indigozeal | Entries tagged with playthrough: baten kaitos

Final round-up of Baten Kaitos:
( Fly like the wind )

Well, that about wraps it up! One of the best RPG experiences I've had in recent years, shortcomings notwithstanding. But let's not be sad. There's only one way to close this out.
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Be prepared for a litany of places I was supposed to feel sad and didn't and places I was supposed to feel sad and did and places where I wasn't supposed to feel sad and did anyway.

( Cut )
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I am indeed steamrolling the doom fortress as feared. ( Cut )
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All set for Cor Hydrae. Unfortunately, I missed one element each in most of the game's big sidequests: the Waterlark atop the waterfall in Opu Village for Animals to Wazn; the fellow in the grape suit from Anuenue's dead wife for Quzman's family tree; and the constellation Magnus that was hiding in the Azha mechanic's workshop for the Star Map. It's frustrating to have to miss out on completing these quests all by my lonesome (though I don't think having to talk to Mr. Grapeman three times or look under a barrel that doesn't even give the game's trademark "!" when approached are exactly well-signposted!), but I suppose a 95-97% completion rate isn't too shabby. (On smaller sidequests, I also missed the Picture Book for the Mira schoolteacher and the Adventure Novel for the Mira museum curator. Who exhibits a book, honestly?)

I did like the denouement to the Quzman quest, though, which involves getting together over thirty family members from around the world to witness their patriarch's imminent passing. The man's house fills up with family members as you find them over the globe, everyone gets caught up in fights and reunions and whatnot as more and more people come in, and it really is kind of bustling and heartwarming as you approach the end, when the huge extended family of NPCs is almost back together. (Heartwarming like no actual family reunion!) The Star Map, too, was nicely concluded - the completed map is, like most eye candy in this game, remarkably beautiful.

After dithering between Savyna and Gibari for the third slot in my Xelha-Lyude final team, I ended up settling on the former just because but Gibari has been a bit smug lately. Savyna might not work out, though, as her fire & ice affinities usually end up dinging her attack power rather than enhancing it. (Light is probably the most useful attack element in the game overall, which both Xelha & Lyude have in spades and which certainly will come in handy in Ye Olde Dark Fortress.) Gibari, meanwhile, has been averaging ~2300 per attack round without elemental boosts, whereas the others are around 1800. If Savyna's not the best choice, I can swap Gibari in, no biggie. We *are* overleveled - Lyude is at level 70 right now, with the others at around 68, and I've heard that people usually beat the final boss at 65, so I suppose it doesn't quite matter what party I have. I just hope the game doesn't make Kalas mandatory in the final battle. (A Kefka's Tower multiple-teams-at-once section would be nice, though.)
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Just a few more tidying-up of sidequests, and I think we'll be ready to tackle the final dungeon.

( Cut )
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( Cut )
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While the core design was undoubtedly taken from every heavy metal album cover ever, it strikes me how much Malpercio looks like Sammael.

Currently, the Baten Kaitos party is looking for yet another miracle weapon to take down Malpercio after their latest pick went tits-up (oh, like that's a spoiler; I think they were on their fourth Absolute Last Hope). I suggest they look for a hunting rifle.
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( Cut )
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- I poked around the Empire for a bit, trying to determine where the other party members were being held, but I was not even offered an entrance on the world map to the palace that I believe contained the prison. After no leads materialized, I eventually opted to give up and explore the path toward which the NPCs were trying to railroad me, which was investigating a "dimensional rift" that appeared to have opened near a local landmark in Rainbow Hawaii Land. After venturing through to an inexplicable temple and defeating a boss monster within, I discovered...Savyna, bound to a cross. All your missing party members are held captive thus, in fact - in their own separate temple behind their own separate rifts bound to their own separate crucifixes.

This raises more questions than it resolves: I realize that killing them outright would mean no more game, or at least a very sad storyline development and a heck of a trudge to refill your roster, but why aren't the others in the Imperial prison from which party leader pro tem Xelha escaped? Why are they enshrined in temples? Were they going to be used in some ritual? What makes this disparate band of strangers so special and/or suitable for sacrifice in the dark arts, as opposed to some hapless townsfolk or something? Why go to all this trouble with people of whom it's better swiftly to dispose? And what is it with Japanese game makers and crucifixion, anyway?

- For that matter, how do the characters' wings fit into all this? It's an appealing visual - the game takes place in an archipelago floating in the sky, and most of the characters sport wings that they use in part to get around, but only in crisis situations, like a battle - the rest of the time, they're hidden/disapparated. Imaginatively, they're not all of the angel mold - Xelha, for example, sprouts an iridescent pair of beetle wings, Savyna a spray of peacock feathers (that don't look able to support flight, but anyhow). The people of the mechanized Empire, though, deride those who rely on "Wings of the Heart" instead of machines and technology, and indeed, even the open-minded, curious Lyude, devoid of his kinsmen's chauvinistic attitudes, has no wings. Furthermore, it's a rather big deal plotwise that Kalas was born with only one wing and uses a mechanical prosthetic to compensate, suggesting that there's no way of naturally regaining lost or missing wings through the will or the heart or what have you. Savyna, however, was once part of the Imperial army, during which time one can presume she had no wings - but she clearly has them in the present day. You could probably come up with a couple explanations here, but I guess I'd like more exploration of how people got these wings, how exactly they're linked to a person's heart or mindset, what the significance is of an entire culture spurning a part of their anatomy, etc.

- It occurs to me late that Lyude's brother Skeed (what a name) is really just Kiefer from the Angelique gaiden with a dye job, but it also occurs to me how miniscule an audience there is for that crossover reference.

- It's going to be tough, if not impossible, to replay this game. I'm kind of enjoying being a character in it too much, and that's not an act I can duplicate on a repeat run-through.
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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.

Not entirely unforeseen.

But, goddamn, that was excellent.

(Now to rescue the dweeb. I feel viscerally deprived without his presence.)
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- Your party's resident dweeb has returned to the home he left in the evil empire he fled - the same evil empire that is hunting the party as wanted criminals. His enlisted siblings unsurprisingly track him down, demand he turn in his comrades, and, when he refuses, ready their firearms to execute him. What do you do? Well, if you're Baten Kaitos, you have Lyude's middle-aged nursemaid show up with a freaking assault rifle, take a potshot at his loyalist siblings, and warn them that "next time, I won't miss." I'm afraid my thesis regarding intentionally stiff voice acting didn't survive entirely, as the voice actor kind of muffed Lyude's angst surrounding said nursemaid's death scene, but goddamn if that wasn't glorious. There are characters who've headlined entire games who haven't done as much to distinguish themselves (ahem, Terra and Celes) as this lady.

(Incidentally, in the scant web searching I dare to do on a title I haven't yet finished, I've seen Lyude's story derided as "emo angst." I know my tastes are different, but I kind of like "emo angst." I like it when characters have emotional reactions to things. That's what fiction's for, right?)

- On the other hand, I appreciate Savyna's cool and focused attitude regarding the non-revelation (that'd been heavily hinted previously) that she led the death squads that besieged the poor mining town where the fifth Macguffin is held. She clearly regrets and acknowledges her crime but wants to keep focused on acting in the present to right it. It's a necessary change in perspective, given that Lyude's highly-emotional backstory involves the same incident and you don't want both tales to hit the same note, but it's a intriguing and rather original attitude for a character seeking redemption to take.

- The pacing on the whole Giacomo storyline in the end is exceptionally odd. He and his cronies show up for their boss fight, and just before the conflagration, Giacomo launches a "hey, join me" offer at Kalas, the hero. (Kalas storms that why would he join someone who's killed members of his family, to Giacomo rejoins, "keep your eyes on the past and you miss out on all the future has to offer" - which is an excellent line, from a villainous point of view.) Post-defeat, Giacomo launches into a whole spiel about how he was "meant to inherit" Kalas's power and claims that the man Kalas knew as his grandfather (whom he, Giacomo, killed), was actually his, Giacomo's, father. There's surely more to come on this, but it seems that these plot points could've used room to breathe. The whole "come join me" thing alone could've been fodder for more than it was - almost the first we see of Kalas, he's looting dead bodies, after all. He's kind of #1 with a bullet on the game's Playable Characters Most Likely to Turn list. It would've been nice had these revelations been...revealed before Giacomo had been mortally wounded, when he and Kalas could've actually interacted regarding them.

At least, I think halfway. I'm about to head to the Empire, the last continent in the known world (though there are rumors of a sixth ice continent where we'll undoubtedly have to go to unseal Gariso or something), which should signal that we're nearing the end of disc 1 (of 2). I'm not making a daily log of my travels, but this is the type of game where overall periodic impressions work better than day-by-day updates:

- The game really starts off on the wrong foot. The opening movie is stiff and awkward, the game is really in love with tutorializing basic RPG concepts through dodgily-voiced NPCs, and the main character starts out as a real jerk - halfway through the first dungeon, he's snarkily looting the corpses of the heroine's tragically-deceased companions (as she looks on kind of enchanted, mind). Fortunately, the tutorializing stops, the clouds quickly clear from the heroine's head, and the matter of the ostensible hero being a jerk is not only pointed out but actually becomes a joke among the cast (at one point, he complains mopey-teenager style that they're giving him "the look"). The sheer tide of crisis eventually carries him along, improving his behavior and outlook considerably.

- Voice acting is a big renowned sore spot in this game, but I'm not finding it that horrible - some of the NPCs aren't great, particularly in the early going, but the main heroes are all okay in a somewhat-cartoony vein, and gregarious, assertive fisherman Gibari is actually done quite well. The clear exception is nebbish, endearingly earnest Imperial conscientious objector Lyude, and holy shit I would need an entire entry to talk about Lyude properly, but the short of it is that I'm becoming less and less sure as I play that his awkward voice acting and hilariously stiff attempts at heroic battle cries are a mistake instead of a conscious choice. He's a genuine delight of characterization and one of my favorite things about the game.

- As for the real low point of the enterprise, that would be the villains, who are all cartoony cutouts. The hero's personal antagonist is voiced like the villain in a Disney romance (which isn't bad-quality voice acting in itself but comes off as gratingly bad by how heavily it's derived from cliche), and the low-rent Kefka knockoff ends up being the best-realized member of the crew. The Emperor himself is actually interesting design-wise - he's maquillaged like a character in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, and his voice acting is both refreshingly free of hokeyness and genuinely menacing - but you don't see him that much, as we seem to be building up a Jeal & Sadoul situation, if you get my out-of-place lesser Working Designs references.

- The other weak point: The sixth and last character to join the party is a magician named "the Great Mizuti" who wears a huge carved mask with exaggerated lips and mouth and speaks in a childish pidgin. He's kind of a secondary mascot character (you're given a genuinely cute bouncing-bird-type creature to fulfill the role of primary mascot) but is obnoxiously Jar Jar-esque and completely out-of-place among the other heroes.

- I believe I've said this before, but I'm not used to PS2 era-onward RPG running times. I'm over twenty hours in, and I'm kind of ready for the game to start wrapping up. I'm not sick of it (and the game so far has been remarkably free of filler); it just seems that the quest should be drawing to a close by this point. They seem to be heavily hinting at a FF6 World of Ruin scenario upcoming, and as that'd be genuinely distressing given the truly lovely world design, I hope we're instead just in for a Chrono Trigger-esque sidequest-filled last act.

- To the previously-praised Cloud Land and Rainbow Hawaii Land, I can now add LSD Land, which is accessed by sailing through an extended psychedelic light show, scintillates on the map screen like a hallucination amidst a sitar-heavy trippy soundtrack, and features both a village of munchies and a village of brilliantly-colored exaggerated picture-book cutouts. This freaking game. (Honestly, though: Baten Kaitos's art direction is wonderful and frequently brilliant.)

- Interestingly, we seem to have another FFX/FFXII scenario where the female lead is the actual protagonist and story catalyst, not the male face of the game. (The game does in fact acknowledge this at a couple points, referring to the party as the heroine's companions rather than the hero's.)

- So far, I'd put the game as one of the best of the second-tier productions. It has first-class production values but isn't going for the big emotions and is too cartoony to be transcendent. It excels so in certain other areas that I wish it'd aim a bit higher with the story.

- A neat touch: in every town, you can encounter numerous members of the mascot-character bird-creatures who're kept as pets on this world. If you talk to them, you'll see a short exchange between them and the party's personal bird-creature. The conversation varies every time (with "squeak?"s or "squ-squeak"s or "squeak!!"s). You'll never know what they're saying, however. It reminds me of Star Trek IV, with the alien probe that had traveled light-years to talk to humpback whales. Sometimes, the human race isn't the be-all end-all.
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For his stream's latest feature title, supergreatfriend has been playing Indigo Prophecy, and, man, not even live chat can save this game. If, like I was, you are largely unfamiliar with Indigo Prophecy, you're probably aware of its reputation for completely wrecking a supposedly good plot with an insane, intractable twist. I haven't any idea of what this twist is, but I take issue with the "good plot" assertion; it's a distillation of every Hollywood thriller/cop movie over the last twenty years, with hardly an original thought, scene, or line to be found, spaced out over an interminable length. When it finally got to a scene that should've been grandiosely outre (murder suspect chased by giant hallucinatory ticks through cubicles in his IT office), I couldn't have been more bored.

David Cage is praised first and foremost for how much his games play like interactive films, but, paradoxically, the more Indigo Prophecy succeeds in its goal of emulating a movie, the more boring it is. It's the same "I've seen this already" problem with the Empire plots, but I think here that it's a problem of concept itself more than execution: the end goal of the recent triple-A push to make games supposedly feel like movies is to make an inferior copy of a product I've experienced a thousand times before. Games aren't going to get better at being movies than movies are, and chasing that goal without embracing at least some of the strengths of the medium is just going to make your work seem as glaringly derivative as it is. The only gamelike interactive things Indigo Prophecy boasts (besides occasional "choose which cliche the droning plot will follow next" minor story branching) are lengthy distractions - play your guitar; put an LP on your turntable; wash your hands. Not a bonus, when the pacing is glacial as it is.

As mentioned, I've been playing Baten Kaitos, and while it's not a flawless interactive experience (its aforementioned basic Empire plot; some dodgy voice acting), it's so far given me the opportunity to explore a castle made of luminescent clouds, a Hawaii-like jungle kingdom with a cultural predilection for vivid rainbow palettes, and a world of flying islands founded atop a neverending sea of poisonous miasma, whose greatest myth is an unimaginably deep and vast pool of water known as the Ocean that once engulfed their world. I'm not saying that fantasy is flatly superior to an attempt at real-life drama, but I'll happily take a flawed expression of true ambition and imagination over the neverending samey deluge of knockoff dreck to which too many producers are aspiring nowadays.
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I've begun playing Baten Kaitos, and last session, I happened upon the game's main plot, about the machinations of a power-hungry Empire. I got Legend of Heroes 3 a couple days ago, and the only story the manual mentions is about the looming threat of a rapacious Empire. I open an article about the revamped Final Fantasy XIV, and the new plot, meant as FF6 fanservice, centers on an expanding Empire.

I know only one of those titles was made in the last five years, but: enough with the freaking Empires already. It's not like there are multiple surprising directions in which that plot can go. I wonder why I spend so much time with dinky amateur RPG Maker titles, and yet I remember the plots: a little girl is trapped in an otherworldly art museum; a mute hikikomori neglects real life in favor of exploring malevolent dreamscapes; an amnesiac is guided by a psychologist to sort through her remaining shred of memory and recover her identity. Yes, there's a common thread throughout these games of surreal mindscapes turned tangible, but it's one that invites variation and imagination. The progression and denouement of the Empire plot is predetermined virtually from its inception, and yet so many RPGs default to it.

(That said, I can think of a couple cases where an Empire plot was explored from a legitimately new perspective, but both diverge in significant ways from the traditional yarn. The Angelique side-story novel Beneath Wings of Black is set in an Empire whose reach is total, with no legitimate challengers to its dominion, which allows for an intriguing exploration of the decadent culture and economy of a world that gives its foremost citizens no real option to be good. The tale focuses on a distaff and relatively upstanding member of the royal family legitimately wronged by his kin and follows him and his supporters as they are thoroughly corrupted by what they have to do to grow powerful enough to pose a legitimate challenge to the establishment. Additionally, the Silver Star games of the Lunar series - which is quality but no bastion of nontraditionalism - feature a looming Empire that must be challenged by a few plucky kids, but said Empire isn't yet all-powerful at the start of the game; it's relatively nascent and hidden in a region sealed away from the rest of a the world, which doesn't even know of said Empire's existence at the beginning of the story. When it finally breaks its bonds at the game's climax, its dominance over the rest of the world is instant and total, not protracted over the entire length of the narrative, which is devoted more to exploring the historical issues and racial injustices that enabled its rise. That said, Silver Star's Empire plotline is still backseat to a strong character- and values-based conflict.)
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