Bandai Namco's rather glorious-looking Baten Kaitos RPG remasters are now on Steam
Edwin backstory fragment #345: the greatest usage to which I have ever put my failing grasp of mathematics is determining how many different RPGs I could buy using the "same" money, by dint of trading them in promptly at Gamestation for carefully calculated diminishing returns. I'd save up to buy one of the premium headliners, attempt to get my money's worth inside a week, then swap it for a respected double-A and perhaps a sub-£8 oddity with the manual missing - nesting one purchase within the other like a series of Matryoshka dolls.
This was my Big Short, my Money Ball. But it had a drawback: often, I was so eager to leapfrog to another game before the trade-in price changed that I skimmed RPGs that are now considered classics. The big one was Suikoden 2, which I spent only an evening with before gambling that I'd eke more FunValue out of a game with a less traditional battle system. I can't remember what I traded that for, which says it all. Another was Baten Kaitos on Gamecube, which - yes, we are finally getting to the point here - has just been rereleased on Steam in the shape of a Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster. I can't remember what I traded Baten Kaitos for either, which again, says it all. Please, gentle reader - be better.
Our hard-beset guides writer Jeremy Blum did play Baten Kaitos properly as a youth, but he can't write this post because he's caught in the anaconda coils of Elden Ring tips-writing (I hear there's some kind of expansion out this week?) so you'll have to settle for my sparse memories and what I can glean from the Steam page. Battle-system-wise, Baten Kaitos is notable for smushing together active-timey combat with card-battling - the essence of your items and abilities are stored inside Magnus cards which are played in real time. I think the CG/real-time mash-up was what had me hurrying back to Gamestation originally - it takes some time to bed in. I'm interested to experience/hear about how it measures up in today's world, where
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