has anyone played Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings & the Lost Ocean or Baten Kaitos Origins for the gamecube>?

Played the original but not the sequel haven't quite got round to importing that one yet - though it is on the 'to buy list'

Good story, nice artwork, decent music, fairly original and addictive battle system but a terrible voice over - the number of times I cringed during that one... I really should have just turned to VO off but it was almost mesmerizing in how bad it was I ended up listening to see if it could get any worse - invariably it did.

But its wrong to focus on this flaw when otherwise it was a pretty solid game. True at the time of me playing the game I didn't own another console and was making do with what RPGs I could get hold of, and as a result was one of the earlier titles in the genre that I bought, but I enjoyed it and fully intend to go back to it one day. Need to try and see if I can get a more complete card collection - I was missing a couple of the highest level accessories if memory serves - but they were notoriously hard to get and at the time none of the guides that were out knew how to get them either. Was missing a number of time dependent cards and a few of the recipe ones as well. Though I did manage to finish the family tree side quest after a lot of back tracking.

So yeah in short. a good game that I will always look favorably upon - just hope the sequel turns out to be as good.

wow, well the sequel is in fact a PREQUEL, it takes place before the original, i actually played them in reverse order for similar reasons, gamecube was my only system and im an RPG addict. Anyways the "sequel" is MUCH better, i dont think i would have beat the first game if i didnt beat Baten Kaitos Origins first.

its way better than the original BTW....

I played the first game and I really didn't like it.
It wasn't the battlesystem per sé, though it was a burden, but rather the unbelievable crappy story that totally threw me off.
The part where you fight the three guys at once and then you loose all your party members and the main hero leaves you, as well as you having to recruit all members again made the game tedious and I just gave up.
I'll most likely never play this again, as I have no need for it.

It was also a job to collect cards and get better cards, most of the time resulting in not really effective cards after all. That, or they were ineffective really quick. You were forced to continually change your deck.
Also the fact that leveling up was annoying didn't really help either.

Oh and yes, I was really looking forward to it. I was actually looking for a year, as it was shown on the Tokyo Game Show the year before its release, if not two years.

Anyway, you are a RPG fan and you have a cube? That is a really odd choice, as the RPGs, or lack off good ones, aren't that good.
If you go for RPGs, please go for a PS2, much better variety and so many more games. Oh and guess what? The PS2 is really cheap now, considering the PS3 is out and such.

i understand why you hate the first one. I KNOW i would have hated that game if i would have played it first.

BUT TRUST MY WORDS!!!! you must play Origins, not only does it take place before the first game (so you dont need to know anyone) but its way better and the battle system kick a$s for being card based, and the announcer in the battle makes it sound like your playing an SNK fighting game.

Whoa I'm surprised to find someone who so much prefers Origins over Eternal Wings - i'd heard that as a result of the major overhaul in an attempt to simplify the battle system they'd ended up removing a fair bit of the in-battle strategy wrt to combos. Also taking into account the fact that all characters now draw from the same deck battles had become considerably more random and resulting in drawing multiple cards that you just can't use.

Tbh its for this reason that the game hasn't been higher up on my priorities as its never been particularly difficult to play import cube games.

Don't really know how it compares story wise as been avoiding sites as usual so as to not spoil anything, so maybe thats where it made up for some lost ground on the original.


Never really understood why so many people had a problem with the deck building and/or the battle system - sure there was a fair bit of deck reconstruction but once I got the basic structure down that I was after it was just a case of removing the weaker cards for better ones as a when I got hold of them. I personally found far more tedious exercises in games before and since BK but to each his own.

I think Pesmerga got the right of it though - if you like RPGs then the PS2 is the one to go for - so if you've not already got one or its not an option for you at present then you may want to look into Skies of Arcadia if you haven't done so previously, though I'm guessing you've already played Tales of Symphonia as thats a given for an cube owning RPG fan.

the combos in Origins actually do large amounts of damage unlike Eternal Wings. Anyways, the whole battle system and presentation have been upgraded to provide a faster paced action filled fight. Origins is great play Eternal Wings after.