The GameCube RPG That Fans Still Beg Nintendo to Revive

The GameCube isn’t Nintendo’s most popular system, but it is filled with all-time classics that continued fan-favorite series or started new ones from scratch. The system was also solid for RPGs, delivering games like Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia Legends, and, of course, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. However, there’s one game that’s mostly been left behind thanks to several factors unrelated to its quality. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean was a critical darling when it launched in 2003, but the team at Monolith Soft could never build on that solid foundation.

Baten-Kaitos’s Lackluster Sales and Disappointing Sequel

Baten-Kaitos is a bold, new take on the RPG formula. Players don’t control the protagonist directly. Instead, you are a “guardian spirit,” and must use a text-based dialogue tree to interact with the characters. Because you’re not controlling the characters, Baten-Kaitos uses magical cards called “Magnus” to build a deck for combat.

Battles are both turn- and action-based. You need to quickly play cards during your turn to deal damage and complete defensive actions. It keeps the action relatively quick, which makes what could be a slog a slightly more action-packed experience.

It’s a unique take on the genre that was met with critical acclaim by reviewers at the time. Critics praised the exceptional graphics and music, which, like the gameplay, felt different from most of the other games at the time. Speaking of that gameplay, many reviewers called it a “stand-out” feature that merged collectible card games, poker, and RPG combat. There were some issues with the storyline and voice acting, but Baten-Kaitos was generally viewed as a success by critics.

Unfortunately, that success was not met with massive sales. Baten-Kaitos sold just under 250,000 copies between Japan and North America. That was well under publisher Namco’s targets and about half of what Tales of Symphonia sold during a similar time frame. For a game that was planned to start a new franchise, Baten-Kaitos just couldn’t get an audience despite its review scores. That put everything in a bit of a holding pattern, though Nintendo eventually agreed to release a prequel called Baten Kaitos Origins.

Like the first game, Origins actually performed relatively well with critics. It was viewed as having a better story, and many reviewers liked the streamlined battle system. However, the prequel launched only a few months before the Wii’s release, making it one of the last GameCube games. With most players looking toward the shiny, new system, Origins sold even worse than the original.

The Rise of the Xeno Series

The tepid sales of both Baten-Kaitos games certainly played a part in the series’ dying, but it’s not the only reason we likely haven’t seen another game. After all, several members of the teams at Monolith Soft and Tri-Crescendo have said they’d like to work on a new game, and there have been persistent rumors about Baten-Kaitos 3 over the last decade. Instead, the issue might be that Monolith found the RPG franchise it was hoping for in another series.

Monolith’s first game as a studio was Xenosaga Episode 1 on the PlayStation 2 in 2002, one year before the first Baten-Kaitos. It performed much better than Baten-Kaitos, though part of that is because it launched on the much more successful PS2.

Selling 340,000 copies is impressive, but the PlayStation 2 user base was nearly eight times as large as the GameCube’s by the end of its lifespan. It’s hard to know exactly what the difference was in the early days of the two consoles, but developers had a better chance of big sales on Sony’s console.

Still, the Xeno series has become Monolith Soft’s biggest success. Since the launch of Xenoblade Chronicles in 2010, the Xeno saga has become a fan-favorite RPG franchise. It is effectively Monolith Soft’s cash cow, and it’s tough to expect them to ditch it for a series that never moved copies.

That said, Baten-Kaitos has become a cult classic. In 2024, the two games were finally given the remaster treatment, opening the franchise to a new audience. If a new game does happen, Bandai Namco may decide to give Tri-Cresendo the full reins this time.

The studio handled the battles and sound design in the first two games, and has worked as a support studio for Bandai Namco on games like Tales of Arise and Tales of Berseria. For now, that’s all speculation, but the remaster has given fans hope that the much-rumored Baten-Kaitos 3 might finally be a real possibility.

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