Baten Kaitos - first impressions

Yesterday I started playing Baten Kaitos. I played for probably an hour or so. Here are a few of my impressions.

Good:
-The battle system is surprisingly easy to learn and is a nice mix between turn-based and real-time.
-The graphics are gorgeous
-The story so far seems different enough

Bad:
-The voice acting is terrible.

That's about it for the moment. If anyone has any questions, ask and I will see if I can answer.

How does it compare to Tales of Symphonia? I really, really love Tales, and so I was hoping Baten Kaitos would be good too. Keep me updated on this one Mai.

Thanks.

Well you have to realize that Tales of Symphonia is currently my favorite game of all time (yes, even over Ocarina of Time) so I'm probably not the best person to ask, as I'm not sure how objective I can be about it.

I don't think an hour is enough time to compare, though, so I will post more as I get more into the game. *^_^*

The only bad thing about Baten Kaitos so far is the voice-acting though, and that's compared to any game, not just Tales. Luckily, there is an option to turn it off, so it's not such a big deal.

I wonder if the voice acting is worse than Dark Cloud 2's voice acting...now THAT is horrible.

heh, that was pretty bad.

What happened with the voice acting for Baten Kaitos was this:

Initially, they did have good VAs. But the localization of Xenosaga II (for PS2) was taking too much money, so they had to fire the good Baten Kaitos VAs and hire some cheaper ones. They might have even used regular Namco employees (which seems likely, as I think I recognize many of the NPC voices as also being in Katamari Damacy).

At any rate, I finally decided I couldn't stand the voice acting and I just turned it off. They still make cheesy remarks during battles, but it's not as bad.

I'm about 5 hours into it now and having a decent time. Once I figured out how to level up I had a much easier time with it. :lol

It's kind of weird, really. I like the card battle system but at the same time it's irritating. Like, if you are poisoned, you have to wait until an antidote turns up in someone's hand and then you have to play it, and even then it only has a 60% chance of curing the poison status. When every monster you run into can poison you and you only have 3 antidotes between your three party members, it gets annoying. Naturally, you can buy more antidotes to add to your deck, but sometimes it's still a while before they come up.

Even with that irritation though, I still find myself wanting to play it. So that's a good thing. I'm also going through with no strat guide and no help from any FAQs, so I know I'm probably missing some things.

I'd say if you like rpgs in general, you will probably like BK once you get used to it.

I hate to say it, but Baten Kaitos is not doing it for me. I have tried to like it, I even turned off the irritating voice acting, but I still can't get into it. It looks gorgeous, but the battle system is too simplistic for me. I LOVE card based games, maybe due to the years I spent playing Magic: The Gathering. PSO Episode III was a lot of fun for me. The card system in this game is just too simple to keep my interest. I'll try playing it some more, but I don't think it's going to stay in my collection long.

On that note, anyone interested in a mint copy? :-\

It gets a little better as you go, from what I understand. I'm now 8 hours into it and most of my party members are Class 3 or 4, so they can hold 5 cards at a time and do 5 card combos, which can be really cool.

I still don't think it's as good as Tales of Symphonia was, though.