The second Baten Kaitos game and a prequel story to the original game. This one was never released in Europe the first time round so the HD remaster on Switch was my first time playing it and the version that forms the basis of this review.
Baten Kaitos Origins takes the foundations laid by the original game and instead of building upon them, decides to simplify things a bit to make for a smoother experience. The battle system is where this can be seen at its most prominent. Like the original game, this game uses a card based battle system where you have a deck of cards and your hand determines what actions you can do during your turn. In Origins things have been simplified to make for a smoother experience. Here we have just one deck of a maximum of 60 cards that all party members pull from. You can build multiple decks and switch them in and out for whatever you feel you need at the time. The cards themselves have also been simplified with each card having a number ranging from 0-6. 0 cards now provide your defence options rather than it being a separate turn, or can provide elemental effects to attacks and stuff like that. The defence cards provide damage reduction for a set amount of attacks and all 0 cards can be used at the start of a turn to kick off a combo. Cards numbered 1-3 are standard attacks while 4-6 require the level meter to be filled to the right level to use and that bar is filled from doing combos.
Combos are built from using the cards in numerical order. You can start with whatever number you like but you can only combo into a card with a higher numerical value than the one you used. The ideal scenario is having a hand that lets you go from 0-6 but it's difficult when each character has their own 0 cards and specials 4-6 cards. Each card you use draws a new one from the deck and you only get a second or so to carry on your combo before your turn ends so you're frantically scanning your hand and planning your attacks before you run out of time.
As you progress through the game you'll end up with a maximum deck of 60 cards, 7 cards in a hand, and the ability to discard more and more cards during a turn. At first I was kinda disappointed with the new battle system as I felt like it removed a lot of the depth of the original system but once I got a hang of it and learned how to do relay combos where characters can continue a previous combo and is doable for all 3 party members, as well as taking advantage of Milly's unique +1 and +2 cards to build even longer combos, I came to appreciate the much faster paced battles and loved seeing how crazy a combo I could build up in a single turn.
Other simplifications this game does is cut your playable cast in half to just 3 characters: Sagi, Guillo, and Milly. Honestly, this was kinda disappointing after having a great time with the cast in Baten Kaitos 1 and felt like an overcorrection when the battle system changes already solved the biggest issue with having so many characters in 1 by cutting out the deck management for each character.
Sagi is an alright character, a very standard Japanese RPG protagonist and unfortunately didn't do much for me.
Guillo is this cool machina who has no filter on what they say and often clashes with Milly who is our feisty kick ass girl of the group. I enjoyed Milly and Guillo a lot but the group didn't do a whole lot for me and honestly felt a little flat and lacking.
Which brings us onto the story for Origins itself. A prequel story set around 20 years before the events of BK1, Sagi ends up being tasked with stopping the Empire machinanising the other continents as well as stopping them collecting the remnants of Malparcio, the evil god they were reviving in the first game. The bulk of the first half of the game is visiting each continent, trying to stop the Empire and falling, and getting a flashback after a remnant of Malparcio is defeated. The flashbacks take Sagi and co back to 1000 years ago and detail the events that lead into the War of the Gods we heard so much about in BK1. The past sections had the more interesting story for me as it was cool learning more about such a huge event spoken about in the first game, the main story felt a little flat, repetitive and uninteresting outside of seeing some cameos from characters in the original game. The fact you gain your whole party very early in the game means that repeating the same core story beats 4 times in a row starts to fall flat very quickly. There's some cool plot twists after that section and I like how the Spiriters are utilised in this game but then so much of the back half of the game feels like optional content that shouldn't be optional. Freeing each continent from machination and wrapping up the War of the Gods scenario (which needs to be done to fight the true final boss) are unvoiced and optional with no real build up to them and it kinda sucks because the pacing and urgency of those situations just falls completely off a cliff when they should've been some of the more epic portions of the game.
And ultimately that's the biggest flaw of Baten Kaitos Origins - it takes the original game and fails to truly build on its foundations, instead spinning its wheels in place and doesn't really go anywhere exciting. What we end up with is a solid enough game that is consistently fine but struggles to hit the highs that the first game did.
Baten Kaitos Origins takes the foundations laid by the original game and instead of building upon them, decides to simplify things a bit to make for a smoother experience. The battle system is where this can be seen at its most prominent. Like the original game, this game uses a card based battle system where you have a deck of cards and your hand determines what actions you can do during your turn. In Origins things have been simplified to make for a smoother experience. Here we have just one deck of a maximum of 60 cards that all party members pull from. You can build multiple decks and switch them in and out for whatever you feel you need at the time. The cards themselves have also been simplified with each card having a number ranging from 0-6. 0 cards now provide your defence options rather than it being a separate turn, or can provide elemental effects to attacks and stuff like that. The defence cards provide damage reduction for a set amount of attacks and all 0 cards can be used at the start of a turn to kick off a combo. Cards numbered 1-3 are standard attacks while 4-6 require the level meter to be filled to the right level to use and that bar is filled from doing combos.
Combos are built from using the cards in numerical order. You can start with whatever number you like but you can only combo into a card with a higher numerical value than the one you used. The ideal scenario is having a hand that lets you go from 0-6 but it's difficult when each character has their own 0 cards and specials 4-6 cards. Each card you use draws a new one from the deck and you only get a second or so to carry on your combo before your turn ends so you're frantically scanning your hand and planning your attacks before you run out of time.
As you progress through the game you'll end up with a maximum deck of 60 cards, 7 cards in a hand, and the ability to discard more and more cards during a turn. At first I was kinda disappointed with the new battle system as I felt like it removed a lot of the depth of the original system but once I got a hang of it and learned how to do relay combos where characters can continue a previous combo and is doable for all 3 party members, as well as taking advantage of Milly's unique +1 and +2 cards to build even longer combos, I came to appreciate the much faster paced battles and loved seeing how crazy a combo I could build up in a single turn.
Other simplifications this game does is cut your playable cast in half to just 3 characters: Sagi, Guillo, and Milly. Honestly, this was kinda disappointing after having a great time with the cast in Baten Kaitos 1 and felt like an overcorrection when the battle system changes already solved the biggest issue with having so many characters in 1 by cutting out the deck management for each character.
Sagi is an alright character, a very standard Japanese RPG protagonist and unfortunately didn't do much for me.
Guillo is this cool machina who has no filter on what they say and often clashes with Milly who is our feisty kick ass girl of the group. I enjoyed Milly and Guillo a lot but the group didn't do a whole lot for me and honestly felt a little flat and lacking.
Which brings us onto the story for Origins itself. A prequel story set around 20 years before the events of BK1, Sagi ends up being tasked with stopping the Empire machinanising the other continents as well as stopping them collecting the remnants of Malparcio, the evil god they were reviving in the first game. The bulk of the first half of the game is visiting each continent, trying to stop the Empire and falling, and getting a flashback after a remnant of Malparcio is defeated. The flashbacks take Sagi and co back to 1000 years ago and detail the events that lead into the War of the Gods we heard so much about in BK1. The past sections had the more interesting story for me as it was cool learning more about such a huge event spoken about in the first game, the main story felt a little flat, repetitive and uninteresting outside of seeing some cameos from characters in the original game. The fact you gain your whole party very early in the game means that repeating the same core story beats 4 times in a row starts to fall flat very quickly. There's some cool plot twists after that section and I like how the Spiriters are utilised in this game but then so much of the back half of the game feels like optional content that shouldn't be optional. Freeing each continent from machination and wrapping up the War of the Gods scenario (which needs to be done to fight the true final boss) are unvoiced and optional with no real build up to them and it kinda sucks because the pacing and urgency of those situations just falls completely off a cliff when they should've been some of the more epic portions of the game.
And ultimately that's the biggest flaw of Baten Kaitos Origins - it takes the original game and fails to truly build on its foundations, instead spinning its wheels in place and doesn't really go anywhere exciting. What we end up with is a solid enough game that is consistently fine but struggles to hit the highs that the first game did.