Baten Kaitos I&II HD Remaster (14th September 2023)

[Julius]

All the broken clocks are right today! 

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Wings of the Heart Take Flight Once More

Two JRPG masterpieces return. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins are back with improved graphics and new features to aid game progression, making them even easier to play!

A long time ago, there was a great conflict between the evil god and the people. After a fierce battle, the people managed to seal off the evil god, but what was left behind was only a desolate land. The people thus chose to abandon the land and live in the sky.

Such fairy tales were passed down as legends. At this time, people had wings called Wings of the Heart and lived a peaceful life. It was an era of long-lasting tranquility. ...But the collapse had quietly begun.

When a young man calls your name, the name of the spirit, the story begins to unfold. A story set on a floating continent in the sky, where thoughts and prayers intersect.

Coming Summer 2023. 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Julius

[Dcubed]

Namco to Monolith Soft...

[Jonnas]

I am so happy right now. Baten Kaitos Origins finally comes to Europe! I've been itching to replay the original game for a while now too, this is such a treat!

Regarding QoL changes, I only ask that missable cards are made easier to get or recoup in some form. BK was particularly obnoxious about that. God, I remember a playthrough I did where I was carefully trying to collect all cards, and then I ended up missing some anyway because a character left the party temporarily, and when they came back, a few cards from their deck had evolved twice, which means the middle stages were permanently blank in the Collection. Infuriating.

[Julius]

Trailer is finally up on an official channel, so I've added it to the OP. 

There's also an official Bandai Namco site for it with a few more details. 

[Julius]

A new trailer has gone live, and - at the time of writing - is only on the Bandai Namco SEA Channel. Wonder if someone has jumped the gun? Anyways: September 14th 2023. 

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Get ready to indulge in nostalgia with this remastered collection of your beloved RPGs BATEN KAITOS I & II HD REMASTER comes to you soon on the Nintendo Switch on 14 September 2023.

Shame about the delay from summer, but also...thank goodness, because June is stacked. Oh wait, it delayed to September, which is also stacked, so... 

I'll get to you when I get to you, Baten Kaitos!

Edited June 20, 2023 by Julius

[Dcubed]

Man, not having the English dub is such a bummer, because the remaster looks great otherwise.

Always has to be some sort of monkey's paw with Bamco and re-releases...

[Julius]

Trailer is now up on the NoA channel as of an hour ago - yeah, got to imagine it's a case of someone over at Bandai Namco SEA jumping the gun. 

I suggest this because even the linked website for the game doesn't yet have the release date of September 14th; imagine it'll be updating tomorrow. 

Hope whoever might have pulled the trigger early doesn't get in too much trouble 

[EEVILMURRAY]

11 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Man, not having the English dub is such a bummer, because the remaster looks great otherwise.

Always has to be some sort of monkey's paw with Bamco and re-releases...

Fingers crossed for a u turn or patch adding on that sweet English word audio

[Jonnas]

Is it confirmed that it lacks English audio? Sure, the trailer goes with JP audio, but surely that's because the English voices are the same as the original, which are awful and would make the game look bad.

Since I have nostalgia for it, I'd like the option to be there. Plus, even if the acting is bad, it's still fun to hear the attack names in English. Heck, it can even be fun to hear the story dialogue, in a The Room kind of way

[Julius]

14 minutes ago, Jonnas said:

Is it confirmed that it lacks English audio? Sure, the trailer goes with JP audio, but surely that's because the English voices are the same as the original, which are awful and would make the game look bad.

Since I have nostalgia for it, I'd like the option to be there. Plus, even if the acting is bad, it's still fun to hear the attack names in English. Heck, it can even be fun to hear the story dialogue, in a The Room kind of way

Unfortunately, it does seem that it's been confirmed, but outside of the context of the trailer (which I guess only implies it). I've just done a little digging and here's what I've found. 

From an updated excerpt from the February 8th Q&A on the Bandai Namco site:

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Q. Is there any content added or deleted?

There is no additional content added for this title. This is a remastered title that combines two games, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins into one title. Only Japanese voice over will be available for both games in this collection. Regarding details of language support, please refer to the next question on specification information.*

*Answer has been updated to reflect comments from fans. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

I don't recall this answer from when I first posted about it (otherwise I think I would've mentioned it), so it seems they've updated it on the down-low since then. This page is the only official source I can find for the Japanese-only VO (the Nintendo site doesn't list VO languages, only text languages) on any of the sites you'd expect to get official details from, but the following question in the Q&A focusing on specs also then highlights the Japanese-only VO and text languages for the game. 

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• Voice Over: Japanese
• Text Languages:
- Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish
- Baten Kaitos Origins: English

It's a shame, and while I'd love for them to update it with the English VO, the 'Answer has been updated to reflect comments from fans. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.' portion of the Q&A response seems very non-committal to that ever coming to fruition. I feel they would have said something completely nondescript instead of apologising if they even had the slightest inkling of getting around to it. 

But, I will say, stranger things have happened in updates before, so who knows? I'm kind of curious to hear what the English VO was like and hate random little pieces of gaming history like that falling into the aether with re-releases, so fingers crossed they can update it at some point!  

Inevitably like two years from now, but still, Namco gonna Namco 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Julius

[Jonnas]

Just now, Julius said:

I'm kind of curious to hear what the English VO was like and hate random little pieces of gaming history like that falling into the aether with re-releases, so fingers crossed they can update it at some point!

Sadly, there aren't that many on youtube. It's either a megavideo with ALL of the cutscenes, or a spoilerific scene.

But I did find a decent video, at least:

It's actually a pretty decent snippet of the game! It shows the battle system in full display (including two instances of a terrible hand, where the player couldn't attack), and then an inoffensive cutscene. There's no singular moment of horrendous acting, just our two main characters sounding stilted, stressing the wrong words, and lacking direction on which emotion their character is supposed to be feeling. You do hear how the script just... blanks whenever the player's name comes up, it's still hilarious that this is how they decided to write dialogue.

If I had to pick a singular moment to represent bad acting, I'd pick the one kid in the starting village that says "Meemai" several times. It sounds like he's reading each individual word as he says it, and the sound quality is like he's speaking through a cardboard tube. It's some Shenmue level of jank.

[Dcubed]

I'm guessing that the reason why the game only includes the Japanese dub is because Nintendo owns the rights to the English dub and Namco aren't willing to pay for whatever Nintendo is asking (Nintendo funded the English localisation for both games back in the day).

[Julius]

Interview with some of the key devs to work on the game:

 

[EEVILMURRAY]

Forgot this was out... Amazon have it for about 43 quid, so gonna hop into Nottingham and see if there's anything better/close because I'm impatient

[Josh64]

1 hour ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Forgot this was out... Amazon have it for about 43 quid, so gonna hop into Nottingham and see if there's anything better/close because I'm impatient

I believe its GAME exclusive (at least as far as the high street is concerned), I saw it in store for £45!

[EEVILMURRAY]

51 minutes ago, Josh64 said:

I believe its GAME exclusive (at least as far as the high street is concerned), I saw it in store for £45!

I've just picked it up from GAME, I think it's the only store in town now, so made a beeline straight for it.

[EEVILMURRAY]

On 21/06/2023 at 7:14 AM, Dcubed said:

I'm guessing that the reason why the game only includes the Japanese dub is because Nintendo owns the rights to the English dub and Namco aren't willing to pay for whatever Nintendo is asking (Nintendo funded the English localisation for both games back in the day).

The excuse I've seen:

In developing the remastered version, we tried to make adjustments on some of the expressions to match the current era. That's why we made the difficult decision not to use English VOs for this remastered version, due to the discrepancies that will happen

Basically they've changed bits of the script and could be arsed to pay people to say the new stuff.

[EEVILMURRAY]

I don't think I remember the menu being this convoluted. I've gotten to the cloud path and only then did I discover how to find the healing items (never needed to before), but it's a bit of a mess getting there. Including equippable stuff. They've packed too much into one heading which simply isn't necessary.

Apart from that game is going smoothly, just beaten the Thunderfish and got a fair bit of levelling up to do because I haven't encountered a blue flower for ages. 

I'm happy I have waited this long to replay this (not for want of trying), I've forgotten practically everything. Which I always find is always nice in a later playthrough. Don't recall Kalas being such a dick though. I do miss the English speaking though, but without it I've progressed further, as at least in the beginning of these type of games I like to hear every sentence. Since I can't understand shit, I just read and move on.

[Dcubed]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/baten-kaitos-Ⅰ-Ⅱ-hd-remaster-for-pc-rated-by-australian-classifications-board.768257/

Looks like there's a PC version coming...

Fine.  If Namco won't give us the English voices, I'll do it myself!

Edited September 26, 2023 by Dcubed

[Glen-i]

Now, that's interesting. Don't Nintendo have some rights to one of the games?

[Dcubed]

14 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Now, that's interesting. Don't Nintendo have some rights to one of the games?

Yeah, they funded the localisation for both games I believe.

Not sure what other rights they hold over both games though.

[darksnowman]

Got this the other week on release day but held off on starting it until the 26th. One reason was I'd code-in-a-boxed WoFF Maxima which I wanted to finish off first--very much enjoyed my time with it, two segments aside.

Anyway, I have Baten Kaitos from its original release and I'm discovering I remember next to nothing about it. Maybe I was so traumatised by the card battling I locked it up in my memory and threw away the key.

Took me about 45 mins to get to the first battle... and I thought WoFF Maxima had a slow start! Since then, I've been getting used to the rhythm of it yet I remember so little overall I keep wondering if I dropped the game back in the day. Like, most recently, I didn't remember Anuenue at all then I recognised Queen Corellia, followed by the library and jungle being "all-new" to me again. Though I haven't forgot the Great Mizuti and that's still to come. Wonder if it'd be similar re-experiencing Skies of Arcadia if a re-release ever comes. Think I remember Tales of Symphonia well enough but that's probably helped by the new game plus.

I've come to accept that battles are slow-going affairs rather than mash A and move on. Since there are only two or three enemies per screen it probably balances out. There've been a few I had to retry (rejigging my deck in between) but I'm just going with the slow pace and being at the mercy of the cards on these occasions. Would love to see enemy health bars. I'm only level 5 or so--Lyude who recently joined is higher--as I'm saving up exp before cashing it in as it seems to give a stat boost doing it this way...? Maybe once I do this I'll be able to steamroll through for a while. I've just being playing vanilla without any of the QoL stuff enabled.

Noticed a few weird things like the Shadow Wings move shooting off-screen in the opposite direction to the enemy (pretty sure damage still registered), there was an encounter we were sat at full health and took no damage for a few turns and I don't know if that was a glitch or something I did (think I defended with a strawberry), and sometimes the card numbers linger at the top of the screen after the cards themselves are gone. No idea if things like this happened in the original or not.

Things I hadn't forgotten are the lovely clouds, Gibari/ Wakka and being stocked up on stagnant water magnus. 

PS I don't recommend doing the online registration as the free digital bonus was only a wallpaper in various resolutions. I thought they'd put more effort in or I wouldn't have bothered.

On 22/09/2023 at 4:20 PM, EEVILMURRAY said:

I don't think I remember the menu being this convoluted. I've gotten to the cloud path and only then did I discover how to find the healing items (never needed to before), but it's a bit of a mess getting there. Including equippable stuff. They've packed too much into one heading which simply isn't necessary.

Apart from that game is going smoothly, just beaten the Thunderfish and got a fair bit of levelling up to do because I haven't encountered a blue flower for ages. 

I'm happy I have waited this long to replay this (not for want of trying), I've forgotten practically everything. Which I always find is always nice in a later playthrough. Don't recall Kalas being such a dick though. I do miss the English speaking though, but without it I've progressed further, as at least in the beginning of these type of games I like to hear every sentence. Since I can't understand shit, I just read and move on.

Are there equips? I've noticed that on a menu but couldn't seem to interact with it. With healing items, I thought it said you use them in camp, so I was waiting for the opportunity to camp before realising you just use them any time out of battle.

Agree with you on forgetting practically everything including Kalas personality!

[EEVILMURRAY]

1 hour ago, darksnowman said:

Are there equips? I've noticed that on a menu but couldn't seem to interact with it. With healing items, I thought it said you use them in camp, so I was waiting for the opportunity to camp before realising you just use them any time out of battle.

Agree with you on forgetting practically everything including Kalas personality!

Each character has a certain thing they equip, like Gibari has these creel things. It's on the magnus option, but you need to find them as you go along.

Currently about lv 28, did a thrice boss thing then went and levelled up 3-4 each. 

It may be slow-ish for you naow, but when the time limit for the first card is 7 seconds, you gotta be fast. Defending is a bit of a bitch as you barely get any time to register your first card and usually the first hit gets through. I think the speed hinders the experience a bit, I'm down with ramping up the pressure, but being shocked into picking a card straight away feels a bit jarring.

No one likes to go for Kalas, which is a shit when I have a hand full of defence cards and no chance to use them...

[darksnowman]

On 02/10/2023 at 2:36 PM, EEVILMURRAY said:

Each character has a certain thing they equip, like Gibari has these creel things. It's on the magnus option, but you need to find them as you go along.

Currently about lv 28, did a thrice boss thing then went and levelled up 3-4 each. 

It may be slow-ish for you naow, but when the time limit for the first card is 7 seconds, you gotta be fast. Defending is a bit of a bitch as you barely get any time to register your first card and usually the first hit gets through. I think the speed hinders the experience a bit, I'm down with ramping up the pressure, but being shocked into picking a card straight away feels a bit jarring.

No one likes to go for Kalas, which is a shit when I have a hand full of defence cards and no chance to use them...

Sounds like your more than ten levels worth of game ahead as I'm only up into the teens now.

Didn't notice I was on the 10-second countdown until I went to use a turn to top up on HP. Timer ran out when I was looking through the HP recovery in my hand. The increased pressure is good. I've botched a few combo attempts trying to select card numbers but it was no biggie in the long run. I keep making combos like 2-4-6 that the game never deems worth a bonus. Or like 5-6-7-6-5. Come on, I'm putting in some effort here.

Found my way to the equipment page no thanks to the help section which mentions its existence but not how to get there (far as I saw). I just started pressing L, R, LZ and RZ until it came up. Looks like I've missed a few on my travels but swapping everyone over to the latest had the instant impact of landing status effects on enemies. Can't be bad to that.

Also, cashed in ten levels for Kalas, Gibari and Xelha which provided a welcome boost for the Celestial Tree, and brought them up to one level below the newly-joined fourth party member so it seems like I'm pretty much where the game expects. Now we are routinely dealing damage in the hundreds while enemies plink away at us! 

Unfortunately, the camera cards didn't come up in time to get a snap of the boss' tentacles atop the tree. It was a rare boss encounter that Xelha made it through despite being picked on as usual so the level ups paid off. I was glad not to find the tree hollowed out into a dungeon, though there was one dead end so let's see if I'm ever pointed back there.

I've noticed the tornado effect for Blue Storm playing on the opposite side of the screen to the targeted enemy too. 

I still remember a few more locations but I'm not sure what or where is coming next. I'll be glad to put cramped Komo-Mai behind me, and hopefully there is nowhere else like the jungle.

Looking forward to getting some cards that target all enemies...

Reacquainting with the red- and blue-haired Folon, we should've twigged on to Baten Kaitos' return as soon we saw Fire Emblem Engage.

[darksnowman]

I think that's my sketchy Baten Kaitos memories (pun intended) now accounted for in quick succession. The Great Mizuti, the confectionary village, the picture book village--though I visualised it differently, so I don't know if there's somewhere else akin to it later. Somehow I'd completely forgotten about the Tower of Druaga homage so it was a treat to rediscover that. Tank controls (!) would have been handy in the main room there with the upside-down entry points. 

Normal service resumed in battles with Xelha getting pummelled turn after turn. Haven't the faintest why she draws so much aggro. I've amassed another half a dozen plus levels so it might be time to think about visiting the church. Xelha has some defence cards that never seem to be selectable so maybe it's time to cut my losses with those. Attacking has taken a turn for the more strange with my wilted flowers and fishing rods joined by various meats, mattresses and the peach boy (??). Don't judge me, I just pick whatever has the highest ATK. Been trying to stay on top of deck management but I'd welcome a button to auto-add, say, the 20 top attack cards, 15 top defensive, then a camera and some healing. At least you can sort them to make life a bit easier. The next time there's an area with monsters and a handy way back to heal and save, I intend to swap the party around to give the other three a proper runout. They're higher level than the trio I'm rolling with so I'd expect them to be relative powerhouses.

Wonder if I'll recognise any future locations when I see them. There's a story twist coming but I don't know when or where to expect it, however the breadcrumbs leading to it are there to see. Meanwhile, the party is ravaged by suspicion. Can they trust one another? Who is 100% faithful? We press onwards in the hopes that this is just a ploy from the baddies to divide and conquer us.

Here's hoping I can get more blank Magnus at the next stop! ...whenever and wherever that is because I got a bit lost since the game resumed on the map at our ship but I couldn't board it. I went everywhere and talked with everyone again before I spotted a new town, Kalas' home, was available for entry.

Over to you, @EEVILMURRAY. You ploughing ahead? And how's it been going for you @Tales?