Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster) (Switch)

 

Take me on your mighty wings tonight!

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!

Heroes of Might and Magic III: In the Wake of the Gods

Here there be dragons!

My brother-in-law mentioned that they apparently was doing a board game of Heroes of Might and Magic III, and as I wrote before, I like that game. So I got a craving to play it again as I put in some cash to get the whole package when it releases in October 2023 (all 11 kilos of it). Couldn't get the old workarounds to boot the game so I had to check around a bit. My MacBook is now so old that they don't support it with updates anymore and I was on the verge to look into getting a new one (and have to choose if I'm getting a PC or Mac and what kind and so on), but I was able to crack it open. First I had to get a Heroes III Complete version from Gog.com. Then get a program called Osu (that they also have discontinued for this computer). And a side program to just update the version to allow it to run. Then pick the files from that installation within the wineskin and then use another program called VCMI to actually be able to run it. And it run fantastic as well with modded content. Some monster have changed appearance and others are new, different heroes appear, you know have a commander unit that levels up with the hero, there's a threat indicator for monsters on the map so that you can gauge if you stand a chance and I think they also added a quick way to see combiner artefacts so you know which to put together. And a lot of new maps.

So I played around a bit and satisfied my cravings for the game. It's been a while as well and this time the computer doesn't sound like it's powering a car while trying to get the game running. Small hassle is that I don't seem to be able to get sound to the intro or voices to the cutscenes (at least for Shadow of Death). But at least all campaigns are open without need to play through them all (some are really tiresome).

Thunder Sub (Space Carrier Blue Noah)

 

To Certain Death!

Well, went on a nostalgic binge so rewatched the anime series Thunder Sub (aka Space Carrier Blue Noah), made in 1979 in Japan and dubbed I guess in 1986. As I said before my parents had recorded the TV-movie that started the series. Of course, we had it on two different tapes. The ending part which I saw first was on a VHS tape I think we had recorded Raiders of the Lost Ark and a Bugs Bunny Special where Bugs tells the history of the US to his... nephew (?) followed by some road runner cartoons. The cartoon ends on Wile E. Coyote shrinking after running through a pipe, but he gets the roadrunner and realises he is so small that he holds up a sign where it says something like "you always told me to catch the roadrunner... so what do I do now" and as the Swedish dubber said the line it cuts to Thunder Sub and it sailing away on the attack on the first Death Force fort. The first part was recorded on a VHS with Spitting Image special on Ronal Reagan after he ended his run as president of the US, but the ending is cut off. 

Story is... well, depending on which voice over you listen to, it's either 2052 or the 22nd centuary and the world is at peace (see, clearly fiction!) and have colonised the planets of the solar system (or at least Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). The earth is one united federation and have created 9 scientific research centres around the world to help the exploration of the world and space. N1 being the most important one for this story and focused on Oceanography and placed in... well, the map shows Japan, but they dub it to Hawaii. 

Beside the N1 problem I also noticed there is no centres in Africa (maybe N5, but hard to see) or South America.

One night a meteor shower causes concern when one is studied by scientist and they discover spying equipment and reports of signals beaming out from Earth into space and no known transmitter. All scientist and politicians meet in Hawaii (aka Tokyo) to discuss this alarming news. From N1 head director Cromwell Colins meet his son Colin Colins (not much fantasy in naming really) who been accepted to the science academy. During the meeting the aliens causing the meteor shower attacks from their satellite Terror-Star with their army, the Death Force. Terror-Star is home to the Gothamites from the planet Gotham that is 30 light years away near the constellation Gemini. Their home was destroyed by a wandering black hole that devoured their sun and planet. In desperation they give dictatorial powers to General Zee who have the plans for the Terror-Star that will save 200 million gothamites. Colin with his two friends Chris and Jamie survives the initial attack and enter the conference centre where both Colins and Chris fathers is. They find Cromwell pinned under a large stone slab dying. He gives Colin his pendent and the task of going to N1 with the word "Thunder Sub" before passing away. They find a futuristic hoover craft and pick up their classmates like Jeremy, Robby and Fenton and some more unnamed ones before visiting their families. At Chris's house they pick up this girl Anna that seems shellshocked from the destruction and they leave, finding no other survivors they can help. At Terror-Star we learn that they placed themselves between the earth and moon and with it changed the poles. The attacks and disasters that follows kills 90 % of the human population leaving 600 million alive. Collin and his friends reach N1 and is sucked down a whirlpool to a hidden cave where they open doors with Collins pendant and at what looks like a ship bridge Collins utters the command input "Thunder Sub" and it awakens the weapon to save the earth!

It looks amazing!

N1 was in actuality built to create Thunder Sub as a weapon against a possible war between Jupiters moons and Earth due to Earths economical dominance... so much for a world in peace. At the same time another sub observes them, the Tempest Junior controlled by the Thunder Sub crew lead by Captain Noah. They board Thunder Sub and confronts the students at the brig. As they learn about the creation of Thunder Sub by Colins father they are spotted by Death Forces lead by Colonel Lupus that tries to sink her. They fire back and submerge and goes away. The student are drafted as the crew for Tempest Junior and taken on a two week training course where they discover a downed fighter jet from Earth with the pilot barely alive. Rushing him to the infirmary he says the words Point N9, Bermuda to Colin and Anna. Captain Noah informs them that Bermuda is where N9 is stationed, he also begin asking Anna about her brothers and it is revealed (to Colin, there was a scene earlier where Noah and Grogan, first mate and now skipper of the Tempest Junior discuss the kids) that Anna is Noah's daughter. Ricky and Jason didn't make it according to Anna since they where hit by a missile. Their relationship was also strained since Noah's wife died while he was working on Thunder Sub. 

With this Thunder Sub prepares its first attack on the Gothamites by destroying their Heavy Water Plant by using the Tempest to lure the forces so that Thunder Sub can attack them from behind and then go all out on the Plant. There's entangling bombs, a missile creating a whirl pool under Thunder Sub and other things, but the humans prevail and uses their Anti-Proton Gun that obliterates the plant, but Colonel Lupus and his superior officer Admiral Zogal escapes. At the Gotham Headquarters in the Sahara they ask for materials to fight Thunder Sub from Commander Gulf, but are denied so Lupus contacts General Zee himself and is granted the manpower and materials to build his own submarine. At Thunder Sub the N9 pilot have awakened is named Captain Domingo that informs them that N9 survived the attack and have completed the space engine for Thunder Sub. With their new goal they set out rescuing Earth from the alien invasion.

The adventure continues for 23 more episodes. You get ideas as space elevators, how best to protect the Earth, either focusing on the human element or other animals. They rescue locals and destroy most of the alien invasion force. The strange thing is that both sides knows information they shouldn't have until later. In the very first episode the humans know that the aliens squadrons are known as the death force and their satellite is the Terror Star and vice versa from episode 2 the Gothamites knows that the warship they fought are named Thunder Sub with the commander named Captain Noah. There is an episode where they interrogate a gothamite prisoner and learns about the command structure and history of Terror Star, but the prisoner exchange isn't completed that follows so the Gothamites shouldn't knew anything about this. Especially when Thunder Sub only was known to pretty much the crew and a handful of people, most probably killed in the initial attack (like the President of the World). Even more curious is how civilians knows about Thunder Sub when they are rescued from a slave colony and there is no communication between Gothamites and humans until they have the tongue twister from the interrogation episode.

And the tongue twister is a bit of other problem with the show. Any obstacle they face is solved by using another gadget they just happen to have access to. Is Thunder Sub under attack by kamikaze barracudas at 2 000 m below the surface? Let's try these experimental scubas we just happen to have here. Is the Tempest caught in a living water organism that is weak to ice? Use these ice bombs we have here. Some things like the battle copter I can accept since it looks like a different part of the ship. And since the show tries to look very scientific (everyone has a degree, scientist saves and dooms their respective planets) it feels like they might should have foreshadowed some parts more. The ending is rather short as well, but on the other hand, they at least don't bring out the Anti-Proton Gun 2.0... they just make it so it can fire more often since they have two engines which makes sense to me (who doesn't have a degree in natural science). Also, how many people where on the crew? They use fighter jets in the first episode, but who pilots them? They show Spencer and other pilots run to them in the episode following that, but I got the impression that the reason they hit the slave colony to rescue everyone was to get more people to man the ship? And where is the women? There are 7 women in the whole show, and that includes Colins mother that I assume dies in the first episode (and isn't mentioned at all compared to Colins father after that). And Gotham seems to have no women at all, and how could they have an army stationed after travelling for 30 years?

Small nitpicks, the bigger problem is that they didn't dub the second-to-last episode where they kill the main bad guy and set up the confrontation between Lupus and Thunder Sub that have been anticipated since the very beginning. And missing out the plot point that General Zee intended to take the cells off the dead gothamites and recreate them on earth as a new race devoted to him and for that betrayal is killed by the commander of the death force. At least the commanders noble sacrifice in the final episode is shown. Although why it's him and not General Zee must have been curious for the watchers... did the other dubbers translate it? I found some episodes on the Swedish dub on youtube, but episode two is horrendous where they cut away the music every time someone speaks (and I happen to like the music) and I don't know, Åskbåten sound kinda childish. And that Gunnar Ernblad is like 5 main characters stretches the imagination. He's not bad, but the english is at least varied. And I think Jamie's voice actor also was in Batman Beyond as a minor roll professor and Colin Colins was Batman himself on some of the animated movies. Of course some moments was a bit weird, for example the first flash back to the death of Colins father must have taken another actor and Domingo in one scene almost sounded like his voice broke during the line read. And I don't like the clothes change in episode 8-9 without explanation. Before they had their blue and white shirts and after that everyone wore green. But Colin in total have 5 different clothes. Civilian clothes, academy clothes, the blue shirt, green shirt and space uniform. And that not counting the awesome black scuba gear and the underwater suit.

I would recommend watching it. Youtube have most of the series in english (missing something like 2-3 episodes), think I've seen the greek one complete. I got a boot leg dvd collection back in 2007, but the website seems to be defunct. Sadly the DVD's seems to have been dirtied enough to not been able to be read by my PS3 completely, but my DVD-drive for my Mac works fine. Tried to clean it, but I ain't able to get every speck of dirt so it might be scratched. Doesn't make it better that using the soap and water cleaning destroys the paper glued on top of the DVD. Commendable effort. This is probably to niche to get a whole sale release with commentaries and other things. A pity really since it was one of my first anime's. 

Pikmin 2 (Pikmin 1+2) (Switch)

Attack of the Lobster!

Continued with the second game in the series. Olimar returns home, but due to a shipment being destroyed by a lunar bunny according to Louie,  the other pilot for the Olimar's company, the company is now in deep debt. Their CEO has to sell Olimars ship, but Olimar drops a capsule cap that he brought with him from the Pikmin planet and it is apparently worth a lot of money. The CEO sends Olimar and Louie back to the planet to find treasures to pay off the debt. 

So back in action Olimar and Louie search the planet for stuff to collect and finding a couple new pikmins, the purple and white one. After getting enough treasure they head home. but oops, Olimar left Louie behind. Credits roll and afterwards Olimar pays of the company debts and the CEO and Olimar returns to find Louie. Which I didn't do this time. I cleared the last area and went through the final dungeon, but when I lost all but 5 pikmins I just got to the first out and quit pretty much. The newer games clearly is superior. The ability to replay a level of a dungeon if it went sour speeds up and don't cause as much stress, especially when you have to survive a bit of an ordeal to get to some of them with the respawning monsters. The fact that grinding white and purple pikmins is a hassle also add to the stress... or maybe more accuratelly, waste your time pretty much. I have more games to play!

Now, some might think I left Louie in the ditch, but really? Who likes Louie? That space bunny that ate the shipments? Was him all along! And then we have the damn dogs he sicks on me in 4, or when he stole all my food in 3. No, Louie can be left behind with no remorse. The CEO is at least symphatetic as he is hunted by the debt collectors and lives together with animals under a bridge.

Didn't get the Gamecube original, but got the Wii version and finished it ones, not 100 % since the dungeons is past my abilities it seems. So that concludes the reason people love the newer game is that it is easy enough and I prefer them.