Baten Kaitos Origins, released in Japan as Baten Kaitos II, is a 2006 role-playing video game developed by Monolith Soft and Tri-Crescendo and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It was released in February 2006 in Japan, and in North America in September 2006. It is a prequel to Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (2003). Similar to the first entry, the player assume the role of a "guardian spirit" – an unseen player avatar – who guides protagonist Sagi and his party of companions in an adventure across an aerial floating island-based kingdom in the clouds. The game retains the original's focus around the concept of "Magnus" – magical cards that capture the "essence" of items found in the in-game world, where the concept is still used as a plot device, for in-game item management, and as a basis for the card-themed battle system, albeit with minor tweaks. A remaster was released with its predecessor as Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster for the Nintendo Switch on September 15, 2023 and on Windows through Steam on June 18, 2024 by series owner Bandai Namco Entertainment under license from Nintendo.
Gameplay
The game plays as a traditional JRPG and very similarly to the first Baten Kaitos game, albeit with some changes and adjustments. Similar to the original, the player plays the role of a "guardian spirit" that can break the fourth wall to interact with the game party through dialogue options. Outside of this, the player also maneuvers the main character, "Sagi" through the game's environment and battles in the traditional sense. Unlike typical role-playing games, the Baten Kaitos series uses a mechanism where all in-game items are stored in magical cards called "Magnus". Magnus come in two forms - battle and quest. Battle Magnus replace equipment; rather than equipping characters with weapons and armor, battle Magnus are dealt to the player at the start of the battle and then selected as battle commands. Hence, equipment and even attack types exist as cards, rather than as statistics associated with the characters. Quest Magus, on the other hand, are treated like most in-game RPG items, and can be used to interact with the game's environment. For example, if the player wanted to light a torch, they could choose to use a Fire Magnus next to it. Some Magnus change naturally as time progresses (such as a fruit changing from ripe to rotten), while other Magnus may be combined manually using the "Magnus Mixer" to create new, more powerful items. For example, combining "Saber" and "Flame" creates the stronger "Flame Sword". As the game progresses, the player obtains more Magnus to be used and manipulated as needed. In addition to playing through the game's main narrative, many side quests exist as well, including on-going efforts to restore the abandoned village of Sedna.
The game retains the core battle system from the original game as well, which focuses around the player selecting Magnus cards in specific orders to attack and deplete the health of computer-controlled opponents. Battles are turn based, but have brief time limits in which cards must be selected as well. A key difference is that all characters now use cards from a single deck and play from a single hand, instead of having separate decks as it was in the original Baten Kaitos. Battle Magnus are assigned number value, and playing increasingly higher numbered cards spur combos that increase effectiveness. As the game progresses, the player may add more Magnus into the decks, or organize preset decks that may be set to either active or inactive for use, allowing the player to set up themed decks for specific battles. The game contains no "out of battle" statistics, so there is no need to heal characters after battles. The game does not contain random battles; enemy characters are visible on the field, and the player is able to choose to fight or avoid them.
Synopsis
Settings and characters The game is a prequel to the original Baten Kaitos game, taking place in the same fictional world twenty years prior to the events of the first game. While many of the locales are present in an altered form, the game also features several new locales, such as the continent of Hassaleh, and Sedna, a fantastical town made entirely out of clay sculptures. While featuring a new cast of playable characters, younger versions of characters from the original game can be found scattered across the game's world, albeit twenty years younger. The overall theme of the game's world is that of a struggle between "pro-magnation" (the power of hearts, wings of the heart, and magic) and "pro-machination" (mechanical) forces; having many parallels to the modern concept of industrialization. The main race of characters are human-like in nature, but possess bird-like wings on their back that assists in flying in small short bursts. The player plays the role of an unseen guardian spirit who can communicate to Sagi, the main character, who is a "spiriter" - a rare type of person who can communicate with said spirits. Communication is limited to pre-set dialogue tree option selections. Other playable characters include Guillo, a synthetic, puppet-like genderless life form which Sagi has known since childhood, and Milly, a sheltered, runaway young woman who decides to travel with the two.
Plot Twenty years prior to the events of the original Baten Kaitos. The main character, Sagi, works for the Alfard Empire in an elite unit, the Dark Service, that reports directly to a powerful politician, Lord Baelheit. Sagi is a spiriter: someone with a connection to an extra-dimensional entity called a Guardian Spirit that provides power and protection. The role of the Guardian Spirit is taken by the player. He is joined by Guillo, a sentient mechanized puppet animated by magic. Their assignment, coming from an unnamed source, is to assassinate Emperor Olgan. However, it is a set-up; a third party kills Olgan and frames Sagi and Guillo for it, requiring them to flee the area. A man named Geldoblame assists them and suggests they meet up with his master, Quaestor Verus, due to Sagi and Verus both being spiriters. They encounter a giant beast called an Umbra, which Guillo has been mysteriously programmed to defeat, and meet up with the third and final member of the party, a young woman named Milly. The three of them work to clear Sagi's name while trying to uncover the nature of the threat causing unrest among Alfard's various power-hungry politicians. They also continue to work under Verus as Verus runs against Baelheit in an election to replace Olgan.
Verus assigns the group to stop Baelheit's efforts at pro-machination, an effort to forcibly mechanize key locations in other nations to boost Baelheit's power and control. Though Sagi's group secure the cooperation of the other nations' leaders, they're unable to contend with the powerful mechanical weapons of Baelheit's Machina Vanguard, ultimately allowing Baelheit to establish footholds in every nation. The group encounters more Umbra on their journey, learning that they are "afterlings", pieces of an ancient, evil god named Malpercio. Whenever an afterling is slain in Sagi's presence, he sees visions of another world, in which a sorcerer named Wiseman pursues "pro-magnation" to turn every being in the world into Magnus. They discover the visions are real scenes from the past, and that Malpercio was not a god, but simply a group of warriors who solicited the help of dark forces to defeat Wiseman.
Sagi learns that he is not actually a spiriter, but a subject in the Empire's "Malideiter Project" experiments to create artificial spiriters by infusing people with pieces of Malpercio's afterlings. The project, ordered by Baelheit on behalf of Olgan, was abandoned after a mishap, but Sagi still lived on with pieces of Malpercio within him. This revelation means the player is not actually a "Guardian Spirit" either, but one of the Malpercio warriors. Sagi coming to terms with the player on this gives him the strength to defeat the Machina Vanguard. Meanwhile, Milly admits she is Baelheit's daughter, sent to spy on the group until she had a change of heart. Baelheit reveals that Milly is half-Machina; when she was just a child, a failed experiment similar to the "Malideiter Project" tore her in half and killed her mother. With the help of his own guardian spirit, Baelheit managed to revive Milly using Machina.
Baelheit wins the election over Verus and becomes Emperor. He completes Tarazed, a huge flying mechanized fortress, and orders everyone to move onto it, as he intends to destroy the continents. Verus orders Sagi to stop Baelheit, and Sagi does so. Verus reveals he has been pulling the strings and using the group for his own corrupt goals. The group defeats him, but this brings Wiseman, who had possessed Verus, out to attack the group. With the aid of the members of Malpercio, Sagi is able to defeat Wiseman, but this leads to Tarazed's collapse. Sagi, Milly and Guillo flee, aided by the previously defeated members of the Machina Vanguard. In the chaos of the fortress's collapse, Guillo sacrifices itself to save Sagi. Sagi and Milly return to Alfard, happily reunite with family and friends, and eventually decide to elope and move to Mira. Geldoblame, as Verus's most loyal devotee, is devastated and driven mad by Verus's betrayal, but discovers that he is now Emperor due to the deaths of Verus and Baelheit's entire cabinet in the destruction of Tarazed. The game's final scenes foreshadow the original Baten Kaitos: Geldoblame, corrupt and fixated on power, instructs his new subjects to locate the five "End Magnus" that have the power to end the world, and announces his intention to work with the scientist Georg. The game ends on a still-frame of a baby with one wing, the same as Kalas in Baten Kaitos, with a note about the story being continued in Baten Kaitos.
Development and release The original Baten Kaitos was originally conceived as the start of a new series for the relatively newly created Monolith Soft, which up to that point, had largely focused on the company's flagship Xeno series. After a brief period of waiting and seeing how the original performed, and despite underperforming in sales, a follow-up title was quickly green-lit, largely in part of the original's strong critical reception. The game was first announced as Baten Kaitos 2 in September 2005 at the Tokyo Game Show. Despite being a prequel, the game retained its 2 moniker even through its final release in Japan, while being renamed to Origins in its North American release. For its North American release, it was given the Origins subtitle to better indicate it was a prequel, while in Japan, it retained its 2 and was given the subtitle of Baten Kaitos II: Beginning of the Wings and the Heir of the Gods for context.