Hi, I'm one of the 4 people who actually played this horseshit back in the day, and honestly, I can't recommend it to anyone.
-It's overly long with a childish plot about Civil War between people and people with wings, and something about a space whale that operates like a space subway system. It's exactly as dumb as it sounds.
-English dub's audio compression was genuinely some of the worst sound quality I've ever heard in any product released from any country ever. Instead of fixing this, the remaster just cuts it entirely, turning this game into a full-on weeb experience
-Soundtrack is composed by alt-progressive butt rocker Motoi Sakuraba; yeah sure, he later went on to compose Lord of Cinder/"Plin-Plin-Plon", but here he stuck to his roots, which is basically Sonic the Hedgehog music with no lyrics. Once you've heard one Sakuraba battle track you've heard them all; the guy knows how to use guitars and organs, but seemingly not much else.
-Battle system is mind-numbingly stupid. Imagine a turn-based Final Fantasy where every action you can take is an organic trading card that "decays" on use and "grows" over a period of subsequently waiting turns. Who thinks of this retarded shit?
-There's a boss fight like 30+ hours into the game with your dad where he just takes 2 turns at a time, for no reason. This gimmick came so out of nowhere and was such a frustratingly pointless level check that I actually just ... snapped the first disc under my shoe and never looked back.
It's always fun reading comments like yours on this site. This section is practically the wild west but I like it when people share their insights.
I know nothing about the original titles but they caught my eye. If the plot really is that naive (why do I feel it's that way more often than not when it comes to RPGs?) then it's a great shame. The gameplay part is very subjective though and since I can just try it out for free, I think I will at some point. At least it's something unconvential I guess? That might be good for an evening or two.
It is refreshing to see my gibberish was not wasted! I made this account just to make this post, and even though I've been playing RPGs for ages, Baten Kaitos is one of the very few I ever had such a negative experience with. I played it somewhere around 2005, when both my gaming sensibilities and options were limited, but that Giacomo fight just sent me to another plane of rage I previously did not know existed.
I'm sure the story eventually becomes more nuanced than I'm letting on here, but I personally couldn't get through most of the presentation long enough to see the "good stuff". I'd like to say my biggest issue with the story was that, conceptually, it seemed to bite off more than it could chew (the second game appears to be a prequel, so I guess the devs realized this too and went back to establish more groundwork), but really I can't back that claim as I didn't finish the game so I'll just leave it at that.
"At least it's something unconventional" was along the lines of my original motivation for purchasing it. Something about the box art said to me, "I'm a JRPG with a mature narrative" and as a bit of a history buff, I expected parallels to extend past the surface racism BK commonly employs ... forgive me for recollecting an almost 20-year-old experience but, I honestly don't recall the plot's depth ever expanding past the notion of "winged people bad, but also, non-winged people bad, because everyone war!" and then segregating everyone between natural landmass colonies and sky island societies while you play a half-breed protagonist trying to bridge the centuries-old gap.
Having said all that though, there are still aspects of it that I did like. It is certainly one of the less run-of-the-mill JRPGs you'll find ... the setting itself is original and interesting (there's a whole Christmas/candy-themed town where everyone lives in gingerbread houses and sells OP sweets/candy cards iirc?), the cultural aesthetics are all delightfully strange and unlike anything else I've ever seen from its time or since (but I've always believed Kalas beats Xenoblade's Rex for "worst character design ever") and the English dub, despite the trash quality, did have a hokey charm to it (but is Gamecube version-only) so it's not all bad, just ... mostly.
Thank you for further elaborating on the game. I didn't expect such an in-depth reply and truly appreciate it.
I actually have a love-hate relationship with games when it comes to their writing. I adore an engaging and well-paced story, and will put up with the worst gameplay imaginable to experience it (I dare you to look up a video of Sword and Fairy 6. It's barely playable but in my humble opinion, the narrative makes up for all its faults). The problem is, writers come up with original ideas, and then... do nothing interesting with them or fail to do so. Sometimes they just take no risks. Other times it's more like you said, they try to focus on too many aspects of the story at once, come up with concepts which never get expanded on, so on and so forth. It's so much more disappointing than the story just being bad from beginning to end, since the writers commit the sin of setting high expectations and not delivering. So I don't blame you for ragequitting at that time, I've been there.
For example, Lost Odyssey really disappointed me. I last played it long ago, so pardon me for not sharing details, but what I remember the most fondly is the beginning of the story. This is possibly the worst thing that could have happened to it in general - since this implies that the more you learn about a world and its characters, the more the entire setting falls apart (!). It might have been a matter of preference, I'm not sure, but I had certainly expected more, and the basic gameplay in no way justified trying to finish the game (and sure enough, I never did). Wanting me to grind was just the last nail in the coffin.
When it comes to BK, I really hope the gameplay will positively surprise me. Because the opposite of what I said before is also true - if I love the gameplay, the story will not ruin the experience no matter what. I've enjoyed almost universally disliked games in the past, like The Last Remnant, most of them odd in one way or another (TLR honestly deserved the treatment it got; it demanded way too much patience from newcomers and the story being bad was just the cherry on top). I like to think I'm the enduring type, for better or for worse, and usually only drop games if I really reach breaking point.
Anyway, to wrap this up, if the game is unique, then it might be fun and that would be good enough. At least your comment does give me that hope. I'll probably get around to it tomorrow and I'm honestly kind of looking forward to getting started, but no big deal if it makes a bad impression. I have a scary backlog of games anyway...
U saved me a lot of time mate! Im someone that If I start a game I barely ever stop till I finish it no matter how much it annoys me. Was about to download it but it looks like u saved me from a lot of wasted time. Thx mate!
I like to know the thoughts about things i experienced too. I was an experienced JRPG, tabletop, boardgame and strategy games already at the time of Gamecube and i enjoyed Baten Kaitos a lot, because it was very original, complex and mature too, in a period when i was becoming bored of "normal" RPG, it's also one of the few that i continued to play in emulation, in this years. I think maybe was because of its difficulty, that wasn't pleasant for you at the time, maybe today your point of view is different, sure it's not a "shit" considering the consideration it have in the country mother of the genre...considering also it was one pioneer that inspired some card titles very popular today, like heartstone and the spire.
-It's overly long with a childish plot about Civil War between people and people with wings, and something about a space whale that operates like a space subway system. It's exactly as dumb as it sounds.
-English dub's audio compression was genuinely some of the worst sound quality I've ever heard in any product released from any country ever. Instead of fixing this, the remaster just cuts it entirely, turning this game into a full-on weeb experience
-Soundtrack is composed by alt-progressive butt rocker Motoi Sakuraba; yeah sure, he later went on to compose Lord of Cinder/"Plin-Plin-Plon", but here he stuck to his roots, which is basically Sonic the Hedgehog music with no lyrics. Once you've heard one Sakuraba battle track you've heard them all; the guy knows how to use guitars and organs, but seemingly not much else.
-Battle system is mind-numbingly stupid. Imagine a turn-based Final Fantasy where every action you can take is an organic trading card that "decays" on use and "grows" over a period of subsequently waiting turns. Who thinks of this retarded shit?
-There's a boss fight like 30+ hours into the game with your dad where he just takes 2 turns at a time, for no reason. This gimmick came so out of nowhere and was such a frustratingly pointless level check that I actually just ... snapped the first disc under my shoe and never looked back.
I know nothing about the original titles but they caught my eye. If the plot really is that naive (why do I feel it's that way more often than not when it comes to RPGs?) then it's a great shame. The gameplay part is very subjective though and since I can just try it out for free, I think I will at some point. At least it's something unconvential I guess? That might be good for an evening or two.
I'm sure the story eventually becomes more nuanced than I'm letting on here, but I personally couldn't get through most of the presentation long enough to see the "good stuff". I'd like to say my biggest issue with the story was that, conceptually, it seemed to bite off more than it could chew (the second game appears to be a prequel, so I guess the devs realized this too and went back to establish more groundwork), but really I can't back that claim as I didn't finish the game so I'll just leave it at that.
"At least it's something unconventional" was along the lines of my original motivation for purchasing it. Something about the box art said to me, "I'm a JRPG with a mature narrative" and as a bit of a history buff, I expected parallels to extend past the surface racism BK commonly employs ... forgive me for recollecting an almost 20-year-old experience but, I honestly don't recall the plot's depth ever expanding past the notion of "winged people bad, but also, non-winged people bad, because everyone war!" and then segregating everyone between natural landmass colonies and sky island societies while you play a half-breed protagonist trying to bridge the centuries-old gap.
Having said all that though, there are still aspects of it that I did like. It is certainly one of the less run-of-the-mill JRPGs you'll find ... the setting itself is original and interesting (there's a whole Christmas/candy-themed town where everyone lives in gingerbread houses and sells OP sweets/candy cards iirc?), the cultural aesthetics are all delightfully strange and unlike anything else I've ever seen from its time or since (but I've always believed Kalas beats Xenoblade's Rex for "worst character design ever") and the English dub, despite the trash quality, did have a hokey charm to it (but is Gamecube version-only) so it's not all bad, just ... mostly.
I actually have a love-hate relationship with games when it comes to their writing. I adore an engaging and well-paced story, and will put up with the worst gameplay imaginable to experience it (I dare you to look up a video of Sword and Fairy 6. It's barely playable but in my humble opinion, the narrative makes up for all its faults). The problem is, writers come up with original ideas, and then... do nothing interesting with them or fail to do so. Sometimes they just take no risks. Other times it's more like you said, they try to focus on too many aspects of the story at once, come up with concepts which never get expanded on, so on and so forth. It's so much more disappointing than the story just being bad from beginning to end, since the writers commit the sin of setting high expectations and not delivering. So I don't blame you for ragequitting at that time, I've been there.
For example, Lost Odyssey really disappointed me. I last played it long ago, so pardon me for not sharing details, but what I remember the most fondly is the beginning of the story. This is possibly the worst thing that could have happened to it in general - since this implies that the more you learn about a world and its characters, the more the entire setting falls apart (!). It might have been a matter of preference, I'm not sure, but I had certainly expected more, and the basic gameplay in no way justified trying to finish the game (and sure enough, I never did). Wanting me to grind was just the last nail in the coffin.
When it comes to BK, I really hope the gameplay will positively surprise me. Because the opposite of what I said before is also true - if I love the gameplay, the story will not ruin the experience no matter what. I've enjoyed almost universally disliked games in the past, like The Last Remnant, most of them odd in one way or another (TLR honestly deserved the treatment it got; it demanded way too much patience from newcomers and the story being bad was just the cherry on top). I like to think I'm the enduring type, for better or for worse, and usually only drop games if I really reach breaking point.
Anyway, to wrap this up, if the game is unique, then it might be fun and that would be good enough. At least your comment does give me that hope. I'll probably get around to it tomorrow and I'm honestly kind of looking forward to getting started, but no big deal if it makes a bad impression. I have a scary backlog of games anyway...
I was an experienced JRPG, tabletop, boardgame and strategy games already at the time of Gamecube and i enjoyed Baten Kaitos a lot, because it was very original, complex and mature too, in a period when i was becoming bored of "normal" RPG, it's also one of the few that i continued to play in emulation, in this years.
I think maybe was because of its difficulty, that wasn't pleasant for you at the time, maybe today your point of view is different, sure it's not a "shit" considering the consideration it have in the country mother of the genre...considering also it was one pioneer that inspired some card titles very popular today, like heartstone and the spire.