[GC] How is Baten Kaitos?

[Ridah]

I just picked up Baten Kaitos for the GameCube because I had heard a lot of positive things about it, but I wanted to hear from some of you guys on how it is compared to other RPG's on the PS2 and such?

[EddieA]

I'm about halfway through, and I'm enjoying it a lot.  It's an incredibly beautiful game, with amazing and creative backgrounds.  The voice acting isn't the best (although I don't think it's as bad as most people seem to), but the music is great.  The battles are fun, and the randomly-dealt cards make each battle a little different, something very important to me in RPGs, given that you fight the same enemies over and over again.

[JCC]

I haven't played it for a while since Fire Emblem came out and distracted me from it. The graphics are fantastic. The voice acting is awful - among the worst I have ever heard in a game. The story was pretty uninteresting to me, though I was only maybe 10 hours in.

I did like the card battle system a lot, other than the stupid initial timer being impossibly short (on defense).

Hopefully, I will get back to it someday.

[Gratch]

I really enjoyed Baten Kaitos.  The artwork was jaw-droppingly beautiful, I enjoyed the card battle mechanic, the story and characters were decent, and the music was very well done.

But - and this is a big but - having a timer on card selection really ended up killing the game for me.  When you get further on in the game, you only have 1-2 seconds to choose which card to play.  It constantly felt like I was scrambling just to find cards and often losing battles simply because I couldn't select the correct card in time.  It was a huge frustration, and ultimately made me quit playing.  I think that if they had removed that card timer, BK would be one of my favorites.  As it stands, it was a good game marred by a terrible and completely aggravating design choice.

EDIT:  I also thought the voice acting is possibly the worst I've ever heard in a game.  Thankfully, you can turn the voices off.

[Purge]

+1 on the bad voice acting; it makes the Dynasty Warriors series seem top-notch. ::shudder::

I got tired of the card battle thing; I preferred Phantom Dust a LOT more on Xbox. (it also sported the bad voice acting and cliche'd JRPG storyline)

[Andrew Mallon]

I think Baten Kaitos is terrible. Beyond the horrible voice acting the story and setting are so generic that it's painful. The card combat doesn't have a lot of depth to it and the timer yanks away what little depth remains. The graphics in the game are nice, but the aesthetic wears off after the first couple of hours.

[Interloper]

I played it through to the last battle.  I liked it for the most part, but as time went on, I found myself extremely bored with the plot and characters.  And yeah, it has the most horrid voice acting I've heard in any game I've played.  The last battle is a tough one, and I tried several times.  Eventually I lost interest and gave up trying again, and just last week I traded it in without beating it.  I liked the novelty of the cards at first, but as I went along I found myself frustrated by it.  It has great graphics for the GC, however, and a couple of the songs weren't bad.  Great spell effects.