What Does God Need With a Magnus? Let's Play Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean [VLP]

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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(This is a kinda-sorta sister thread to Argate's Xenoblade Chronicles LP which you should also check out)

The mid-2000's was a weird time for video games. With the PS2 generation in full swing, developers had finally (more or less) figured out this new-fangled 3D thing and were starting to make games that really experimented in a lot of ways. The RPG genre, though arguably a bit more resistant than most games, certainly had their own mix of ecclectic ideas - for every Dragon Quest VIII, there was Tales of the Abyss, a Final Fantasy XII, a Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, a Drakengard, a Xenosaga. But arguably, none of them were quite as weird as this game.

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Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean was developed by Namco and Monolith Soft for the Gamecube in 2003, and is probably single-handedly responsible for my love of weird and off-the-wall shit. On the surface, it's a fairly standard JRPG, especially by 2003 standards. It has a weird card-based combat system, and the decision to go full pre-rendered for all the backgrounds was a little odd, to be sure, but one listen to Motoi Sakuraba's soundtrack and those worries would be washed away... At least, until you actually sit down and play it. Baten Kaitos is probably the weirdest, deliberately-designed game I've ever played in my life. A "deckbuilder RPG" doesn't do it justice - to play Baten Kaitos is to play Slay the Spire and Poker at the same time...with the same cards. Your cards (including your quest items) evolve over time, quite literally - bananas ripen and then rot, ice melts, and fire goes out. The entire game has this weird, tinny filter over the voice acting to simulate the effect of not actually being in this world with the characters. Suffice to say that Baten Kaitos marches to the beat of its own drum, and it does not give a damn if you are along for the ride or not.

(It should come as no surprise that the co-developer, Tri-Crescendo, would go on to make Eternal Sonata for the PS3/360. There will be a lot of parallels with that game as we go.)

Despite the oddities, the game actually reviewed fairly well, with an 80 on metacritic (and an 8.4 user score, for what that's worth), a score which is well-deserved in my opinion. Regardless of your opinion on the game's core mechanics, it's undeniable that the game is gorgeous, with one of Sakuraba's best pre-Dark Souls soundtracks and a story that hits the mark far more than it misses. It is janky, yes, and decidedly not for everyone on a lot of levels, but I love it to death.

My partner in crime, Fedule, has never played this game. He has only heard of it by reputation, which I suspect is the case for a lot of you as well (unless you cheated and read Overrated Sage's excellent LP of it), so let's try and keep the spoilers under control, yeah? Do not post anything we have not seen in a video yet outside of spoiler tags.

Table of Contents

Disc One

Part 0: Introduction
Part 1: Cebalrai, the Farming Hamlet
Part 2: Moonguile Forest
Part 3: Nunki Valley
Part 4: Pherkad, the Ancient Capital
Part 5: Lord Rodolfo's Mansion
Part 6: Nashira, the Fishing Village
Part 7: Lesser Celestial River
Part 8: Cloud Passage
Part 9: Sheliak, the Castle Town
Part 10: Castle Elnath
Part 11: The Shrine of Winds
Part 12: Komo Mai, the City of Flowers
Part 13: Ancient Library of Magic
Part 14: Holoholo Jungle
Part 15: Opu, the Waterfall Village
Part 16: The Celestial Tree
Part 17: Heart of the Tree
Part 18: The Trail of Souls
Part 19: Portal to an Outer Dimension
Part 20: Parnasse, the Confectionery Village
Part 21: Detourne, the Mystical Garden
Part 22: Reverence, the Picture Book Village
Part 23: Nekton, the Shrine of Spirits
Part 24: Balancoire, Borough of Illusion
Part 25: Coccolith, Labyrinth of Mirrors

Disc Two

Part 26: Mintaka, the Imperial Capital
Part 27: The Battleship Goldoba
Part 28: Azha, the Mining Village
Part 29: The Lava Caves
Part 30: Mintaka Imperial Fortress
Part 31: Interdimensional Cracks (Part 1)
Part 32: Interdimensional Cracks (Part 2)
Part 33: Interdimensional Cracks (Part 3)
Part 34: The Ice Cliffs of Gomeisa
Part 35: Cursa, the Snowy City
Part 36: Kaffaljidhma, Castle of Ice
Part 37: Mintaka Imperial Fortress Redux
Part 38: The Sanctum of Malpercio
Part 39: A Moment of Respite
Part 40: The Labyrinth of Duhr
Part 41: Gemma Village
Part 42: Capella, the Garden of Death
Part 43: Zosma, Tower of Stones
Part 44: Algorab Village
Part 45: Larikush's Confession
Part 46: The Celestial Alps
Part 47: The Phantom Goldoba
Part 48: Nihal Desert
Part 49: Revenge of the Tower of Zosma
Part 50: The Illusory Fortress
Part 51: Greater Celestial River
Part 52: The Plan
Part 53: Cor Hydrae Castle (Part 1)
Part 54: Cor Hydrae Castle (Part 2)
Part 55: The Final Battle
Part 56: O Mighty Ocean...

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Part 1: Cebalrai Village

It's good to be back, ya'll. Welcome to the world's most fucked up card game.

Oh wow. I had this game and all I can remember of it is one of the party member's weapons. Looking forward to seeing what I totally failed to wrap my head around before.

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This game is super cool and, despite being ~15 years old, still feels like a fresh breath of air within the JRPG genre, at least on the battle system side. Looking forward to this!

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Well this is gonna be interesting.

EDIT: Are you going for a 100% collection? I ask in particular because of the Shampoo.

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I really like the look of the backgrounds.

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Quackles wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 1:22 am
Well this is gonna be interesting.

EDIT: Are you going for a 100% collection? I ask in particular because of the Shampoo.
Fuck no, 100% is a fool's gambit. I'll get as much as I can be bothered to, which will probably be most but not all stuff.

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I'm here for this one. Baten Kaitos remains one of my favorite games, even as jank as it is sometimes.

100% would most definitely be a fools errand though.

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100% is such a fool's errand that even i, as a notably foolish teen, rapidly gave up on 100% card collection

i'm super stoked to see Fedule's reactions to this wonderful wild ride of game :D

This is gonna be something alright. And a long trip in and of itself. Good luck regardless! The battle system is certainly a hallmark (?) of the game.

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Baten Kaitos is a name ive been vaguely aware of since i was a kid but i think this is the first time ive ever sctually seen what it is

The battle theme is great too (The True Mirror). Here's a polsy link for it: http://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=https ... 4FdfaRX8EM

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100% in Baten Kaitos is a fool's errand. I don't blame you in the slightest for not going for it!

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I can say that in my opinion, the game starts to pick up in pace and starts to hit a decent stride by the time you leave Sadaal Suud. The mechanics never did feel like they sat too well in the early game for me, and didn't really pick up until you got better cards than shortsword/longsword tier.

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Roluth wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 4:24 am
The battle theme is great too (The True Mirror). Here's a polsy link for it: http://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=https ... 4FdfaRX8EM
It's really really good! ...But not as good as The Valedictory Elegy, which I will swear until my dying breath is in this game when it is definitely, 100% not. But I guess we'll get to that way down the road.

E: Also major shout-outs to Eternal Sonata in which Sakuraba wanted to see if he could just literally reuse a battle theme and see if anyone noticed.

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Artix wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 5:23 am
It's really really good! ...But not as good as The Valedictory Elegy, which I will swear until my dying breath is in this game when it is definitely, 100% not. But I guess we'll get to that way down the road.
 
Honestly, I entirely forgot how much I missed hearing The True Mirror. I've got a major bias when I say this, but I actually like it just a bit more than Valedictory Elegy. That's mostly nostalgia speaking, but I'm also one of those people who liked Lost Ocean more than Origins. I also quite like Between the Winds, the world map theme for this game.


And regardless of how ridiculous the combat system is, I'll still never get tired of it. That layering of opposite elements, poker numbers, and card combat just connects somewhere in my brain.

I suppose it would also be worth mentioning that a good number of the names the game uses are derived from Arabic, many of which are star names, with Baten Kaitos ("Belly of Cetus") itself being Zeta Ceti and Cebalrai (the Shepherd's Dog) being Beta Ophiuchi.

Not everything is just that, but a lot of the names are simply words from different languages.
 
 

Any plans on the second game? It was the first one I played, so I have fonder memories of it’s own weirdness.

SysL wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 5:33 pm
Any plans on the second game? It was the first one I played, so I have fonder memories of it’s own weirdness.
This is a 70+ hour JRPG in and of itself. We are going to be here a while before that question becomes relevant.

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So for anyone playing along, and in case Artix isn't aware, this game has a tendency to crash Dolphin when playing in Dual Core mode and looking at your photo magnus, particularly when selling them in shops. To avoid this, disable Dual Core mode in the General settings (and hope your CPU is good enough to handle single core performance).

Are there many deadly fruits in this game or are green bananas just that distasteful in this universe?

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Kibayasu wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:15 pm
Are there many deadly fruits in this game or are green bananas just that distasteful in this universe?
There's a couple dangerous food items that can be used as weapons, yes, but it's all part of a mechanic I'm sure Artix will get around to in time.

In this case, these bananas just happen to be ripe enough to hurt when thrown at things.

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Part 2: Moonguile Forest

In which I get the boss theme wrong (It's Vitrolic a Stroke) and it turns out that actually our hero is kind of a terrible person!

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Honestly Kalas is simultaneously a breath of fresh air and utterly insufferable at times. It makes the dialogue options kinda hilarious if you want to make him happy though.

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You could say that Kalas is...callous.

I'll direct myself to the corner.

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EMN wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:47 pm
You could say that Kalas is...callous.

I'll direct myself to the corner.
This is exactly what I thought during that scene also, for what it's worth.

This game is going to be interesting to watch. So many of the choices that have been made here have me scratching my head already, I can't imagine that's going to change any time soon.

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I'm interested in seeing Monolith Soft's older games, so I'm looking forward to following this wild ride.

Also I kind of like the weird voices. Don't ask me why, I don't know.

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He's such an edge-lord and I love it.

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Explopyro wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 6:59 pm

This game is going to be interesting to watch. So many of the choices that have been made here have me scratching my head already, I can't imagine that's going to change any time soon.
Honestly I love this game it's one of my favorite games on the Gamecube which is itself one of my favorite consoles and I do sometimes question just about everything about this game, except for the music that is. The music is totally amazing. But I mean if you want a game that will make you wonder about the mental state of the developers quite regularly this is the game for you.

I wonder if the corpse robbing was left out of the summary to the mayor or if was enthusiastically included.

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oh no this is an isekai

ManyLots wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:59 pm
oh no this is an isekai
All video games are isekai

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It's a simple, but effective, note on Kalas's character that he asks for the direction of the ship on by bringing up Xelha just because he's more likely to get an answer that way. Once he's back talking to the player, his only concern is revenge. Simply put, Kalas really isn't the hero type. I also forgot how specifically bad Xelha's compression is on her lines.

As another note for anyone wondering, that Voice 1 card is a taunt that provides a flat percentage boost to the overall damage you deal in a turn in the same way the poker boosts do. The early ones are really quite minor and numerically aren't worth using presently, but they get better later when that 5% boost could be an extra 50 - 100 damage instead of, like 2. The later Voice cards in general have a much better percentage boost and are readily more usable, but I don't know if Artix is planning on using them or not. In the long run, they're really quite ignorable aside from maybe boosting healing / elemental damage or adding onto an already very large percentage boost.

Also, Artix, if at any point you want me to hold back on explaining details or mechanics just say the word.

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God, this game. I have lot of thoughts on this game. Different parts run the gamut from genius to terrible to downright bizarre.

Also I see what you slipped into that elemental pairs breakdown and I can't wait for the payoff.

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Part 3: Nunki Valley

Thought you had a handle on this game's weirdness? Yeah you did, didn't you, but here comes real-time degradation of your cards. Let it never be said that this game does not commit to its concept, aesthetically or mechanically.

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You cannot cheese the Shampoo or anything else by altering the system clock, because items in this game don't evolve in real time, but rather in *in-game time*. You literally have to play the game for days worth of hours -- or leave the game running, of course -- to evolve that thing. This is actually a good thing, because it would suck to load your save the next day just to see that all your healing items have rotted and now you're stuck against the next boss fight with none of them. It just ends up being a bit silly for a handful of items.


(Also the Shampoo specifically has an age time of 336 hours, which is two weeks. Not just one.)

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I like that Fedule completely missed that they're called Pows because they're obviously pig/cow hybrids. Look at their snouts.

The degradation of cards sounds like a real pain in the ass.

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Oh the changing cards is absolutely a pain, and for an annoyingly long part of the game most of the cards that change are your healing items. The bananas are just one of many. Also it speaks that other than the shampoo the obtuse secret recipes aren't even the worst thing stopping you from getting all the magnus. 100%ing this game is truly a madman's errand.
Last edited by Zaycen on Sun Jul 05, 2020 3:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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So does the game at least give you the shampoo early on? You know, to give it time to evolve over the course of just playing the game?

What kind of indication is there that getting it and keeping it around is in any way Important?

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Weeble wrote:
Sat Jul 04, 2020 5:34 am
So does the game at least give you the shampoo early on? You know, to give it time to evolve over the course of just playing the game?

What kind of indication is there that getting it and keeping it around is in any way Important?
The description is, "Blended with moisturizer for dry, damaged hair. Try it for two weeks. Your hair won't be able to thank you enough. It'll be shiny and healthy."

Fedule's continued incredulity at the basic premise of carrying stuff around in magic cards is great.

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