Eleven entire months in the past, a South African rankings board indicated that the Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster assortment existed for PC, regardless of 2023’s Bandai Namco solely asserting it for the Nintendo Change. That is a very long time for a PC launch to be MIA with no different signal it exists, however hastily, whammo, right here we’re—Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 are out on Steam proper now, after being launched on the Nintendo Change final September.
If there is a method to launch a sport with lower than zero fanfare, this is likely to be it. There isn’t any signal of the video games on the Steam homepage or perhaps a information article on the Steam web page itself contextualizing the launch. Which is a disgrace, as a result of seeing these video games now out there on a platform the place they’re going to be playable for many years to come back is a good factor.
The Baten Kaitos video games are among the many final of a era developed with extremely detailed pre-rendered environments as a substitute of totally counting on real-time 3D. There is a lush, painterly high quality to them that few video games evoke even at this time, although I am unsure how effectively they maintain as much as trendy resolutions (upscaling these sorts of detailed 2D graphics can sadly get fairly muddy).
I’ve solely performed just a few hours of the primary Baten Kaitos, however the second sport, Origins, is a last-of-its-breed traditional, a Japanese RPG with beautiful artwork, an attention-grabbing world and surprisingly well-written and voice acted characters for this style in 2006. It additionally has a crackling battle system: each video games are card battlers, now en vogue however unusual on the time. The place the unique sport’s battles are a bit stodgy, Origins brings in an arcadey sensibility the place you are enjoying playing cards at a speedy clip and stacking them into killer combos. Origins has move, one thing Baten Kaitos’s fight did not fairly nail, despite the fact that it nonetheless offers you some meaty technique and card mechanics to chew on. And hey: they’re each within the assortment, anyway.
As a result of the pair of RPGs have been initially developed by Monolith Delicate for the Nintendo GameCube, which is now owned by Nintendo—and Origins was additionally revealed by Nintendo—there was hypothesis final yr that maybe a launch on any platform apart from the Change was off the desk. I am glad that turned out to not be the case. I’ve had a working save file of Baten Kaitos Origins loaded up in my Dolphin emulator for years now, returning to it once in a while simply to benefit from the battles. It is nice to see an official launch convey one other little bit of JRPG historical past to PC, just some days after the Kingdom Hearts collection lastly made it to Steam, too.
It would not appear to be Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster is Steam Deck verified, however I am certain the collection’ followers will get it engaged on the Deck earlier than lengthy, regardless.