The "General Games Chat" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
This thread has been linked to the game 'Baten Kaitos'.
Or
Baten Kaitos
Eternal Wings And The Lost Ocean
Clocked up 4 and a half hours on this so far, and I have to say I'm becoming a fan of Namco. They've given us two fantastic (and exclusive) RPGs this year, Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos. Both similar, and yet very different.
Tales has the younger anime style look to it, where as Kaitos has a more adult look to it. Have to say I prefer Kaitos' graphics over Tales, they are far more detailed and yet still retain that 'warm' look. It's a bit weird at first, the backgrounds look finely hand drawn and are similar to RE's pre-rendered backdrops. This means you can't move the camera around yourself, and in bigger areas your character is going to be look tiny running around at the back end of the screen, which can make it a little difficult to spot everything you can interact with or enter/exit from. After the first 40 minutes or so I'd fully adjusted to this and it's no longer an issue.
Combat differs greatly as well. Tales uses a real time combat system where you can pause to issue commands to other team members, and Kaitos uses a good old turn based system, it also uses cards. Now I've never been a big fan of card systems, and I had my doubts at the start of the game. Naturally I hadn't read the manual, and while working everything out was simple enough, the battle system, had me a little puzzled over the fine details. But I can confirm that, like the rest of the game, what initially starts out as a bit dodgy soon becomes enjoyable and feels natural. Here's a little run down of the coolness battle system:
Everything comes on cards, items, weapons, equipment etc.
You have a combat 'deck' of cards (starts at 20). You choose which of your cards (can hold 1000) you want to use in this deck. In battle you recieve your hand of 3 (gets bigger later) active cards randomly, you have to use these cards to attack/defend/use items. As you use each card, the next from the battle deck is added to your active hand. When you've used them all the battle deck is simply reshuffled and you work through them again.
These are some cards you will start with:
Short Sword - Attack 5 Defend 3
This means when you use this card on an offensive turn you will do 5 damage (although this is obviously modified by character stats and stuff, I'll keep it simple). If you use it to defend you will block 3 physical damage.
Long Sword - Attack 12 Defend 6
Round Shield - Defend 10
Bananas - Heal 90 HP
Nothing you use in battle is used up. If you use some Bananas outside of battle to heal, you lose that card. If you use them in battle you keep the card and can use it as many times as you like, though it returns to the deck after use.
You can use more than 1 card to create combos, initially you can use two cards in your offense round. In the defense round you can use as many defence cards as they use offense cards. At the moment I can use up to 3 cards in offense. Damage is worked out from the total of the combo and the total of the combo defense, so what order you set it up in is irrelvant (except something I'll come on to in a bit). This means if you used a fire attack and a water attack in the same combo, they would negate each other and you would do hardly any damage.
Every card has a spirit number. These are used to get extra combat bonuses called 'Prizes'. For example, if I do a 2 card combo and both cards have spirit number 4, I would get a 10% bonus to the total damage done. If I used a 3 card offense combo with spirit numbers 5,6 and 7 (has to be played in order though) I would recieve a 30% bonus to total damage. Likewise with defensive cards, except there you would recieve a % reduction on total damage you took.
Later cards have more than 1 number (up to 4), at this point you'll start using the C-stick to choose cards, as you tilt it in the direction of the number you wish to use this round. That obviously makes it easier to earn prizes.
When certain cards are played in a certain order you can uncover secret special attacks, or create a brand new card to use in the future.
Types of attacks are physical, fire, water, light, dark, ice, wind and chrono. Same for types of defense. Something like an ice shield can absorb up to 8 points of physical damage, and 14 points of fire damage.
The battle system is good as it keeps you on your toes, you have to be quick selecting your defense cards as they are playing their attacks. And you have to be quick to select the right cards in a combo whilst looking for spirit point patterns. There is more but, cba.
Like Tales, Kaitos has a decent storyline and feels grand, it uses two discs and I would guess at it being roughly the same length as Tales. The characters look and sound good and the world is beautiful indeed. One of my favourite aspects so far is that you don't pick up coins by killing wild creatures. Instead, you have to use the camera card to take pictures of enemies which you can sell for much gold. Pics take about 10 minutes real time to develop fully, selling them earlier won't earn as much. Alos, clarity and exposure make a difference, if you're in a cave and use a dark move followed by a picture, the lack of light will produce a rubbish picture that is too dark. But do not fear, it's nothing like as fiddly or crappy as it sounds.
The only let down is the speech of the 'extras' characters. Main characters is fine, but the rest sound a bit...off, not quite the quality of Tales but still fine anyway.
Basically this RPG pwns and Namco should be proud of themselves. Two excellent and very different RPGs within a few months of each other, so if you hate one style (like turn based) you should at least enjoy the other. And for people like me you'll be in RPG bliss this December. I would give both a nice 8.5/10, though obviously I've barely scratched the surface of Baten Kaitos.
Only problem now is I'm 8 hours into the brilliant Paper Mario 2, and now nearly 5 hours into this...I just can't decide which to play at a time.
In short: buy buy buy in February or whenever. Of if you import put your silly DS away with it's tiny screens and import a mans game :)
Baten Kaitos
Eternal Wings And The Lost Ocean
Clocked up 4 and a half hours on this so far, and I have to say I'm becoming a fan of Namco. They've given us two fantastic (and exclusive) RPGs this year, Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos. Both similar, and yet very different.
Tales has the younger anime style look to it, where as Kaitos has a more adult look to it. Have to say I prefer Kaitos' graphics over Tales, they are far more detailed and yet still retain that 'warm' look. It's a bit weird at first, the backgrounds look finely hand drawn and are similar to RE's pre-rendered backdrops. This means you can't move the camera around yourself, and in bigger areas your character is going to be look tiny running around at the back end of the screen, which can make it a little difficult to spot everything you can interact with or enter/exit from. After the first 40 minutes or so I'd fully adjusted to this and it's no longer an issue.
Combat differs greatly as well. Tales uses a real time combat system where you can pause to issue commands to other team members, and Kaitos uses a good old turn based system, it also uses cards. Now I've never been a big fan of card systems, and I had my doubts at the start of the game. Naturally I hadn't read the manual, and while working everything out was simple enough, the battle system, had me a little puzzled over the fine details. But I can confirm that, like the rest of the game, what initially starts out as a bit dodgy soon becomes enjoyable and feels natural. Here's a little run down of the coolness battle system:
Everything comes on cards, items, weapons, equipment etc.
You have a combat 'deck' of cards (starts at 20). You choose which of your cards (can hold 1000) you want to use in this deck. In battle you recieve your hand of 3 (gets bigger later) active cards randomly, you have to use these cards to attack/defend/use items. As you use each card, the next from the battle deck is added to your active hand. When you've used them all the battle deck is simply reshuffled and you work through them again.
These are some cards you will start with:
Short Sword - Attack 5 Defend 3
This means when you use this card on an offensive turn you will do 5 damage (although this is obviously modified by character stats and stuff, I'll keep it simple). If you use it to defend you will block 3 physical damage.
Long Sword - Attack 12 Defend 6
Round Shield - Defend 10
Bananas - Heal 90 HP
Nothing you use in battle is used up. If you use some Bananas outside of battle to heal, you lose that card. If you use them in battle you keep the card and can use it as many times as you like, though it returns to the deck after use.
You can use more than 1 card to create combos, initially you can use two cards in your offense round. In the defense round you can use as many defence cards as they use offense cards. At the moment I can use up to 3 cards in offense. Damage is worked out from the total of the combo and the total of the combo defense, so what order you set it up in is irrelvant (except something I'll come on to in a bit). This means if you used a fire attack and a water attack in the same combo, they would negate each other and you would do hardly any damage.
Every card has a spirit number. These are used to get extra combat bonuses called 'Prizes'. For example, if I do a 2 card combo and both cards have spirit number 4, I would get a 10% bonus to the total damage done. If I used a 3 card offense combo with spirit numbers 5,6 and 7 (has to be played in order though) I would recieve a 30% bonus to total damage. Likewise with defensive cards, except there you would recieve a % reduction on total damage you took.
Later cards have more than 1 number (up to 4), at this point you'll start using the C-stick to choose cards, as you tilt it in the direction of the number you wish to use this round. That obviously makes it easier to earn prizes.
When certain cards are played in a certain order you can uncover secret special attacks, or create a brand new card to use in the future.
Types of attacks are physical, fire, water, light, dark, ice, wind and chrono. Same for types of defense. Something like an ice shield can absorb up to 8 points of physical damage, and 14 points of fire damage.
The battle system is good as it keeps you on your toes, you have to be quick selecting your defense cards as they are playing their attacks. And you have to be quick to select the right cards in a combo whilst looking for spirit point patterns. There is more but, cba.
Like Tales, Kaitos has a decent storyline and feels grand, it uses two discs and I would guess at it being roughly the same length as Tales. The characters look and sound good and the world is beautiful indeed. One of my favourite aspects so far is that you don't pick up coins by killing wild creatures. Instead, you have to use the camera card to take pictures of enemies which you can sell for much gold. Pics take about 10 minutes real time to develop fully, selling them earlier won't earn as much. Alos, clarity and exposure make a difference, if you're in a cave and use a dark move followed by a picture, the lack of light will produce a rubbish picture that is too dark. But do not fear, it's nothing like as fiddly or crappy as it sounds.
The only let down is the speech of the 'extras' characters. Main characters is fine, but the rest sound a bit...off, not quite the quality of Tales but still fine anyway.
Basically this RPG pwns and Namco should be proud of themselves. Two excellent and very different RPGs within a few months of each other, so if you hate one style (like turn based) you should at least enjoy the other. And for people like me you'll be in RPG bliss this December. I would give both a nice 8.5/10, though obviously I've barely scratched the surface of Baten Kaitos.
Only problem now is I'm 8 hours into the brilliant Paper Mario 2, and now nearly 5 hours into this...I just can't decide which to play at a time.
In short: buy buy buy in February or whenever. Of if you import put your silly DS away with it's tiny screens and import a mans game :)
Page:
Release date takes priority over everything.
I'll get whichever comes out first.
I'll get whichever comes out first.
BK better take priority over TS3.
This is just about the only game coming out next year that I want.
This, Timesplitters 3 (shush you) and Zelda.
That's it really.
This, Timesplitters 3 (shush you) and Zelda.
That's it really.
I just found some interesting information by acciedent.
Baten Kaitos is actually a real star that joins the neck of the 'whale', to the body, and there is also a star called Mira that makes up the neck.
Baten Kaitos also comes from an arabic phrase meaning 'sea monsters' belly'. There is also a real star called Alphard. Which is Alpha Hydrae, and is known as the solitary star...
Won't mean much to you now, but you'll realise just how many parts of the story have been influenced by these stars and the constellation they are in...
Baten Kaitos is actually a real star that joins the neck of the 'whale', to the body, and there is also a star called Mira that makes up the neck.
Baten Kaitos also comes from an arabic phrase meaning 'sea monsters' belly'. There is also a real star called Alphard. Which is Alpha Hydrae, and is known as the solitary star...
Won't mean much to you now, but you'll realise just how many parts of the story have been influenced by these stars and the constellation they are in...
Finished it, it's utterly fantastic.
There are quite a few twists and 'big things' you discover, there are so many clues along the way and I have to admit I didn't really manage to work anything out by myself before the game revealed it, but afterwards you realise it was there all along. You won't have the full picture until the very end, and the final boss is...certainly not what you'll be expecting.
I also love the way the game is presented, with you as a 'guardian spirit' of the main character. The spirits are supposed to be from another dimension and, obviously, the game developers are actually reffering to our one - the real world. This means characters actually talk to you, as the game player, because you're the guardian guiding them. You also only see what's going on when you're bonded to the main character, it makes for some interesting developments. I'll just say...observe things carefully at the very beginning..and listen well to certain narrations...
Despite the lack of FMV (boo!) everyone must buy this game. Stick with it when you think it isn't going anywhere or is too linear, you will be rewarded. So probably don't buy it if you're Tiltawhirl, I doubt it's your kind of thing.
There are quite a few twists and 'big things' you discover, there are so many clues along the way and I have to admit I didn't really manage to work anything out by myself before the game revealed it, but afterwards you realise it was there all along. You won't have the full picture until the very end, and the final boss is...certainly not what you'll be expecting.
I also love the way the game is presented, with you as a 'guardian spirit' of the main character. The spirits are supposed to be from another dimension and, obviously, the game developers are actually reffering to our one - the real world. This means characters actually talk to you, as the game player, because you're the guardian guiding them. You also only see what's going on when you're bonded to the main character, it makes for some interesting developments. I'll just say...observe things carefully at the very beginning..and listen well to certain narrations...
Despite the lack of FMV (boo!) everyone must buy this game. Stick with it when you think it isn't going anywhere or is too linear, you will be rewarded. So probably don't buy it if you're Tiltawhirl, I doubt it's your kind of thing.
Whitestripes DX wrote:
> For the last 10 hours or so I've been thinking 'it's just about to
> end' but magically it never did. There was one point especially where
> I thought the game had just ended, it doesn't though an it's an
> excellent twist in the story.
Yeh, I've thought that a couple of times with ToS.
> For the last 10 hours or so I've been thinking 'it's just about to
> end' but magically it never did. There was one point especially where
> I thought the game had just ended, it doesn't though an it's an
> excellent twist in the story.
Yeh, I've thought that a couple of times with ToS.
I know one of you mongs got this for Christmas...
Anyway, I've nearly finished this now - just wrapping up sidequests.
I started to have some doubts about this around the 20 hour mark, but they were unfounded soon after. Excellent story, just slightly better than ToS I think. Be warned though that it starts really slowly, and by 'starts' I mean 'the first 15 hours'. Meh, just stick with it. It isn't as long as ToS, which could reach about 80 hours if you did everything (without guides), Baten Kaitos could reach about 60 hours if you do everything.
For the last 10 hours or so I've been thinking 'it's just about to end' but magically it never did. There was one point especially where I thought the game had just ended, it doesn't though an it's an excellent twist in the story.
I really can't decide which is better out of Tales or this, so it's a draw (for now).
There's still no FMV though :(
Anyway, I've nearly finished this now - just wrapping up sidequests.
I started to have some doubts about this around the 20 hour mark, but they were unfounded soon after. Excellent story, just slightly better than ToS I think. Be warned though that it starts really slowly, and by 'starts' I mean 'the first 15 hours'. Meh, just stick with it. It isn't as long as ToS, which could reach about 80 hours if you did everything (without guides), Baten Kaitos could reach about 60 hours if you do everything.
For the last 10 hours or so I've been thinking 'it's just about to end' but magically it never did. There was one point especially where I thought the game had just ended, it doesn't though an it's an excellent twist in the story.
I really can't decide which is better out of Tales or this, so it's a draw (for now).
There's still no FMV though :(
PsYİHo FoX 19 wrote:
> Well in tales there is asub quest that gives characters different
> Titles, and eventually you'll be able to get different costumes for
> the characters
Costume changes in Tales? :O
Tell!!
> Well in tales there is asub quest that gives characters different
> Titles, and eventually you'll be able to get different costumes for
> the characters
Costume changes in Tales? :O
Tell!!
Well in tales there is asub quest that gives characters different Titles, and eventually you'll be able to get different costumes for the characters, but with the different titles comes stat changes, so you'd probably want to get your best title on for fighting and such. Also in Tales you have great freedom to just go where you want to fight and then come back to heal, but you can't go anywhere new til you've finished whatever it is the story wants you to do.
Later on you'll have total free roam on the world and even more.
Later on you'll have total free roam on the world and even more.
I have neither - but my gut instinct had always been towards BK.
But what do I know?
But what do I know?
Page: