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| Baten Kaitos | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 25 2008, 06:03 PM (253 Views) | |
| picollo no. | Aug 25 2008, 06:03 PM Post #1 |
Screw the rules I'm Yuri Lowell
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The Game Cube was hardly an RPG gamer friendly console. There were a few gems there like Tales of Symphonia and Skies of Arcadia but it seemed that developers just weren't interested in making RPG's for the console so when Baten Kaitos was anounced it was a big deal. The game was developed by Namco and Monolift Software of Xenosaga fame (famous because of the incredibly long cutscenes) and it promised an epic adventure with beautiful graphics and a unique battle system. And what we end up with is Baten Kaitos a game which is so flawed that it sort of hurts what could of been a good game. The story in all honesty was a load of old bull. Young angry lad named Kalas whose family was murdered by evil empire has nothing but revenge on his mind and is a self obsessed coward. he meets up with mysterious pretty girl named Xhella who gets you going on a long Journey to find the End Magnus where along the way you meet similarly boring characters who join your team. The story lacks any charm at all and plot twists so obvious you can see them coming from about an hour away. The characters as mentioned are also bad, underdevelped one dimensional and just boring, Kalas is the best character of the lot and if you read my description of him earlier you know thats hardly something to write home about Now lets get onto that innovative battle sytem which of all things card based so each option you have such as healing attacking, defending and running all comes under one deck of card which is called the Magnus which keeps the essence of objects in card form. Battling is turned based and enemies appear as representations on the playing field so you can avoid battles if you like. It's fun at first and it's cool when you get a good hand and can pull of some good combo's which let you finsih off with a pretty finisher but you're just as likely to get a bad hand which consists of helaing items which you don't need and defense items when you're attacking and similarly when you're defending there is a lack of defense cards so you have to use valuable attack cards to defend. The flaws of the combat soon become apparent and will become very annoying. What's also annoying is that when you have enough Exp to level up you need to find a church first to do so which is just pointless and time consuming. I'll get to the magnus the cards you use, you can imprison all sorts of things in those cards of yours such as fire which you can use on field to burn down wood blocking your way to the treasure chest, or milk which you can use to heal in battle. Another feature is that items like fruit magnus or milk magnus change as time goes by. for example milk will turn to cheese then yoghurt which will heal you more effectively. Good right, well sort of as it will also rot which can catch you totally unaware when you enter a battle to find that banana you use to heal up has rotted and will infact poison you is you consume it. It again ends up being another annoying feature which seems totally pointless. Now lets go on to the graphics. The first thing you'll notice is that the backgrounds are beautiful. Namco indeed spent a lot of time on the backdrops which are entirely pre-rendered. The result is undoubtedly pretty but again caus problems beacuse as the game the world is 2D and you control a 3D character you can end up getting lost in the scenery though thats not too much of a problem. What I do have a problem with is the character models themselves. They're bearable but oh so basic and from what I'm aware the developers didn't even bother giving them faces so that means that in all scenes the camera is so pulled away as not to alert you to their laziness and you get no sense of drama from the scenes. Indeed the only way you can tell what emotion the character is feeling by the basic character portarits which appear whenever they speak and the character animation is hardly great. Soo now sound surely this is a redeeming feature. Two sided coin the music is lovely and incredibly varied, you can tell a lot of money went on it but on the other side the voice acting is absolutely sh!t! From the first scene you'll be thinking what the hell happened. It's stilted, wooden and so poorly recorded, they all have some sort of electronic tone to their voice which is just annoying. As with the rest of the game everything good is undone by something that makes it count for nothing. This game is rather rare now so wherever you get it it's going to be rather pricey so I advise to you those who have an interest in thegame that it may not be exactly worth it, sure if you're determined to track it down do so, you may find something you like about it but you are just as likely to be dissapointed by it as I was. This is definately not GC's definitive RPG which it was promised. You'll get more enjoyment out of Tales of Symphonia or Skies of Arcadia. 54% |
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| Noolsey | Aug 26 2008, 07:32 AM Post #2 |
Sextbook: By Order Of The Admin
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I had originally planned to get Tales Of Symphonia, Skies Of Arcadia and this. I've got Tales, now, but is this not worth buying? I'm not keen on the idea of the card system, but I wasn't keen on Tales' battle system until I played it. |
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| picollo no. | Aug 26 2008, 07:57 AM Post #3 |
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Screw the rules I'm Yuri Lowell
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You may get some enjoyment out of it, I did when I first played it but soon as the game progress' you'll feel what's the point. Though I suppose some may enjoy the card battling sytem more than others but it just seems like some gimick thought up to cover what is a standard turn based RPG. Later boss battles can feel like sometimes feel like torture when you get continous bad hands and they have the ability to attack twice per round. |
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