Yet another GameCube remaster for the switch. This time Baten Kaitos that Monolith Soft worked on, the company behind the Xenoblade Chronicle-series. Got the original back in the early 2000's after watching a clip from the intro movie that enticed me... and frankly disappointed me at the time. Don't trust CGI-cutscenes. And Namco as well that made Tales of Symponia, so I thought I was in good hands. Story begins that you, the player bond as a spiritual guardian with the main character Kalas, a one winged anti-hero. You then wake up in a village on one of a couple of floating islands where the spirit have amnesia after Kalas was attacked by some monsters. Going back to the forest they meet Xelha who's attacked by a monster and her two guards are killed before Kalas can make a move. They join up since Xelha is following a pendant that leads her to a spring which it reacts with and another monster appears which leaves a card called End Magnus. And then the soldiers of the evil empire arrives, kidnaps Xelha, take the End Magnus and knocks Kalas out.
Waking up a rescue follows and an escape to a nearby kingdom of knights that lives in the clouds, but the empire strikes again so with the help of the knight turned fisherman Gibari and the disgraced ambassador for the empire Lyude tries to stop the empire, but they get away with yet another End Magnus. The knights king sends them to an island with a world tree and protected by a magic shield. The Emperor Geldoblame is already there on a visit. Our heroes goes to the library to look for information on the End Magnus, but it's a trap set by one of Geldoblames henchmen, but our heroes are saved by the former mercenary Sylvana. After some errands they climb the world tree to get an End Magnus. With that they get the leader of the island to join up with the knights since the End Magnus is the parts of the evil god Malpercio that was sealed away by the wizards of old 1 000 years ago. Next stop is Mira, the island that phases in and out of dimensions, but on their way they are shot down by the head henchmen of Geldoblame, Giocomo. Out of bonds they are trapped until a wizard, the Great Mitzui comes sailing by and leads them back. In Mira they meet the granddaughter of the Duke, Melodia. Looking for the End Magnus hinted to be in a Garden they found nothing, returns and Melodia have been kidnapped. After they have been accused for it and escaped they follow the suspects into a forest. It's the empire again and you defeat them and get Melodia back. Returning her to the Duke they are once again attacked by the empire, The End Magnus is under the Duke's mansion in a labyrinth of mirrors. Foiled again the Empire get away with the Magnus and somehow stole the Magnus our heroes gathered. They have to take the fight to the Empire so Melodia helps to smuggle them in on her ship. They find the Fire Caverns where the Last End Magnus is hidden, but too late, Geldoblame have already recovered it and unleashed its powers on himself turning him into a monster. Defeating him Melodia turns up with a platoon of soldiers to dispatch him and in a plot twist, Kalas is actually a bad guy, joins Melodia and gets a new set of white wings and then he sewers his link with the guardian spirit, turning the screen dark.
You hear Xelha speaking and as you reach out to her you connect with her. You break out of prison and returns to the world tree island. As the other islands tries to fight of the demons that well up from the arriving Cor Hydrea, the castle of the gods that was banished from this dimension 1 000 years ago. Why is it always 1 000 years ago? Anyway, reports of strange phenomenas around the places the magnus was found Xelha sets out, rescue her compatriots that have been trapped in pocket dimensions. They unite up and head back to the Empire to confront Melodia and Kalas before they release the power of Malpercio. But it's all a set up, since they need our heroes powers to break the seal on Malpercio. Xelha uses a mirror she got from the witches off the ice lands to awaken Kalas from the darkness. Doesn't help since Malpercio gets released, but the Great Mitzui summons the wizards of the Earth to try to banish the gods once again, but the spell fails, but Malpercio and Melodia escapes back to Cor Hydrea.
As Kalas comes back to the light our heroes decide to go to the Earth beneath the toxiclouds. They submerge down and tries to find one of the three treasures to fight Malpercio, the Sword of Heavens (the other being the Cloud Mirror and the Earth Sphere, which both have been destroyed by Malpercio). But a schism between the Earth people leads an outbreak group to take the Sword and offer it to Malpercio, destroying the magic shield around them. After driving Malpercio away and at the same time breaking the sword our heroes return up, do some side questing like in Chrono Trigger to get some more information about the different characters. After that it's time to gather all forces to make an attack on Cor Hydrea to destroy it's shield. The five islands joins together and uses the last of the magic from the End Magnus (that have kept the islands floating) and breaks the shield. The heroes flies in and battle through the different corridors and fight of Malpercio, it's revealed that Melodia died 9 years ago, but the Duke used the End Magnus of Mira to revive her, which probably set her on the path to release Malpercio due to his dark influences. As she joins Malpercio the demon now gets a soul and actually becomes a threat since it been pretty much a mindless puppet. Well, not for long since it's just one boss battle left. Malpercio is defeated, Mitzui seals the god and Kalas enter the body of the god to bring back Melodia and emerges with the help of the player spirit. Afterwards Malpercio's body disappears, the islands crash back to Earth as the toxiclouds goes away. A banquet is held and everyone celebrates, except Xelha that sneaks away. Kalas follows and the last twist of the game is revealed that the Ocean was hidden away by the Queens of the Ice lands in her own body and she has to give it back as the Earth is restored, giving up her life, but they are interupted as the spirit of Geldoblame comes back as a sandhead that you quite easily defeat. Xelha gives up her life, the ocean rains back and then every major character appears in the spirit forest in a farewell for the guardian spirit. Some kids you met early come by with a pendant from Xelha where you hear the ocean and from it water springs forth and returns Xelha to life. Everyone's happy, the end!
Finished it for the first time in 20 years. I still have the save from the last save point before the final boss. If I load it up I would assume that my problem would be that I probably didn't enhance the deck that well. Well, just wait a moment as I start my old save... oh god! What is this suboptimal deck? 8 damage on Kalas weapon output? And Mitzui and Xehla still have level 1 spells? How did I make it to end with such a bad output? A pity there isn't a New Game + since then I could probably have pilfered the mages to that one at least have a decent output and hopefully find enough for Kalas and one more to get a decent damage output to finish it and then replay it with that, but alas, you gotta start over from the beginning. I tried to replay it some 10 years ago, but quit when I realized I chose the wrong answer for a question, losing out on a equipable defense item early in the game, so I just quit. It's a nice looking game with interesting environments and locals and the music is by Motoi Sakurabi so all that is great. The story is a bit cliched at times, but it has its twist and turns that makes it a bit interesting. And the fact you as a player gets a role is rather interesting. I get that a couple of people experienced that sort of thing with Earthbound, but this was my first time with it and it was interesting. A pity the dub made it cringe by just having an empty space of silence every time your name was mentioned.
Now the remaster... looks fine for the most part. I found at least one instance where they botched the graphics. In the early game after getting an End Magnus you see this body of water with five cocoons that hang over it, after getting a magnus one cocoon falls in and blood taints the water reflecting Malpercio getting released. Now, in the remaster you can't see the cocoons as they disappeared in the darkness at the top. Someone said they might have used an AI enhancer to get it too HD and I think it might have missed that part of the picture. I don't know the technical specs behind it, but it sounds plausible. And then we have the one thing that irritates me to no end, they got rid of the english dub! I know people complained about it and I agree on the child actors, but going back I found the main characters decent and even some of the side characters. Of course I only played the first hours again, so I haven't heard the the major child actors that appears on the first three island! I think that was the major problems with the dub. So here I am again with a GameCube remaster where I can't just get rid of my old games since I still found them more playable. The only one that works is Nintendo's games!... and Capcom's Resident Evil games... alright so it might just be Namco's games that doesn't work! Doesn't look good for Star Fox Assault.
But in serious, had the dub been in I would probably been playing it even more, but now I gotta play the gamecube version next time. And I don't look forward to it since the games mechanics makes it a really slow game. Main battle mechanic is that you have a deck of cards that you draw magnus from. You can reuse the cards in the deck how many times you like so it's a bit of luck, but you can come very far with the knowledge of the element system and straights and pairs, but you need patience and always healing up. Normal battles can take 5 minutes while bosses goes for 30 minutes or so. This time around I also used the saving up to get better stats at level. Didn't know it, but apparently you could save up for a max of 10 levels and level up at once and get a stat boost, makes it harder in the beginning, but it pays out in the end since you basically pushed the stats higher than normal leveling up. Does help that in the remaster you can put on auto-battle and one hit kills on enemies and speed it up by 300 % and just run around saving time and not wearing down the sticks. I gonna miss that when I play the Gamecube game. Still, the AI is really bad. My characters been close to dying since they priorities something awful if anyone is a bit damaged. Especially when they don't heal the most damaged one, but seems to go by player 1, player 2 and player 3. So be at full health while doing it, and hope that all 3 are faster than the enemies... don't know why they decide to photo the player characters and not heal at the same time, or even a full heal for that. Another annoying part, which is in the base game, is the transformation of the magus. Some are time sensitive so for example after 1 hour of gameplay some bananas can go from green to fresh and then onward to rotten, and that can happen mid battle I learned this time around. Makes it a hassle, but it's probably a thing to keep enhancing your deck. The last thing I noticed they changed for the remaster is that they gave you more money for selling photos, meaning I very quickly got over 1 million gold... and nothing to buy but more cards, except paying the damn woman on the knight island who forces me to pay some percentage (tip, be nice since it cost less).
Overall it's a decent game, maybe not for everyone, but try it at least. The remaster recommended for playing, but I won't say the GameCube version maybe have some better moments (and don't f*** up some graphical problems). At least no slow downs or shut downs like in other remasters I've played. Happy Christmas everyone! See you all in 2025!
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