JPRGs are doing well for themselves lately. Games like Persona 5 show just how strong the genre is right now across a wide range of themes and audiences. Another franchise that's going strong is Monolith Soft's Xenoblade Chronicles series, developed in conjunction with Nintendo. Xenoblade's popularity is attested to by the warm welcome received by Pyra and Mythra when they joined Super Smash Bros. Ultimate recently. However, Xenoblade is far from Monolith Soft's first JRPG. A long time ago, Monolith and its publisher Namco -- now Bandai Namco -- helped make a name for itself with a game called Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean.
Baten Kaitos has admittedly faded from most people's memories, since it didn't become a long-form franchise, but it was highly influential on release. Its strong reception got Monolith Soft off to a good start when it was still a really young studio. Now, due to new copyrights by Bandai Namco, there's rumors that Baten Kaitos is going to make a comeback. It's more than worthy of a revival if that's really what Bandai Namco is planning. Baten Kaitos was easily one of the most innovative games of its generation, and it remains a really curious and unique JRPG entry. Even as the genre grows and expands, Baten Kaitos would stand out and inspire with a remaster or a franchise reboot.
Baten Kaitos' Compelling Premise
Baten Kaitos sets itself apart from other JRPGs in a lot of ways. One of them was its Magnus system. In the lore of Baten Kaitos, Magnus are magical cards that can store anything from food to weapons to magical power. Combat revolves around players drawing from a pre-assembled deck of Magnus and using the cards they draw to their advantage. This system sounds a little like Magic: The Gathering, but the Magnus system was a card game style all its own, with items contained in cards sometimes changing over time and Magnus even having a wealth of out-of-combat applications. It was a really fresh take on JRPG combat, which is crucial in a genre so rooted in turn-based combat traditions.
Monolith Soft found a really unique way to tell Baten Kaitos' story too. The first game's protagonist is a young man named Kalas, but the player doesn't exactly play as Kalas. Instead, the player takes the role of a spirit that accompanies and guides Kalas and his allies on their quest. The spirit doesn't appear on screen; instead, Kalas and his team will sometimes speak directly to the screen facing the player, seeming to break the fourth wall. The role of a guardian spirit is a strange but rather brilliant way of really putting the player in the game. Anyone who played Baten Kaitos was really in the thick of the plot and interacted with the player characters very directly.
A Good Time to Return
Now would be a great time for Baten Kaitos to return, even as its aforementioned peers in Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona dominate the attention of fans. The unique ideas that Monolith Soft brought to the table make Baten Kaitos an RPG unlike any other, even if it isn't as well-known as its many peers. As the genre continues to thrive, now would be a great time to revisit Baten Kaitos. Bandai Namco could encourage a lot of its peers to think differently about JRPGs by looking at how Baten Kaitos did things differently.
The first Baten Kaitos and Baten Kaitos Origins both stand on their own two feet in terms of quality, though. They're not just worth rebooting for their original concepts; the execution held up too. Many critics agreed that Baten Kaitos was as satisfying as it was innovative, with strong gameplay, graphics, and music. Even if Monolith and Bandai Namco have moved well beyond these games, they shouldn't lay buried under new projects forever. If Bandai Namco really is filing new trademarks for this franchise, it's a good sign. This is one revival that the JRPG genre could really benefit from.
The Baten Kaitos franchise is available now on Nintendo GameCube.