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New Baten Kaitos screens
- Thread starter Wario64
- Start date
Dragona Akehi
Retired
Meh to it looking fantastic. Well it isn't that bad. Heh.
The BG do look spoogerific, but the models are sorely lacking polygons. God forbid if you're an enemy... it looks like they stole a few from the DreamCast.
The artstyle is wonderful though. I love the art nouveau/aztec/maya combination.
God I hate the FMV intro though. The characters look nothing like it. (For instance Lyude looks like a pansy ass in the FMV, complete with pansy voice, and in the actual game he is a total badass.)
The BG do look spoogerific, but the models are sorely lacking polygons. God forbid if you're an enemy... it looks like they stole a few from the DreamCast.
The artstyle is wonderful though. I love the art nouveau/aztec/maya combination.
God I hate the FMV intro though. The characters look nothing like it. (For instance Lyude looks like a pansy ass in the FMV, complete with pansy voice, and in the actual game he is a total badass.)
Dragona Akehi
Retired
Combat rocks. PGC is down but I'd link you to my review which basically explains the entire thing. It feels like a tri-Ace game.
Basically cards just symbolize commands. Which means item, attacks and defense. That's right kiddos, you can have a Banana card (which will rot eventually, really cool) to heal yourself with!
The really neat thing is how damage is calculated. Basically here's how it goes, where <> means "negates each other":
Water <> Fire
Earth<>Wind
Light<>Shadow
Physical <> Physical
So to defend against a physical attack you have to have a card with physical damage protection... but get this: to negate the damage of a FIRE attack, you have to use a WATER armour.
And, when you're attacking, if you use two opposing elements together they'll NEGATE each other (say you have 15 Fire and 14 Water, you'll end up with 1 Fire damage).
It's really awesome. The only thing that really kinda sucks is the lack of any sort of use for Money. It's really wanting to be a dungeon crawler in the vein of Valkyrie Profile, but because of the storyline, has to concede to some RPG conventions.
Basically cards just symbolize commands. Which means item, attacks and defense. That's right kiddos, you can have a Banana card (which will rot eventually, really cool) to heal yourself with!
The really neat thing is how damage is calculated. Basically here's how it goes, where <> means "negates each other":
Water <> Fire
Earth<>Wind
Light<>Shadow
Physical <> Physical
So to defend against a physical attack you have to have a card with physical damage protection... but get this: to negate the damage of a FIRE attack, you have to use a WATER armour.
And, when you're attacking, if you use two opposing elements together they'll NEGATE each other (say you have 15 Fire and 14 Water, you'll end up with 1 Fire damage).
It's really awesome. The only thing that really kinda sucks is the lack of any sort of use for Money. It's really wanting to be a dungeon crawler in the vein of Valkyrie Profile, but because of the storyline, has to concede to some RPG conventions.
Dragona Akehi
Retired
Alex said:I hate to give Monolith any money, knowing they'll turn around and probably spend it on Xenosaga 3, but I'm starting to really want this one.
Is there any solid character building/sub systems, Dragona? How is the difficulty?
Welll..... the thing is the game has manual levelling. Yeah, that's right, you get experience and then go to the little chapel and go to level up. Also there's Levels and Classes. Levels mainly deal with HP, while Classes determine how many cards you can use in your deck and also in your "hand"...
edit: also I forgot to mention: you get tonnes of customizibility in terms of decks to make. Of course some characters are predisposed to certain archetypes (Kalas as the Swordfighting hero/Xelha as the magic using damsel in distress.) but it still leaves it fairly open.
Unfortunately the only REAL problem with the game is that it's really easy. But it's also really fun. If you don't level up it tends to add to the difficulty. I was trying a later boss at level 1 and I was getting creamed. It was fun. I think the manual levelling was left in there to help create a user-regulated difficultly level. I don't think Monolith wanted to get angry letters saying the 'game was too hard' because of the fact that your "hand" is drawn randomly from your deck.
And yeah, I feel it in terms of supporting Monolith. BUT none of the Xenocrapa team worked on Baten Kaitos, and at least one person from Valkyrie Profile did! (The battle director from VP.) So I wouldn't feel TOO bad about buying it.
And Aerogod: Yeah you build a deck basically. It's neat because you have to balance it right with enough attack/healing/armour cards. Also as you Class level up you can have more cards in your "hand" (during battle, you start at Class 1 with 3 only), and in your deck (you start with 30 only for the deck).
Really it's a fun game. I'd at LEAST give it a solid rent if you're not positive about it. I really enjoyed it and I was really prepared to hate the hell out of it on Monolith alone. You should have heard the fuss when I found out I was reviewing it for PGC. I had all sorts of wonderful paragraphs in mind, but then the game turned out good. Oh well.
edit: It's a really neat experimental type game. Not for everyone sure, but I really liked it.
Greenpanda
Banned
Dragona Akehi said:
No selectable difficulty levels, I take it?
Alex
Member
Hmm, that's a little dissapointing about the difficulty.
I wish more companies would opt for multiple levels of challenge, and perhaps scale the possibility of rewards/content/ending to the level of difficulty you're playing on, basicly, rip off Valkyrie Profile.
But, the rest sounds really great, although the battle system seems really freaky.
It sounds like a solid half-way point between atypical TB-RPG battles and card RPG's, of which I have a mild soft spot for, despite how few decent ones there are. The elemental properties are very interesting.
I'll be picking it up. This and Nocturne will likely be the only RPG's I have time for the rest of this year, though.
I wish more companies would opt for multiple levels of challenge, and perhaps scale the possibility of rewards/content/ending to the level of difficulty you're playing on, basicly, rip off Valkyrie Profile.
But, the rest sounds really great, although the battle system seems really freaky.
It sounds like a solid half-way point between atypical TB-RPG battles and card RPG's, of which I have a mild soft spot for, despite how few decent ones there are. The elemental properties are very interesting.
I'll be picking it up. This and Nocturne will likely be the only RPG's I have time for the rest of this year, though.
Dragona Akehi
Retired
Greenpanda said:
Well not from what I could see. I might have missed it in the KANJILADENMENUSOFDOOM though.
Really as I said above, I think they added "manual" levelling so you could adjust the game to your liking in the difficulty department. You manually level up EITHER your "level" or your class, so you could be level 1 and Class level 45 if you like. Or the other way around.
Dragona Akehi
Retired
Kinda on the cliche side and forgettable. Cute little whalepetthingies they have though. There's this great "Finishing Move" Xelha gets that involves shooting one. It's beyond awesome.
But Xelha's awesome when she's pissed off at Kalas (which is like all the time)!
But Xelha's awesome when she's pissed off at Kalas (which is like all the time)!
Dragona Akehi
Retired
AHAHAHAHAHAH AWESOME! They have that pic up!
THAT IS THE BEST MOVE EVER. BECAUSE YOUR CHEESE TURNS INTO HELLFIRE. SERIOUSLY!
Turning your random mundane objects into ULTIMATE DEATH makes it a surefire ENG buy for me. You just have to support that kind of shit.
Well it had something going at first, but it really gets blah in the end in terms of twists and all.
Dragona: Blah, getting those custom card specials was so random and confusing. Hell, this game was a total bitch to play because I couldn't figure out what half the cards did. (Holy Kanji batman)
Dragona: Blah, getting those custom card specials was so random and confusing. Hell, this game was a total bitch to play because I couldn't figure out what half the cards did. (Holy Kanji batman)
Alex said:
To be fair even on Hard, VP was pretty damned sissy. But it did have the right idea, more dungeons, more loot, extended progression, rewards. It's the one game where playing on Normal is too scaled back to be worthwhile. Even easy had exclusive zones strangely.
This game sounds awesome indeed though.
clipunderground
Member
After watching some movies on IGN when the japanese version launched, there's no possible way I can pass up this game. It's so damn beautiful in motion and the music is superb. Must buy!
God's Hand
Banned
Looks like Chrono Cross.
Bizarro Sun Yat-sen
Banned
You keep saying this, but it's not true. I don't have a full staff listing for BK, but I know for a fact that the art director of XS ep I (and Chrono Cross) was one of its directors, and the event director of the original Xenogears (and director of Chrono Cross) was involved as well. I'd guess that most of the other Monolith-side staff were also spun off from the XS ep I team since XS ep II was a smaller production.
Broshnat said:
Because GC isn't where the rpg fanbase is located. GC rpgs don't sell unless they are part of a series with a fanbase. BK was by a company that most people had never heard of, it was for GC, and it was an original rpg, oh and the cards thing. So all that together equaled bomb
Dragona Akehi
Retired
Bebpo said:What?
The FMV fits him well since he is a whiny pansy ass annoying character whose on the verge of crying every five minutes for THE WHOLE GAME >_< It was the one time I hoped a character in your party would actually die off
But he doesn't LOOK like a total pansy in game. His character art is badass. I guess that's what I was getting at more.
I love the line art. Really art nouveau.
