After defeating the beast, strange things happen involving some massive headaches, before they finally manage to escape the Emperor’s mansion. On his first big mission for the Dark Service (assassinating the Emperor, no less!), things go horribly wrong for our heroes and they wind up being blamed for the Emperor’s death even though they were beaten to the punch by someone else, then attacked by a huge monster. Spiriters are said to contain the potential to change the world… but so do politicians, and the latter are the main source of conflict once again. Sagi is also what is called a spiriter, meaning his heart has bonded with that of a spirit - in this case, that means you, the guy (unlike EWatLO, you do not get to input your own gender its masculinity is part of the narrative this time around) holding the control pad. The Dark Service use semi-autonomous devices called paramachina to aid them in combat Sagi’s “paramachina” is actually a sentient, magic-wielding puppet named Guillo, who has been Sagi’s companion ever since he unearthed it (Guillo’s gender, if any, is never defined) at a young age. The game’s plotline centers around Sagi, a fifteen year-old employed in the Dark Service, a special branch of the Alfard Empire’s military. BKO corrects several nagging problems that plagued its ancestor (descendant? stupid prequels…) while sadly retaining a couple, but it at least brings forth some fresh ideas of its own as well. Baten Kaitos Origins, as you might have guessed by the title, serves as a prequel to EWatLO, set twenty years before the events chronicled in the original. Though the “islands in the sky” setting reminded me very much of Sega’s Skies of Arcadia (Legends) at first, the game’s unique charms and decent plotline let it eventually stand on its own merits. Most noticeably is its card (“magnus”) based inventory and combat systems, as well as a plot twist or two that had not yet been beaten into the ground by its predecessors. One of the few exclusive, original RPGs available to the GameCube, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean brought several unique features to the genre.
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