Baten Kaitos delivers an RPG experience that mirrors most others as far as story goes, then gives players an entirely new way in which to do it. There's an evil empire, a reluctant hero with vengeance on his mind and your "think from the heart" style female character. Kalas - the reluctant hero - awakens outside a small farm community; he has flashbacks of some family members being killed and he then goes about bringing the gamer into the game. After asking your name he asks if you remember what happened before he woke up. Of course, since the small flashbacks show very little, you have no idea and he starts worrying about you. Why? Because you're his spirit guide, you've been with him his entire life and mere minutes into the game he makes you feel like you really are a part of the game. After being taught the basics by the doctor of this community - we'll get into that later - you venture out and meet Xelha, accidentally unlock part of the spell binding evil and then lose a vital piece of the puzzle to the evil empire. And this is where the all the fun begins.

The whole premise may sound typical of an RPG, but that is where the similarities end. Baten Kaitos introduces a brand new way to play RPGs, and there will be those of you out there who will prefer this over the various other ways, and its through the use of cards, or 'Magnus' as they're called in the game. In the world of Baten Kaitos, every object gives off a Magna Essence and it's the essence that can be caught and stored in blank Magnus cards. It's a lot more believable for your characters to be holding 150 cards than it is for them to be lugging about 150 different weapons/armour/health items. It turns out that blank Magnus cards are extremely hard to come by, and you start the game with a mere trio. You can still find Magnus that already have a weapon or item embedded in them but these are normally used in battle or in the menu screen to boost back your health. The blank Magnus are selected with the C stick and are used for capturing the essence of rather random items, some of which are no use at all and some are used to complete side quests.

The real quirk of these Magnus is that items age. A Bamboo Shoot magnus can be used to restore health, but after an hour you may notice that in place of the Shoot is a fully grown Bamboo stick which can now only be used as a weapon, and eventually that bamboo will age into a fishing rod. Every Magnus ages, and it can be fun to see whats in store for that bottle of milk you picked up at the start of the game, or the newly ripened grapes you found behind someone's crate.

The battles start off more like Tales of Symphonia - you can see the enemies walking around the world so you can avoid them if you want, but again, that's where the similarities end. Once the fighting begins it's a whole new game. At the start you will only have a few Magnus in your deck and you will only be able to use a couple at a time.

As the game proceeds you will find more and more cards being able to be held and played at any one time, and this is when the combo system comes into play. Every Magnus card has at least one spirit number in a corner of the card. At first they may seem random - and by all means they might as well be - but if you attack someone using all 3s you will get a prize percentage added to your attack. Similarily, if you attack someone and the numbers on your cards are in numerical order, your attack - or health restoration - will be increased. It's all about combos, and most of them are hidden. You may find that what is a completely random selection of cards for your attack will unlock a combo that unleashes fury upon your foe. The sad thing is that they aren't easy to find, and you will more often than not do it purely by accident. The fight scenes are just plain fun, and as long as you have equipped your decks with the right ones - ice armour and water attack Magnus for that fire setting you are about to go into - then you will have a lot of fun. If you go in unprepared you may find the battles last a little too long, but it's nothing a well set out deck can't fix.

Kaitos' graphics are amazing - sure, they're pre-rendered for the most part, but that hasn't stopped Monolith Software from going all out with well animated and detailed backgrounds. While being pre-rendered isn't something to boast about it definitely opens the door when it comes to polygon use and particle and special effects. What might disappoint is seeing this amazing FMV for the intro and expecting to see the small snippets shown throughout that in full during the game, and instead seeing it from a corner of a room in cutscene form. While this obviously isn't a bad thing, it would've been nice to have seen a lot more FMV help get the story across. This comes down to personal preference and doesn't alter the fact that the story is still delivered to its fullest.

Music in the game is perfect, and the developers knew it as they even made it possible to unlock and play the different music you come across. Some is downright haunting and none hinders the game experience. In fact, the only thing that really annoys is the extremely cheesy voice acting, and again, Monolith knew this and threw in the option to turn it off. What will get to you is that these so called 'actors' see the end of a sentence and decide to have a coffee break before carrying on with their script; likewise the thirty-something woman trying to pass off as a seven-year old girl. I know we can't expect some of Hollywood's finest actors to help out in a game project like this, but it wouldn't hurt auditioning.