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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:
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 :)
Sounds interesting...not sure about the cards system though. It doesn't sound like something that would pwn, to me.
Tales is out on the PS2 about now in Japan.
yeyu.
At last ... been asking if anyone's got this for weeks and weeks. As far as I can see, you're the only sensible one, WS.
At last ... been asking if anyone's got this for weeks and weeks. As far as I can see, you're the only sensible one, WS.
Dringo wrote:
> Tales is out on the PS2 about now in Japan.
It was out in September.
> Tales is out on the PS2 about now in Japan.
It was out in September.
I want.
Lyude is the bestest.
Especially Sforzando and Concerto.
Especially Sforzando and Concerto.
Is Lyude the weird clown looking guy?
No that's Mitzudo or something. Haven't met him yet.
Lyude is the Imperial guy who turns against his own Empire, a bit like Enrique from SOA.
Lyude is the Imperial guy who turns against his own Empire, a bit like Enrique from SOA.
Tphi wrote:
> Dringo wrote:
> Tales is out on the PS2 about now in Japan.
>
> It was out in September.
Well roughly right, I knew it was due out towards the end of 2004.
> Dringo wrote:
> Tales is out on the PS2 about now in Japan.
>
> It was out in September.
Well roughly right, I knew it was due out towards the end of 2004.
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