Review - Baten Kaitos Origins

[Nightcrawler]

My girlfriend and I recently cooperatively played through Baten Kaitos Origins. What I originally thought was an annoying, somewhat dumb, card battling system turned out to be addictive with all the combos. I did often times get annoyed though because it seemed as if I could go through the entire deck and the game wouldn't' give me the fate idol or other card I wanted and needed causing death.

What was most noteworthy about this game is it's sheer length. I don't think I've ever seen a game with so many side quests(although somewhat unrewarding) and that took so long to complete. It did feel like the game was worth the money. I expected it to be a quick to market cookie cutter sequel being that the graphics and areas were practically the same as used in the first one in many cases. But they really did add a lot of content to the game, that's for sure.

I had a love/hate relationship with this game. I ended up not liking it again at the end. The final boss battle(w/ tentacle protection) was one of the dumbest, most annoying one I've ever played. Even if I used Guillo's super attack, I wouldn't even get ONE hit in sometimes before he regenerated a tentacle. What a terrible battle. It wasn't fun, it wasn't challenging. It was just plain stupid and the opposite of fun.

As for the ending. I think Baiten Kaitos 1 had a better ending. This one, while pretty good in parts, was also pretty short and seemed to leave plenty of unanswered questions. It still left alot of things that didn't make sense or had missing links to the other Baten Kaitos game.

All in all, it was a worth playing. The sheer length of the game, witty dialog, and addictive, yet annoying battle system were good enough reasons to play.

Anybody else play through this one?