"An Amazing RPG Plauged By Terrible Voice Overs and Bad Cutscenes"

I enjoyed this game. In fact, I probably enjoyed this game more than any other game I have thus played in 2005. Baten Kaitos is perhaps one of the most fun RPGs of all time. I would even go to say it could have been a contender for the best RPG of all time; however, this is not the case.

In Baten Kaitos, you play as the main character's(Kalas) gaurdian spirit. As the gaurdian spirit, you pretty much just control the main character and give him spiritual advice, help, well, pretty much everything that is in any RPG. The only difference is that you actually interact with the main character. They grow a bond which if good, will help you perform devastating special attacks in battle. If bad, well, you won't get any special attacks.

The interesting aspect of Baten Kaitos is the role that this gaurdian spirit plays into the story. Believe it or not, what initially appears to be just a gimmicky way to incorporate you the player into the game plays a vital role in the progression of the story. I can not tell you though what exactly it is, but take my word that you would not exactly foresee how important the role of the guardian spirit is.

With that being said, allow me to talk about the story in this game. Simply put, this story is damn good. Kalas is out to seek revenge against a general of Alfard, a nation which is trying to awaken an ancient god whom destroyed the world once. Along Kalas' quest for revenge, he becomes side tracked and ends up allying with many characters in order to stop the bigger problem, the awakening of the ancient god. Each character is highly developed throughout the game, each containing a distinct personality you either grow to love or hate. Kalas however appears to have little to none when it comes to personality, but as the story progresses you learn more and more about each character's past and present, including Kalas. Baten Kaitos also boasts an insane amount of plot twists, one of them being perhaps the best I have ever seen in any game.

With the story aside(I tried not to spoil anything, the story is that good), let me tell you about battle. Battle is what I like to call card based turn based. Don't let that fool you though as the game plays more like a Final Fantasy than a Yugi Oh game. Yes you have a deck of cards, each card containing a weapon, armor, healing item, various items(such as branches), and enders, however you play the cards as you would choose your attack in a turn based RPG. When it is your turn to attack, you must pick which attacks you want to use, and you will deal a set amount of damage, your attack phase will end, and you enter the defense stage which is essentially the same. Now what is a nice feature is that ever card has a number/numbers in the corner and you can chain your attacks to add more bonus percentages by either doing a "straight" or a "of a kind set". For example, you play your cards in the order of 1,2,3,4,5 or 8,7,6,5,4 and you form a straight which gives you an added attack or defense bonus. You play your cards 3,3,3, or 4,5,4,5, or 9,7,4,7,4,9 and you get an of a kind bonus. You only have a short amount of time to chain these combos which keeps the action of the battles head over heels more intense than a turn based game. Another nice addition to the battles is that you can use various items in accordance with each other, such as fire and twig, to form a new item. Also, items in your inventory age, so in other words a fruit can be good, then better, then sour.

Let's move onto the music. This game has amazing music. I cannot describe how good the music in this game is. When I first heard the battle music I said to myself holy ****, this game is ****ing awesome. Every clip of music perfectly fits in with the game. I don't know how else to describe the music besides saying that it could possibly be the best music in any game I've ever played.

I have yet to even mention the graphics. To sum this up, the graphics are beautiful. Every single thing looks amazing. Everything. This is one of the best looking games I have ever seen. The one complaint I have though is that all the backgrounds are pre-rendered and sometimes it is hard to tell where exactly a give door is or whatnot in a town. Otherwise the graphics are amazing.

Now you've been reading my review thus far, or at least I hope, and probably are thinking, how did this only get an 8. Well, this game does have some problems. What you will notice right off the back is that the voice acting is terrible. And I mean terrible. Some of the voices, such as Kalas and Gibari, fit the characters, but pretty much every other character has terrible voice acting. And to make the matter worse you have to hit the a button at the right time in order to make the voice acting flow fluently.

As if the voice acting is not enough, the cut scenes are perhaps the most boring things ever. Sure a bunch of really cool plot events are occurring, but everything is done in game, so what you are left with would be the characters just standing around not really moving. Very very borring in my opinion, and since this game has such a great story this is uncalled for.

Baten Kaitos is a great game, actually it is an amazing game. But this game has two unbearable problems for any modern day RPG, voice acting and cut scenes. Perhaps with Baten Kaitos 2 they can fix these problems and create on of the greatest RPGs ever. We can only wait and find out. With that said, I give Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean a 8.5 out of 10, and with .55 being the medium this rounds down to an 8. This game is worth a buy for anyone looking for an amazing RPG.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/04/05