@“RubySunrise”#p133466 I’m wondering if it’s better to keep an equal number of different elemental attack cards in my deck to cover various enemy weaknesses, or to stack just one type to avoid opposite types canceling each other out. Obviously, I wouldn’t play a water and fire attack in the same combo, but it feels unoptimal when I get a hand with 1 defense card, 1 water atk, and 1 fire atk, and I end up just attacking with one card.
You’ve probably figured it out if you’ve played more of the game but once you have multiple spellcaster-type party members the best strategy is usually to specialize each one’s deck with up to three non-conflicting elements (typically guided by the elements of their unique finisher moves) so you don’t end up risking a hand of element cards that cancel each other out. For the early game you just switch off Xelha’s deck for water and fire loadouts depending on the weaknesses of enemies in a given area.
@"2501"#p134305 Also meant to mention here that Xelha’s name is a reference to Schala from _Chrono Trigger_, and hey what do you know she also has a mystical magic pendant lol
@“2501”#p135250 once you have multiple spellcaster-type party members the best strategy is usually to specialize each one’s deck with up to three non-conflicting elements (typically guided by the elements of their unique finisher moves)
The QoL functions I’m now realizing also mess with the game’s balancing, not just its pace, because animation speed/reaction time is mechanically relevant when playing/chaining your cards and the increased battle speeds as far as I can tell don’t pause to give you the same reaction windows as normal-speed battles. This isn’t a big deal in the early game where your reaction windows are pretty generous, but every time you class up your party members their command selection time narrows. By the late game I expect playing at higher speeds could make it much harder to optimize combos. Also since actual time passage affects some items, altering game speed is mechanically relevant in another way!
The option to hide detailed damage info after every attack is also a bit of a trap, because while it makes battles flow faster it also hides strategically important info made visible only on the damage calculations screen: enemy weaknesses and resistances, enemy attack properties, bonus percentages from card combos, etc. So it’s really only for areas where you already know the enemies by heart. I’ve found the battle results on, 200% battle speed option works decently for dungeon mobs but I dread getting caught in an actually tough battle with those settings on.
Players who turn the ordinary game speed multipliers on so you just zip across these lavish backgrounds are I think in denial about JRPGs being a naturally slow-paced genre, and this one in particular making a huge virtue of soaking in the ambiance. Couldn’t be me.
Would you all recommend Baten Kaitos to play during holiday travels? I could get down with a slow-paced low-key RPG for my upcoming airports and train rides. Is this the kind of game that doesn't really demand your full attention? Or am I better off waiting until I can really get invested in the story, the game systems, soaking in presentation and audio, etc?
Is the text and UI good and readable in handheld mode?
This comment has me very interested:
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@“whatsarobot”#p134766 Baten Kaitos really is wonderful. I’ve been taking it ridiculously slowly, sipping at it for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. But it remains in my mind, where I can luxuriate in its vibe whenever I like.
@“Tradegood”#p144831 I would say this game is really good for what you’re describing. And I’m someone who is currently in the middle of holiday travels, bopping around between a few different games, including this one.
debated importing this recently, but i'd heard the originals might be better, even without the QOL stuff? ill have a GCloader setup soon, thinking that might be the way to go
i'd slept on these & assumed they might not be for me, as i was part of the crowd that didn't appreciate chrono cross at it's release, since it was so very different an entry. in the years since, i've come to dig its art style & superior OST, so i think i'm more ready for this one now
@“Tradegood”#p144831 I‘ve also been playing Baten Kaitos very slowly, in 15 minute bursts a lot of the time with a few longer sessions over Thanksgiving. I get the sense that I could go really deep into trying to find some of the more obscure items and side quests in the game, but I just like talking to the NPCs, doing some card-based battles, and rolling with a story that has good things going on but isn’t taxing to follow.
@“Tradegood”#p144831 I’ve been hesitant to play too much in handheld mode because it’s a slow-paced game that really wants you to breathe in the atmospheric visuals and music - but it totally is playable in handheld mode all the same.
@"IrishNinja"#p144987 The only advantage of the Gamecube versions over the remaster that I’m aware of is the presence of English audio tracks! The UI is certainly designed for a Gamecube controller but that’s not a huge obstacle.
I take back what I said, this is kind of great to play in handheld mode on a long trip. The matte-like backgrounds look great on the little tablet screen and the limitations of the polygons are less obvious. Flashbacks to playing PS1 classics on PSP, in the best of ways.
Revisiting this back to back with FF7 Expanded Universe media it’s striking how muted and mature the writing and aesthetics are here by comparison to the nowadays JRPG norm even as it’s still covering the pop fantasy adventure basics (evil empire, etc.). There’s just a layer of raw detail and nuance put into everything that’s easy to miss if you’re just looking at the bullet points or watching the cutscenes on Youtube. There are no _moe_ or lolicon characters or other crass otaku pandering bits. The “hero” character is a cynical realist in a genre that’s direly overpopulated by twinkle-eyed boy scouts - I love this. Characters talk about the Evil Empire’s political motives and the effects of their activity on trade and agriculture. You walk into one room after a dramatic battle setpiece and you find an NPC saying Imperials are people too and asking what could drive them to this; walk into another room and find an NPC saying the Imperials killed his friend and now he’s going to kill them back. The game doesn’t give you any heavyhanded tells that one guy is stupid and wrong and the other is smart and just; you’re allowed to use your own judgment. Later in the game you travel to the imperial capital undercover and talk to ordinary citizens and you find a lot of true believers in the imperial propaganda who can’t or won’t see the world outside of their iron bubble, but also people critical of the regime and even a kid who helps you outright because he’s done a lot of reading and concluded imperialism is Wrong.
No ingredient is just a carbon copy of another popular game with zero independent thought put into it. The writers and designers so obviously cared a lot about the world they were creating and making it feel alive independent of the player’s party. It’s not a 10/10 game but I so badly miss stuff like this. Also even though the score is Sakuraba’s all-time greatest I still wish it could have been Mitsuda lol
I got to sit in front of a television on a comfortable couch and take a real tasty bite out of this game for the first time. I'm having a good time. Each location is uniquely beautiful. All the dancing townspeople in Koko Mai made me laugh, but also the introduction section captures the empty feeling of celebration well, even if some people are genuine.
I've really started to flow with the battle system. It's satisfying to make little tweaks to my party/decks to make navigating a dungeon quicker. If I get it right, sticking around to do the extra little puzzles for some extra magus is no sweat. It feels rewarding. Right now I'm great at maximizing my attacks but lousy at figuring out a good defense. I still find it confusing which damage types get through other damage types. I've developed a semi effective healing card strategy to counteract all the damage I take, but I also spend money on the onr-use-only healing items in town.
This is all part of the satisfaction for me, though. If I find a good strategy, then I can reliably heal my party and keep them healed while exploring all the way up to the boss fight. If not, I take too much damage and am forced to use the items. I guess I like to keep them as an insurance policy.
I love how mysterious "spirit attacks" are. Occasionally one of the cards in Kalas's hand will transform into a mega powerful attack. I guess it's dependent on the guardian spirit's (that's you, the player) bond with him. Strengthen your bond by answering the rather infrequent questions he poses to you in a way he'll like. No real way of knowing what he'll like. I think he's turned a corner as a character, because I always choose the most helpful option. I've started getting a lot more spirit attacks lately. I think I'm rubbing off on him!
@“RubySunrise”#p147631 I still find it confusing which damage types get through other damage types.
Basically the six elements are divided into three opposing pairs with contradictory damage types:
- fire (red) <-> aqua (dark blue)
- light (white) <-> shadow (black)
And the confusing one,
- wind (light blue) <-> chronos (green)
Damage from enemy elements will cancel out in combos; elemental attacks will do more or less damage than usual if the target has an elemental affinity opposed or matched to the attack type; **only** cards of the opposed element can block elemental damage on defense.
It’s not the most elegant system and makes a lot of defense cards in particular highly situational. On my Gamecube playthrough back in the day I tried to minimize deck editing and menu busywork by specializing different characters in different elements, but the early game with its limited selection of characters and cards doesn’t exactly give you that option.
On the topic of spirit attacks… without going into too much detail, I will only mention that Xelha gets spirit attacks as well…
@“RubySunrise”#p147631 Once I finish either the games or the book I have queued up now, I want to get back to Baten Kaitos. I played about 8 hours, just enough to really enjoy the first several locations and the battle system getting more complex. Kalas and Xelha feel like a more contentious variant of Serge and Kid: from silent to amoral, from positive and persistent to downright dismayed.
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You walk into one room after a dramatic battle setpiece and you find an NPC saying Imperials are people too and asking what could drive them to this; walk into another room and find an NPC saying the Imperials killed his friend and now he’s going to kill them back. The game doesn’t give you any heavyhanded tells that one guy is stupid and wrong and the other is smart and just; you’re allowed to use your own judgment. Later in the game you travel to the imperial capital undercover and talk to ordinary citizens and you find a lot of true believers in the imperial propaganda who can’t or won’t see the world outside of their iron bubble, but also people critical of the regime and even a kid who helps you outright because he’s done a lot of reading and concluded imperialism is Wrong.
Yeah, the dialogue writing is good stuff. I found myself back in the habit of talking to every NPC, just to soak in all the different voices and perspectives. It's a good way to trip into some side quests too, though that isn't really my goal.
@“2501”#p147652 so do enemy attacks do some amount of neutral damage too? I believe I almost always block 100% of the neutral damage, but fail to block the elemental damage.
And yeah, I can envision specializing the decks in the way you describe, but I don't have that many characters yet, or cards. I'm in the abandoned magic library on Anuenue. The combat system has only recently started to feel customizable and robust, but nothing has been too difficult so far.
@“RubySunrise”#p147689 iirc that is correct - there is elemental damage and neutral damage. i don‘t think it’s possible to totally block damage during the defense phase, unless you combine elemental neutralization and card combos like straights and flushes. i could be misremembering though!
@“leah”#p147695 No you can definitely block 100% damage just based on having the right defense cards. At least in theory. Enemies will use a combination of neutral damage attacks and elemental damage attacks usually. Elemental defense cards also usually have some smaller neutral damage defense value. In theory if you drew a hand of very strong defense cards appropriately matched to the enemy damage type(s) you could fully block an attack sequence, especially against a lower level enemy. The catch is for this to happen consistently you’d need to specialize your deck so heavily in defense that you risk having weak attack sequences or entirely dead turns, since playing a defense-only card on offense instantly ends the turn. I’m pretty sure it’s better to make defense-only cards a low % of your deck and just give one or more characters a couple good healing cards. (It’s not hard to find cards that will heal a large percentage of health relative to where you are in the game - the catch is they’re usually food items that will eventually go bad!)
The game’s not very hard so you’ll never be punished too harshly for failing to fully optimize all the mechanics, although it’s interesting that leveling up happens manually and you get small growth bonuses for saving up levels to gain a lot at once. I’m pretty sure there’s actually a “New Game minus” mode where you can carry over your endgame inventory but have to play the whole game at level 1? Or something like that. I’m curious how that plays.
This week I finally finished Baten Kaitos 1&2. I used a GAMEFAQ's guide to get through it and probably would have found it impossible without a guide. I only got soft-locked once! I enjoyed both games and was glad I played 1 first and 2 second because I found the battle system of 2 to be a lot more streamlined and it likely would have been an awkward transition had I played the prequel first.
I enjoyed _the shit_ out of both games and wish there was MORE out there to scratch this itch. It's been a while since I played a full length JRPG so this was a change of pace for me.
Thank you to this thread for recommending it! I likely wouldnt have played it otherwise.
Hey everyone, I recently got Baten Kaitos remastered collection on sale on switch. I really liked Xenoblade 1,3 so wanted another game by similar devs. anyway funny thing, I wasn’t too far into it, and got to the quest to get a spider web and was not winning the fight no matter what I tried. So somewhere I missed how to level up at the church? Doh! I had already got 4 levels acquired. Once I did that I was on my way. Anyway just popping in to say the music is super cool and the colors and the designs are nice and very different.
