Baten Kaitos, post-Lava Caves

So I guessed that the seemingly-sweet princess Melodia had actually stolen the single one of the magical Macguffins we had managed to keep from the enemy when she "accidentally" bumped into Kalas and she was actually the "real" villain. As sort-of mentioned in the previous one of these entries, I was kind of looking skanceways at Kalas considering his behavior at various spots in the game (my eyebrows were rather raised when Kalas mentioned that he had "one more thing to do" after killing Giacomo and was going to, after mentioning my suspicions about Melodia, make a throwaway "how many evil people do we have here, anyway" comment). I did not, however, fully anticipate that Kalas had been in on it from the absolute start, a fully-integrated part of the villain's own plan instead of a maverick with his own, possibly-ill agenda, or for him to so enthusiastically embrace his heel turn. That was the best mwa-ha-ha flipout this side of Dietrich Troy, and at Kalas's triumphant, deranged speech as the screen went black, I actually got a feeling in the pit of my stomach - was this it? Had I reached a bad end? (The player is treated as an actual character in Baten Kaitos, a "guardian spirit" that has bonded with Kalas, and the manual mentions that the strength of your "bond" with Kalas can affect the ending.) I was actually kind of unsettled - I didn't want this crew to have a bad end; I didn't want to abandon them in bad circumstances that were perhaps the result of my faulty choices, and I don't think I'll fully calm down until everyone is rescued, now that we've started the Searching for Friends portion of the proceedings. (You know Lyude's jerk siblings are working him over daily in that prison.)

See, that's another thing: despite the spots of rough voice acting and cartoony villains, I'm actually involved in this game. Not that I haven't been with other titles I've played relatively recently, but I actually care about and fret over what happens to the heroes to a considerably greater degree than usual here. For another example, I did not figure out the Melodia thing in time to answer anything but "I don't know" to the "do you know who took the Magnus?" question. I might've been able to help the characters out, but things didn't click for me soon enough for me to be of use. The whole "you're a character in the story" thing might be dismissed as a gimmick, but I actually felt that I had let our little band down.

The game resumes post-apocalypse by having your guardian-spirit character glom onto kind, proactive heroine Xelha instead, which raises some interesting questions: If Kalas comes to his senses and rejoins, do I have to take him back - rebond with him, so to speak? Can I make my switch of allegiance to Xelha permanent? Or do we have to take Kalas back into our ranks at all? Is a permanent-heel-turn run one of the possible endings to which the manual referred? I'm anxious to find out, actually. Kalas was often a poor hero per se, with all the grave-robbing and self-interest, but by the game acknowledging the issues with his behavior and making them clues to his true nature instead of passing them off as speed bumps or character quirks is far more interesting than anything, say, Alex from Lunar 1 got up to. Great job, game.

Game-related book shopping list

Barring those original magazine printings of Vheen Hikuusen and that Clock Tower: Ghost Head manga I'll probably never find...

- Illbleed guide. Scans from past Yahoo auctions show it has what I believe is background info on the movie scenarios that make up the game's stages, displayed in the form of movie posters and press kits. Considering how crazy the game itself is, I can only imagine how the background lore is.

- Silent Hill 4 complete guide. There's another, apparently less-complete version of this guide that was released...just a month? before (a trend I just don't get - incomplete guides, I mean; don't spare the spoilers, people, they're what I'm paying you for). Just want to see if it has any more background info.

- The doujinshi anthology Angelique Treasure, detailed here, because while I don't really go in for the official fan-comic books (Angelique has a ton of them), apparently Vheen Hikuusen artist Akari Funato drew a story for this volume, a short piece with Collet & Victor that seems appearance-wise to be an alpha of Under the Rose.

- More Baten Kaitos infatuation: mega expensive artbook, strategy guide that's a partial artbook, comic anthology, novel 1, novel 2.

- 999 novels. A two-parter. Novels of a visual novel. Jokes aside, I'm interested to see how they adapted the branching/parallel storyline.

- Not a guidebook, but there's an issue of the old U.S. game magazine Game Players - here it is - that featured a bunch of 8-page-or-so looks at early Genesis games. I pored over the Phantasy Star II article again and again when I was a kid - it laid out its screenshots not as a strategy guide or linear narrative, just as a series of snapshots of places and people you encountered on the journey, and I fell in love with the world and artstyle. The magazine isn't scanned anywhere that I can tell, and I'd like to read it again.

Now all I need is five hundred extra dollars.
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