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I’ve never played Baten Kaitos or its sequel when they came out on the Gamecube. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to review Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster when I saw that Bandai Namco had released it on Steam!
Considering its age, it’s not surprising I’ve not played the games. I was a teen back when both games released and money wasn’t exactly free flowing. Yeah, I had a Gamecube but I only got the essentials for the machine.
You know, must haves. Super Mario Sunshine. Rogue Leader. Metroid Prime. Those kind of big hitters.
Like it or not, the Baten Kaitos games are mid-tier at best. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t a bit sad at the missed opportunity. I suppose I could’ve just emulated the games these last few years, but then I never did get around to that.
Lucky me, now I don’t need to!
So the games are now out on Steam and HD remastered to boot! Are they now worth playing?
What is Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster?
Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster is a compilation of Baten Kaitos and Baiten Kaitos Origins (also called Baten Kaitos II). Both games were original developed by Monolith Software (creators of the Xenosaga and Xenoblade games) and tri-Cresendo and published by Namco (for Baten Kaitos) and Nintendo (for Baten Kaitos II).
I have no idea how Bandai Namco got the publishing rights for the sequel, but on Steam both games are published by them.
Incidentally, our copy was gifted to us by our friends at Bandai Namco!
In case you’re wondering how to start the games, you should start with the second game (Baten Kaitos Origins) before you make your way to the original. Origins takes place twenty years before the plot of the original game and playing it first, lets you continue the plot in a much more linear fashion.
Or you could play them in any order you choose. It’s not like the game saves carry over or unlock anything, which is a missed opportunity if you asked me.
Gameplay wise, both games are standard JRPG fare. You and your party members go town to town advancing the plot in that area before moving on. This isn’t an open ended game, and if you hate linearity in RPGs, don’t even bother.
The games’ claim to fame solely lies in their card based battle system. The cards (or Magnus as they’re called in the games) represent attacks or items you can use. Before battle, you pick which ones to have in your deck and when you engage, they’re randomly chosen for you to use when it’s your turn.
The cards can be offensive, defensive or both and chaining them together can great combos, enhancing their effectiveness further.
I don’t really vibe with it though. I feel that it’s much too open to chance. I’ve had battles where the only cards I got for multiple turns were for items or defensive purposes. Instead of facilitating smooth fights, they just made the draggy battles much longer!
Yes, Baten Katos Origins’ take on the card system is MUCH better, but even then, the game’s fights tend to drag on when you compare to other JRPGs.
Like Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII, VIII and XI remasters, Bandai Namco’s injected some cheats into the game.
You can access them anytime from the Pause Menu, and activate them whenever you’re out of battle. Of the 6, most are rather useful…except for the Auto-Battle feature.
The AI in the auto-battles REALLY REALLY suck. They’ll regularly waste turns for no reason, opting to heal or pass when you can use attack cards. As a consequence, your characters usually get hammered more than they need to.
Needless to say, I urge you…NEVER use the game’s auto-battle system unless you really, really need to.
I’m actually a bit surprised that there’s no Infinite Money or any sort of XP multiplier to make the grinding and leveling faster. It’s a bit of a moot point with the one-hit kill option, but sometimes you just want to grind (in a shorter amount of time).
I’m still super grateful to Bandai Namco for adding a speed up option to the game. The battles are already ponderously dragged out as they are when sped up and I shudder to imagine how it was like to have to sit through them at their normal pace.
The visuals in the Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster are actually pretty well done for the most part. The 3D models look super sharp when viewed up close. Sure, the models are dated looking, but at least the textures aren’t blurry.
It’s too bad that no work was done to beef up the polygon count for the models. It won’t make the games better mechanically, but hey, at least the battles would look better!
That’s a point clearly missed with whoever did the upscaling on the backgrounds.
Since the backgrounds are mostly prerendered (instead of actual 3D models), I don’t honestly know why they weren’t improved to a higher quality. There’s no way to even affect their quality level in the game’s options menu, which is a glaring omission for a PC port.
Sure, this might be a port of the Nintendo Switch version (which would certainly explain why Bandai Namco didn’t go all in for the visuals) but PC gamers have standards.
Despite the 3D model textures getting a leg up, the backgrounds aren’t as nice to look at. In fact, some of them are downright muddy looking and it’s really hard to know where you can move (or climb or clamber) around in.
The Bottom Line.
Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster is a decent collection of two forgotten games from the Gamecube era. While sometimes, forgotten games can turn out to be gems, that’s really not the case for these two.
The Baten Kaitos games were ignored because they kind of sucked.
Bandai Namco has to be commended for having the cajones to remaster the games and even update them with cheats though. Due to that, they’ve actually made the battles much more bearable. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that the games aren’t really that fun no matter how much you gussy it up.
Both games have forgettable plots, music, characters and a clunky battle system that tends to overstay its welcome. It’s undoubtedly a pleasant surprise for Baten Kaitos fans to be able to play this remaster, but if I had to pick which Monolith Software series really deserved a remaster, it would be the Xenosaga games.
Come on Bandai Namco…when are those remasters coming?
TLDR:
A decent remaster effort but the Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster is still let down by the games’ quality more than anything else.
The Good:
- Cheats make the games better!
- HD texture work is pretty good.
- 2 games in one compilation.
The Bad:
- The card battle system is clunky and drags on.
- The battle system leaves too much to chance.
- Muddy looking backgrounds.
- Average games in every aspect.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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