Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remastered Review – Cult Classic Breathes New Life

Classic JRPG titles more often than not don’t see the light of day, with most of them not being localised or just not released outside of Japan. Enter Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remastered, a cult classic brought back to life to both veteran fans and newcomers to the series for the Nintendo Switch.

Baten Kaitos Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean, and Baten Kaitos Origins also referred as Baten Kaitos I & II developed by Monolith Soft are Gamecube titles were released back in 2003 and 2006 respectively.

The first game follows the story of Kalas, a self-interested and somewhat unlikeable mercenary who sets on journey of getting revenge for the death of his brother and grandfather. However, on his path of vengeance, Kalas had accidentally released an old seal place on the God of Destruction, Malpercio, which resulted in Kalas needing to get to the other seals before the evil Alfard Empire uses them to unleash chaos into the world.

Meanwhile, Origins is set 20 years before the events of the first game and follows Sagi, a member of an Alfard Empire black ops team called the Dark Service. Sagi and his unit were tasked to assassinate the Alfard emperor, but upon infiltrating his chambers, they found out that another person had already finished the job and framed Sagi and his unit for the death of the emperor, branding them as traitors. After escaping by the skin of their teeth, Sagi and his accompanying unit set off on a journey to clear their names and uncover the conspiracy they found themselves in.

While both games follow a certain degree of a trope in terms of the story, with the whole good guys facing off against an evil empire; the world building, setting of the floating continents, and the implication of Magus (I’ll get to that later) is very interesting.

In both games, the player acts as a “Guardian Spirit” for both of the protagonists, a nameless and figureless being that pretty much makes the decisions in the game and also controls the flow of combat. It’s an interesting way of involving the player to be part of the game without necessarily having the player be part of the game, so to speak.

Trust in Heart of the Cards 

To simplify, the combat for Baten Kaitos revolves around using cards called Magus, which are essentially magical containers that can absorb the essence of anything including. weapons, items and magic. The concept surrounding the Magus is a unique one, with it having applications both in and outside of battle, making it sort of like a puzzle where players have to figure out.

In terms of outside battle applications, players can extract an item’s “essence” into a blank card and there are certain instances in the story where you need to use up those cards to solve whatever the story wants you to do. There’s a wild fire blocking your path, preventing you from going to the next objective? You better have absorbed up some water and applied it to a blank card. It’s an intricate concept that holds both gameplay value and in-universe worldbuilding that I wish more games would follow suit, despite being such an old game.

In terms of in battle combat however, it’s a mixed bag for me personally. Both games feature Active Time Battle combat but play out differently. In Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean, players use support and attack Magus during allied turns, while they use defensive ones during enemy turns. There’s also various other factors that play into the combat, such as elemental weaknesses and card value order, where each Magus has a numbered value located on the bottom right corner, so using cards in a sequential order would increase damage output.

Considering there’s the real-time element during combat, players only have a limited amount of time when attacking and defending, which can be a bit anxiety inducing where you need to scramble around your cards on your deck and make sure you use them properly before the timer runs out. This is especially true during the defence phase as enemies can perform combos and you’ll need to choose multiple defensive cards in a row before each of the enemy’s strikes in order to negate as much damage. 

Meanwhile with Origins, the combat is different as opposed to Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean. In the first game, you’re free to choose whichever attack cards that you have on your hand without too many restrictions, but in Origins, you’ll need to use attacks in a “weak, medium, strong order”. 

Furthermore, the active-time element is a lot more prevalent in this game considering there’s no clear distinction on character turns since the defensive and offensive phase is pretty much mixed into one. Instead of needing to play cards to block attacks individually every time the enemy takes a turn, you can just play a defensive card at the beginning of your turn that’ll cause your character to automatically block a certain number of blows when they’re being attacked, which makes combat feel a lot more streamlined and fast paced, making Origins have the better combat mechanic between the two titles. 

Another further strength that Origins had over Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean is that you’re fully healed after every battle due to the increase in difficulty. Which I honestly prefer since you can just exhaust all your resources and go all out in every battle without worrying too much about saving up, because with only having such limited time to think before using cards, there’s not much strategy going on where you can plan out the perfect round. 

Not only that, in Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean, you don’t actually level up in the conventional way. You can increase your character levels and class levels through praying at churches to redeem experience, which becomes pretty annoying. While with Origins, you gain levels and level up normally, but you still need to go to churches and pray to upgrade your character class. 

While the combat for both games are interesting and a breath of fresh air, it’s still polarising to me. Starting the games off, you will be completely lost in the first few hours of the game unless you go out of your way to dig through the menu, so if that’s not your cup of tea, you’ll find yourself having a hard time getting into the game considering there’s just a lot to take in.  One scenario would be that in the first game, you need to use the camera card to snap a picture of the enemy and defeat them in order to earn money, which isn’t told to you unless you go through the decklist and look up the information.

I have to say though, once you go through the first few hours banging your head against the enemies, you’ll eventually get the hang of combat and it’s a pretty smooth experience. But again, it’s definitely not for everyone.

Remastered Changes 

One of the obvious changes to the Remastered version of Baten Kaitos are the fresh coat of paint to the graphics. Visuals look sharper and more vibrant and it’s definitely gonna be a nice love letter to fans who’ve played through the original gamecube versions. But for players who it’s their first time playing the title, the artstyle is certainly unique and distinct but it’s not my cup of tea.

In terms of performances, it’s not the smoothest title with frame drops here and there but it’s not to the point where it’s literally unplayable but it still brings you out from the immersion at certain points. 

Another gripe that people would find with the game is that the Remastered version of the game removed the English dub, which is an interesting choice, so to speak, especially how the opening animation for Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean is still dubbed in English.

Another feature that the Remastered version adds is the handful of Quality of Life improvements that just makes playing through the titles a lot more enjoyable. Being able to toggle the combat speed and game speed separately is such a nice thing to have as individual toggles as you’d normally want to bump up the game speed but not the combat speed because you already have a short amount of time to use cards in fights. Also having the option to completely remove encounters is super nice to have as well if you just don’t want to deal with the encounters. 

Verdict

Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remastered is a worthwhile pick up for fans of the original title and for JRPG fans who would want to try something new. There’s some genuinely interesting concepts from its combat mechanics and world building and setting, it’s a hard title to recommend for casual JRPG players who just don’t want to invest hours just to figure out the combat system and go through multiple menus. 

But if you’re willing to look past that, or that you want to look through Monolith Soft’s  older catalogue, Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remastered can scratch unconventional JRPG itch. 

[Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remastered is played on the Nintendo Switch, review code sent by the Publishers]

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