when the plot's at it's best it's hardly compelling whatsoever. No characters are interesting, at all, they're all paper-thin. I'm not just talking about personality, I'm talking about basic character traits. Kalas, the main character, has a bad temper. That's all I've been able to find out about him in this 60 hour game. The other characters are even worse. In a conversation, it doesn't matter whose talking; any word could come from any character, and it wouldn't make a difference. Character personalities (or lack of them,) seem to vary from scene to scene. This group of characters never seems to function as a party. After huge events, the scene just ends, and I was left wondering, "Why don't the characters talk to each other about this!?" So...basically, you have a cast of boring characters with no chemistry whatsoever headlining one of the most boring and least action-packed plots I've ever seen in an RPG. Sounds great so far, right?

Wait, I didn't even get to the ear-splittingly bad English voice acting. Eric Kelso, who was great in the Shenmue games as both the voices of Ren and Gui Zhang, (and a few others,) really does a bad job here as Kalas. True, his voice is better than the others in Baten Kaitos, but still, emotional moments with him (particularly in a certain flashback) are sometimes made laughable because of his bad acting. Xelha is extremely annoying, and Lyude sounds like he's reading from a script, taking a split second to pause before every word. When I was watching a cutscene with him talking, someone I know walked into the room, heard 1 second of his acting, and burst out laughing. It's really that bad. To further make your experience with this game as painful as possible, Namco's done a terrible job with the recording. The sound quality for the voice acting's pretty terrible. It sounds like every character's speaking through a pipe! I don't know if it was a result of over-compression or if it was all just done on the cheap, but either way, the result's unbelievably distracting. So picture the worst voice acting in years spoken with terrible sound quality, and you get the voice acting in Baten Kaitos.

To this day I'm not sure why Namco bothered to pay the studio Robot, a very expensive CGI house, to create the game's opening FMV, because it single-handedly upstages everything else in the game: it serves as a constant reminder that once I get past the Start Menu and to the game itself, I'm hit with some of the worst presentation this side of the 16-bit era. Here's how the story's told; There are VERY few cutscenes, rather, the characters just appear on the field and begin talking. Let's say you're in a castle, and you walk into a room, triggering a cutscene. The camera remains EXACTLY where it was, (near the ceiling, or far away,) and other characters appear around you, and the camera never moves at all, and the characters never move at all. Then text boxes come up at the top of the screen. That's it. That's how this game's story is told.

I guess it was a move done to show off the (admittedly very pretty) pre-rendered visuals, but the camera placement got on my nerves. For a huge portion of the game, the camera's at least 40 feet away from the characters, giving me the sense of watching the entire game through binoculars. Since it doesn't change at all for when the game's events, the "cutscenes" are presented this way as well. Sometimes I found myself nearly squinting to see the characters who were delivering this brainless dialogue. The characters all stand completely still, (like statues) and recite their lines. The camera never moves, the characters never move, NOTHING HAPPENS during cutscenes!!! Although there are a few exceptions, much of the game is told this way. You see text boxes at the top of the screen, and you see pictures of the characters' faces to show their emotion. While this worked in Grandia II, at least Grandia II had a great range of expressions! (Grandia II also featured movement, and had a camera that was close enough to tell what was going on,) Baten Kaitos has very few facial expressions. And frankly, I disliked how they were drawn. Again, this wouldn't be the biggest problem if the camera actually showed some motion, or SOMETHING going on in the cutscenes, but it doesn't. Nothing is ever going on during these cutscenes except a bunch of statue-like characters standing completely still with no camera movement whatsoever. The result? I never felt attached to the storyline, or anything. This game, plot-wise, is a bore to sit through. When the camera's so far away that you can't even see the characters' faces, then it's a problem. The bland storytelling and bad voice acting take an already uninspired plot and makes it nearly unbearable.

What's so sad about this totally half-assed RPG is that in it we have potentially THE BEST plot twist I think I've ever seen in the history of my video gaming. It's so perfectly integrated into the setup and so shocking in its reveal that my jaw had completely dropped and stayed down for easily 10 seconds. Unfortunately, despite this earth-shattering twist, the game remains in "play it safe" mode, and yet again seems afraid to take it as far as they could have. The result is that the plot twist serves as a great and very memorable diversion....but that's it. Then we're back to the dull storytelling, voice acting, and presentation.

It felt like the developers were counting on the game's twists to salvage the otherwise deadly-boring plot, and sure enough, the twists are foreshadowed brilliantly and with skill. During the end of the game, you may be amazed at how a simple line early in the game, (one you never thought anything of,) is actually a giveaway of yet another plot twist. If you start up the game again after beating it and play through a little bit of it, you will already notice clues to some info revealed in the ending. But unfortunately the developers never seemed to realize that without first giving us characters we care about and a plot worth telling (and then being afraid to really take advantage of their own twists to their full potential,) that the plot twists just aren't a big deal. They're initially great to witness but mean almost nothing to the game's story.


The "world in the sky" concept was a cool one, but yet again, nothing's done with it. In a game like Skies of Arcadia, for example, the whole world was in an exploration period, every single island was well-developed, there was a huge world to explore, and very much to do. Baten Kaitos, though, has no exploration whatsoever. You are stuck firmly on 1 island at a time, and you move from place to place on a 2-D map. There's no exploration. You just move your character left or right, then hit A and you're in the next location. The whole world just seems dead. Except for the people endlessly dancing in Komo Mai, nothing is ever going on. You simply go from island to island, from dungeon to dungeon, and town to town, to see one boring cutscene after another.

Cutscenes where nothing happens except watching characters stand still and recite their lines to the camera. Talking to NPCs is pointless, as they never have anything interesting to say. Everyone in the world seems completely oblivious to anything that's going on, (until much later in the game,) and even near the end of the game, when A LOT OF STUFF is going on, people are still endlessly dancing around in Komo Mai, or walking around aimlessly in the other towns. At one point in the game, you go to an island below the clouds. It sounds like the chance to open up an entirely new world, but once the gamer gets there....it might as well be any other island. Nothing is developed in this game; the characters, the world, the storyline...nothing. They had a cool idea for a world at their disposal, but did not use it to its full potential.

Granted, Baten Kaitos's world IS different than Skies of Arcadia's. Skies of Arcadia also featured a bright, colorful world, but if you happened to look down, (off the edge of an island,) you'd see DARK, DANGEROUS clouds below. Sailing to the islands was fun, but DANGEROUS, and it was often made very clear that in this world, if your ship engine fails, you're dead. (And there were many depressing stories involving this type of thing in this game.) Skies of Arcadia featured a bright and colorful world, but it was set in a more epic, sometimes even dangerous setting.

Baten Kaitos, instead, opts for more of a "fairy tale" approach. Everything's bright and colorful. There seems to be no danger whatsoever. The fact that you may fall from the sky and die is never really even mentioned once. If you had the ability to look down in Baten Kaitos, (...as if...) you would not likely see dark, stormy clouds, but artsy, peaceful ones. This type of world could have worked on it's own level, (as a fairy tale setting, which they were clearly going for,) but there's no "magic" in this world. Everything seems completely in the ordinary. They could have made something really interesting and cool with this concept, but didn't.

Exploring towns (there are many in Baten Kaitos, few of any interest,) is often annoying due to the distant camera. They're often very impressive-looking visually, but again, you can hardly appreciate the details because you have to practically squint to see them. There's also often very little to explore. Houses you enter typically enter consist of 1 room, and that's it. You can enter so few buildings in towns that they should AT LEAST give you buildings that are bigger than 1 room…Towns also are small themselves, in some cases, only containing 1 town square, with maybe 4 buildings, (or rooms,) to enter. That's it. There's just not much to explore in the game. At one point, you're passengers in a royal airship, and, of course, you can't leave the room you're all sitting in despite traveling in a (supposedly huge) ship. The Queen of Anueanue has such a small castle; 3 rooms and a throne? Couldn't they get her a bigger castle!?

The next point I will discuss; Baten Kaitos's graphics. The backgrounds are impressive; very impressive, but they're nothing but 2-D backgrounds. The first towns that you explore, such as Cebalrai, (the farming hamlet,) and Pherkad, (the ancient capital,) are breathtaking graphics-wise. With the clouds billowing through the town, and the up-close camera angles…it's great. However, once you get to the other towns, the camera starts getting further and further away, until you get to places like Azha, where it's practically impossible to see where you're going. If they made this game in full 3-D, with the camera right behind the character, (and able to follow him,) and with you actually able to EXPLORE these towns, (not walking further and further into the distance,) and look at these visuals up close, then this game could have looked as stunning as...well, as other reviewers may have lead you to believe it is. As it stands, though, Baten Kaitos really doesn't offer anything impressive visually, which is unfortunate (and a little confusing,) after all the praise the graphics have received. Yes, the backgrounds are imaginative and very nice looking. But it's completely out of reach. It's like watching a visually breathtaking movie, but you forgot to wear your contact lenses, therefore, you can hardly see anything. Baten Kaitos has amazing backgrounds, but that's all they are; BACKGROUNDS. I never felt immersed in this group of backgrounds that they call locations in this game.

And how does the game play? Well….surprisingly solid. The card battling system's fairly cool, and it's a fun way to battle. Sure, random battles take way too long, but otherwise, this system is fun. It's basically a unique combination of Turn Based, Active Time Battle, and Real Time Battle. Each character has a deck of cards, and as you get further in the game, you can carry more at a time, and use more at once as well. You can use the C-stick to select cards by their numbers, which can create combos, which can double or tripple the damage given. This battle system works great for most of the game….however, near the end is where things get a little too difficult. The enemies suddenly have the ability to overpower you quite easily, (these are bosses I'm talking about,) and they get very challenging. Expect to have to power-level A LOT to be able to beat some of these bosses. One of the final bosses, in particular, is seemingly impossible. I was stuck on him for quite a while before I finally put this game down, for months and months. Eventually I forced myself to pick it up again and FINALLY beat the game, but it wasn't easy. I don't know what the developers were thinking with this boss, but it was way too difficult. Despite spending 9 additional hours leveling up and doing sidequests for better cards, I could not beat this boss. It wasn't until I was told that using the C-stick (rather than the A-button) to select cards was a significantly better way to damage enemies and defend yourself. I was then able to beat him. If using the C-stick was so important to the gameplay, why did the game even bother giving you any other option?

It's unfortunate that this game, (like Star Ocean; Till the End of Time) felt the need to suddenly increase the difficulty level on disc 2, because it really leaves a negative final impression. Despite the ridiculous difficulty curve, it's a very solid battle system. Luckily there are only a couple tedious, time-consuming dungeons, (THANKFULLY. Tales of Symphonia's Escape from Welgaia dungeon and the Heimdal Entrance Puzzle still give me nightmares,) and Baten Kaitos is just fun to play, and fairly addictive. The controls (when not in battle,) are a little on the stiff side, and characters run way too slowly, but overall, it's not a huge problem. Except for the latter-part of the game, gameplay is where Baten Kaitos impresses. It's just really unfortunate that everything else about this game is so lacking.

(Note: The Gamecube controllers apparently feature analog sticks that wear out. Baten Kaitos relies too heavily on analog sensitivity and 2 of my controllers did not work with this game, since in certain directions Kalas wouldn't run, but start walking. I switched controllers and fixed the problem. No other game's given me this issue, so it's something to keep in mind. You potentially may need to purchase another Gamecube controller if all yours are too "worn out" already to play the game.)

Finally, the music's actually pretty good. I'm not the biggest fan of Motoi Sakuraba's soundtracks, but he hits a home run here. The music in the towns, in particular, is stunning. The worldmap theme's equally memorable and relaxing, and provides the perfect sense of place. The battle theme, while only OK, is tolerable. Yet this turns AWESOME when it's played-with electric guitar-during some bosses. The music in Nashira is perfect as well. Those are just some examples. There are many more. It's all great while it lasts: about half way through the game, the music starts repeating itself, and then, eventually, it gets to a point where you can't remember the last time you heard a new song. The music that plays when you're traveling to Mira is really cool. But it is not cool to hear it in two, yes, two, towns later in the game. A lot of the music is like that. I don't know if Sakuraba is too lazy to compose a full soundtrack, or if he charges too much, or if Namco is simply cheap…either way, though, there is simply not enough music in this game. It just repeats itself incredibly often. Still, I have to admit, I was impressed by Sakuraba's soundtrack, and that's definitely a first. While none of the stuff stands out as much as some of the great stuff on the Star Ocean; Till the End of Time soundtrack, (although the great stuff in that soundtrack was very few and far in between,) Baten Kaitos still delivers a pleasant, very nice soundtrack that usually fits perfectly.

Overall, other than the battle system and the music, Baten Kaitos is a very mediocre experience. The whole game seemed to completely lack any great ideas or inspiration. The plot's terrible, the character development's non-existent, (the characters lack any personality to begin with,) the cutscenes are extremely boring, the voice acting's awful, (although you can turn this off,) the world's hardly explorable, and the game becomes way too difficult near the end. Again, the exception to all this is an excellent plot twist that occurs in about the middle of the game…but to think about how amazing a twist like this could have been in a game like Final Fantasy, (any of them,) or Skies of Arcadia, hell, even Tales of Symphonia…..it's sad. But Baten Kaitos just seems to be setting us up to not care about it at all. Unfortunately, despite the solid, sometimes fun and addictive battle system, (although even this turns into a pain in the second half of the game,) I can't recommend this game. If you own only a Gamecube and are desperately in need of an RPG, I'd recommend Skies of Arcadia Legends instead of Baten Kaitos. It's really everything that Baten Kaitos wasn't, and the sad thing is that it came out years ago. If you've already played that, then I recommend, (and I can't believe I'm saying this,) Tales of Symphonia instead of Baten Kaitos. Although a tedious game as well, (and not one I particularly enjoyed,) Tales of Symphonia at least seemed to have a sense of where it was going, and it had a real story to tell. Both Skies of Arcadia and Tales of Symphonia seemed to be something special. Overall, Baten Kaitos was simply nothing special. The developers had a lot of tricks up their sleeve in regard to the game's plot, and the ending shows how much foreshadowing this game really had. This just makes things more disappointing. This great foreshadowing, these cool plot twists, the solid battle system, the good music....this should have been in a much better final product than Baten Kaitos. With incredibly bland and uninteresting storytelling, flat characters, outdated technical graphics and camera angles, terrible plot, a bland, uninteresting world, lack of any exploration, and way too difficult gameplay, (near the game's end,) I can't recommend Baten Kaitos. Not when Skies of Arcadia is on the same console.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/14/05, Updated 07/25/08

Game Release: Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (US, 11/16/04)