Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is an RPG published by Namco Bandai for the Gamecube. The main thing that differentiates this game from other RPGs is the card system. The game revolves around the use of cards called magnus. Magnus capture the essences of real life items. A magnus of an apple will heal you but after a certain amount of time passes on your save file the apple may become a rotten apple which may have a 60% chance of poison. This is a very intuitive thing in the game with the whole time quests and time items. The way this works is like in real life, if you have a magnus for bananas at 3 hours on your save at around 6 hours they will become rotten bananas. This time system has nothing to do with the story at all and only has to do with getting extra cards and doing a couple of side quests but it is still a very neat effect. The way battle works is you are dealt a certain amount of cards, you pick these cards to chain combos together each card normally having a type of element. There is so much strategy involved in the cards if one wants to play efficiently. The first form of strategy comes in the elements. There are six elements: Light, Dark, Wind, Chronos, Fire, Water. With Light canceling Dark, Wind Canceling Chronos, Fire canceling Water and the other way around. This involves strategy because if you are dealt many chronos attacks but then a very powerful wind finisher it would be best to wait a few seconds instead of picking that card because the element with the most damage will get the amount of damage normally dealt by the other element subtracted by its total. This may sound complicated but it is really simple in game and a feature which you will easily learn to use. The second part of strategy comes in number combos. Like a real deck of cards the cards dealt to you are labeled with multiple numbers, using the c stick to pick a number for each card not only can you string 9 fire attacks but you can string together 9 fire attacks all labeled with a 5 which increases damage percent by a lot. This is the second strategy which actually will take a lot of thinking. This is were my problem with the game is, the randomness of the decks and the amount of time given to you to decide your choice. Strategizing with the numbers is something I myself never really got into doing because of the complications of deciding which numbers to go for then realizing that you do not have enough time and your turn for that character is up. That is the one and only complaint with the game. On to the most important part of any good RPG, the story. The story starts off with everyone in your team searching for the end magnus which have the power to unleash the beast if you will. Each end magnus represents a "part" of the beast which would be summoned if all cards were used. You have a total of 6 controllable characters with a total of 3 in your party at any time. The characters all come from different backgrounds as you would expect. Throughout the story you learn more background of each characters life and story. Most significant in my opinion Mizuti's because it drops a bombshell on you that I kind of though would happen but wasn't really expecting it. Overall Baten Kaitos is an RPG that will have you drawn in for the 70+ hours you will play it. With its Great story and amazingly strategic gameplay having this game in your position is a big plus no matter what price you may have to pay.