With an innovative Battle Card System, great graphics and music this is one of the best RPG for the Nintendo Gamecube.
The story takes place in a world with floating continents and magic cards called Magnus, these cards draw the escence of things for example you wouldn't need to carry your wii in your back pack you just put the wii in the magnus and you're set, you can release it's escence later. Pretty convenient huh?
These cards are used for battle, all the attacks you're going to use are magnus cards, you need to create your deck in order to fight, there are cards that anyone can use or some exclusive to certain characters, the battles are fast placed you need to have fast reflexes in order to select the cards carefully, the have a number and you need to choose them in that order, you can start with a 1 then 3 and then a 4 (special attack), you can't make a combo like 3 then 2 the 5. You'll get used to the battle style in no time.
The special attacks are something worth seeing, the animations are awesome. The graphics of the game aren't quite shocking but they put a lot of effort in the enviroments, the lights, the sounds everything is carefully detailed.
The music is another good part of the game, it's really catchy and it isn't that repetitive, the story has many plot twists and is in my opinion the best part of the game, you'll get hooked up very easily and you can spend 30+ hours without noticing.
The only bad thing I found in this game is that you can't play it on multiplayer but it isn't that necesary since you'll enjoy the story.
Baten Kaitos Origins brings us a new style and fresh new stories, you can learn many things of the first game in here also, you can see many of the first game characters backstories here.
This is a game that will be remembered as one of the best RPG for gamecube and hopefully we can expect a sequel for the wii.