Baten Kaitos Origins
Nintendo Game Cube, 2006
By Diana Poulsen
I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I adored Baten Kaitos despite its horrific voice acting, and was even more excited for its prequel, Baten Kaitos Origins, than I was for Final Fantasy XII.
For those of you out of the loop, the Baten Kaitos series is set in a world where humanity dwells on a series of floating continents above the miasma of the Taint Clouds. The majority of people in the Baten Kaitos world have wings, or wings of the heart, allowing them to fly short distances. Sorry, no intercontinental flying, but eventually you’ll get a ship, so that helps.
Each continent in the Origins world is unique, reflecting the culture of the people who live there. There is a city in the clouds, one devoted to trees, one that glitters with the highly polished metals it’s made from and another that is completely done in claymation. The world, however, is sadly recycled from the first game, making the game feel dated. Despite that, the graphics have a familiar and colourful warmth about them. The game does feature some initiative, including two new continents, a completely new world, and a colosseum where you can battle to prove you are a champion fighter.
In Origins, this time around you only have three players: Sagi, Milly, and Guillo. Sagi, the main character, is a Spiriter, meaning that he can talk to an invisible guardian (i.e. the player) and ask for you advice. Sagi is polite enough to address you by name, though he has an odd habit of shifting between worlds during key battles. In one minute you’ll be opposing the enemy armies attempting to infiltrate a continent, and then you’ll be in another world. This helps create the two separate storylines and the overarching mystery of the game. Of course, when you get back from this trip and return to the first world no time will have passed, so you’ll still have a battle on your hands.
Similar to the original game, Origins has an intricate plot with dips and dives and it continues the overarching theme of faith (not to be confused with religion) versus science or more simply put, the trouble caused by paradigm shifts. Origins also helps fill in some of the plot gaps and major questions of the original. Fighting-wise, the game continues the card battler system of its predecessor, though it simplifies it somewhat. The ‘apparently annoying’ defensive phase is gone, and no longer does each character have their own deck. All three characters now share the same deck, so you’ll have to have enough attack cards to cover everyone and insure that you don’t have too many. The game is entirely about balance and strategy. The boss battles are challenging, relying on both skill and strength. If you lose in boss battles you’ll have to tweak your deck to make it the most effective against the baddie you are fighting. It’s not simply about being in a higher level, you need skill.
I recommend playing Baten Kaitos before playing Origins, because while it is a prequel, you may not appreciate the story without knowing what’s going to happen in the future. It’s a bit like Merlin, sometimes living the future first gives you a better grip on the past. Overall, it’s a budget title. Origins has a great story, but seems to be meant for the fan of the original game. It gives further depth into a world that turned some of us hard core turn-based RPGers into card battlers.
