"Even those who hate Poker owe it to themselves to pick this up."

Kalas is a teen aged boy who has lost the two most important people to him. That was when the anger within him was fed, and it grew so rapidly to the point where nothing else in life mattered to him. We find him laying peacefully on a bed within a town unknown to him. The local doctor tells him he was knocked out, and was found by one of the local residents who takes the form of an animal. It was there when he met Xhelha, a future close acquaintance. After accidentally defeating the guardian to one of the end magnus, Giacamo, the one responsible for Kalas's misery, appears and snatches it in front of their eyes. The end magnus hold a deep secret; when all five are collected, the cursed Wicked god Malpercio will be unleashed. And so, Kalas and crew travel around the globe in order to stop the Alfard Empire from resurrecting Malpercio by grabbing the End Magnus themselves.

Many will make comparisons with Skies of Arcadia, and I wouldn't blame them. Floating islands, chasing after a tyrannical empire, collecting relics in order to prevent world destruction. Though the story sways away from what would have happened if it were Skies of Arcadia, and treats the audience to one of the best plot twists ever. The story doesn't really make much progression in the first disc, but speeds up immensely within the second. You'll be hooked to the game's story, waiting for the final question to be answered.

Though you'll be hooked anyways, and it's not because of the storyline. The game's battle system is surprisingly and incredibly addictive, especially for an RPG. In the past, I was never fond of battles when it comes to RPG's, but Baten Kaitos makes them fun. Many were skeptical of it because the system revolves around cards, but it's much more in-depth than people give it credit for. Each character has a deck, and depending on their battling backgrounds, they'll only be able to insert certain cards within it. When battle time comes, a certain amount of cards will show up, which can be referred to as your hand. During each of your characters turns, you'll be able to attack the enemy a certain amount of times depending on your level.

You can almost say this is Final Fantasy VI with a card system included, but it doesn't stop there. When concurring elements are thrown together within the same turn (dark and light, fire and water), the final attack damage will actually subtract from each other! So you can't randomly throw in cards in your deck based off of its numbers. Also, there's a time limit for each player's turn, so if you don't react fast enough, your turn will be passed. Keep in mind it's not active time, it's just in there to cause you pressure.

To make the game even more challenging and fast paced, on the corner of each card is a number. You'll be able to choose the desired number by tilting the C-Stick into that direction. What's the point you ask? If you create a pattern, such as 1,1,2,2 or 2,2,2,2, then your attack will be multiplied! When you incorporate this with the other battle elements, then you have one satisfying game. This also makes assembling your deck even more enjoyable, because you won't only have to consider the cards with the highest numbers. Also, rather than letting the enemies bash you as much as you want, during your opponent's turn, you'll be able to use defensive cards to subtract the damage committed towards you.

When you first play this game, you feel like the developers tried so hard to set Baten Kaitos apart from the other games in its genre. The most obvious (besides the use of cards) is how you level up. You do gain experience from defeating your enemies, but you won't actually level up by battling alone. By entering blue flowers that are scattered throughout the world, you'll find yourself in a church as beautiful as the Montreal Basilica (a church famous for its beauty). A priest will be available near the alter, and by reflecting on your past experiences of battle via praying, you'll gain levels. You can also gain rank by class ups. Your class level doesn't determine your stats, but the amount of cards you can carry within your deck and hand, as well as the amount of attacks you can make in a move.

Another unique feature is how you receive money. Rather than taking the loose change monsters carry around in their wallets and purses, you'll be taking pictures of them using a picture card. For some reason, pictures of monsters are taken of high value to the people of Baten Kaitos, so you'll be able to sell them for high amounts of money. Though you can't simply take a bunch of pictures and sell them immediately. As time passes by, the pictures will become more clear to see, and will sell for higher than pictures that are covered in light. Time also plays a part with the cards themselves. Overtime, a banana will turn ripe and serve for the purpose of not healing, but attacking. When a flower is overly exposed to dark environments, it will simply die. When a sword has been used several times in battle, it'll rust. Though the results aren't always as negative as the examples given. They can turn out good as well, but most of the time what they turn into isn't always satisfying.

One of the features that everyone was anticipating from Baten Kaitos aside from the battle system was its graphics. Many have labelled Baten Kaitos as the most beautiful game ever created it, and I agree. The backgrounds are simply indescribably gorgeous. The water almost looks alive; the textures of the jungles are almost real; the clouds are beautiful. Not to mention the cinematics for the attacks for each character's finisher. Basically, a finisher is a card that's the most powerful at the time, but finishes your move even if you have a couple more attacks left. The effects are just engrossing and extraordinary. My personal favourite is when Lyude unleashes waves of clouds from his instrument. The special effects and background uses are definitely the best I've seen so far in a game.

However, the use of prerendered backgrounds forced the developers to resort to a camera fixed system. There are several instances where Kalas will be too far to see, that you'll easily mistaken him for a near by civilian. The character models themselves look mediocre, and look very out of place when combined with the beautiful and astonishing backgrounds. Though I can easily overlook them because the special effects and backgrounds are a true feast to the eyes. I usually skip the sequences where the attacker is doing various moves of attacks, but this is the only time where I don't.

The soundtrack I think is Baten Kaitos's third strongest point (1st being the battle system, 2nd the graphics). Composed by overshadowed composer Motoi Sakuraba, he's whipped up possibly one of the best soundtracks in the genre, and we all know about RPG soundtracks, especially Nobuo Uematsu's. While Baten Kaitos's scores aren't on the same level as Final Fantasy VII's, it's up there, and probably ranks its way to having the best soundtrack on any Gamecube game. I personally love how he takes the same sheet music for different battle themes, but uses different instruments. The normal battle theme revolves around the use of a violin, while the boss theme uses the same template, except it uses a guitar. Amazing results.

Unfortunately, Baten Kaitos succeeds in where most RPG's fail, while fails in where most RPG's succeed. The story is very disorganized and the pacing is inconsistent. On paper the story sounds awesome, but how it was executed was lousy. In fact, it feels rather rushed. It probably would have been better if the characters were developed with more emotional closeness. I personally felt quite distanced from my characters and were never really attached to them in any way. The only remotely interesting characters were Savyna and Kalas; Savyna because she's just so sexy and shares many similarities with a character from Final Fantasy X, Lulu. Kalas because he also shares many traits of another character I liked, Cloud. However, unlike Cloud, Kalas sports some pretty geeky clothes to fit his badass personality, and in the end was still quite shallow.

The story is also ruined by the corny dialogue and childish cutscenes. We all know about kids movies; the hero is restrained by a flawless system, but escapes its wrath because of "adrenaline". Like Goku, Kalas turns Super Saiyan (while keeping the blue hair) when all hope is lost and running away isn't an option no more. These situations are overused, and it's surprising to see a company with Japanese descent use them. As for the dialogue, it's decent, but it's really not the dialogue itself that makes it corny. Baten Kaitos has some of the worst voice acting period! Literally, I'm not even joking, some of the characters, such as the old fortune teller lady in the opening cutscene, sound like nails to chalkboard. Xhelha's voice is just annoying and squeaky. The others are below mediocre, or are decent. Though there are notable characters with quality voices, such as Melodia, who have voices that perfectly fits their nature and personality. Geldoblame, the ruler of Alfard empire, has a very convincing and evil tone to it, similar to the speeches a powerful Dictator in Germany made back in World War II. Other than that, if you love your ears, you would do them a favour disabling voices.

There's also a flaw to the battle system itself that really isn't the developers fault. I don't have much experience with card games; only ones I've ever played were Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh. Though often times you'll rely on luck during battles, since cards come at random. There will be many times when your entire hand will be filled with defensive cards on your offensive turn, or times when your defensive hand is filled with healing and attack items. Pure frustration is the result, and it's bad enough already when it occurs during normal battles.

Despite the principal of luck that all card games are centered around, you'll enjoy the battle system greatly. I found myself running into enemies intentionally because they were that fun, and not for the reason of leveling up. In fact, I fought for fun so many times throughout the course of the game, I've never even considered to level up to prepare for the next boss fight. In almost every way, Baten Kaitos is a beautifully molded game that shouldn't be missed by any RPG loving fan owning a Cube. The story does feel clumsy at times (except near the middle where the plot twist to end all plot twists triggers), and the characters are quite shallow, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying such a gem.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/11/05