Video Game / Baten Kaitos

aka: Baten Kaitos Origins

The heroes of Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (counter-clockwise from the bottom: Kalas, Mizuti, Lyude, Xelha, Gibari and Savyna)

Cast light upon the darkened earth,
Save those lost in despair,
O Mighty Ocean,
Guide as we journey through
The darkest pit of night

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is a memorably named JRPG and part-Card Battle Game for the Nintendo GameCube, developed by Monolith Soft and published by Namco.

The world of Baten Kaitos takes place on a series of magical Floating Continents, high above an endless expanse of poisonous gas. The humans who live here have evolved "Wings Of The Heart", and use a form of magic called "Magnus" to capture, store and reproduce the essence of any item imaginable.

Kalas, a young Anti-Hero with an artificial Wing of Heart to replace his missing one, is searching for the murderer of his grandfather and brother with the help of his "Guardian Spirit" (essentially a fourth-wall stand-in for the player). He stumbles onto a Mysterious Waif called Xelha who is on her own quest: to stop The Empire and its Emperor Geldoblame from capturing the five End Magnus that contain the essence of a long-dead evil god and using their power to Take Over the World.

As they journey across the islands, they gather an eclectic party of allies: a buff fisherman named Gibari; an idealistic Empire ambassador and Defector from Decadence named Lyude; a cold-hearted mercenary named Savyna; and the bizarre but powerful "Great" Mizuti.

So what makes the game interesting? Well, for starters, there's the visual appeal. The graphics remain not only among the best on the Gamecube, but thanks to its Yasuyuki Honne, handpainted backgrounds, one of the best looking games period, but it's more than that: the game has a visual style that is very interesting. Unlike most media that have used the "floating continent" schtick, the world of Baten Kaitos is more than just a few chunks of otherwise-normal firmament suspended in the air. The architecture and costumes of the world offer unique "local flavor" without clear parallels in other worlds — the land of Diadem, for example, has buildings made out of dark purple clouds. Furthermore, the characters have interesting designs, enhanced by their "Wings of the Heart," which appear during battle and some cutscenes. The wings change the way the characters move and fight, allowing for unique and flashy special attacks.

The gameplay is also worth noting. In the world of Baten Kaitos, cards called "Magnus" are all-important, as they can be used to store the "essences" of objects, or even intangible things like memories and exhaustion. This allows for a Hyperspace Arsenal and interesting puzzles like storing or combining key items. Items even "age" over real time: food items (which provide HP recovery) rot and lose their effectiveness, seeds grow into plants and gain effectiveness, and rare items (like coins) appreciate in value.

The battle system also uses Magnus, as each party member builds a deck of attack, defense and support items that can be played in turn. Each card has a set of numbers attached to it, and like poker, playing matching numbers or even straights can increase the potency of the effects tremendously. Coordinating your elemental affinities is also critical to success, as opposing elements simply cancel each other out: for example, 50 points of Fire damage and 50 points of Water damage in the same "action" cancel each other and result in a net attack of 0 damage points.

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It proved popular enough to gain a prequel called Baten Kaitos: Origins (or Baten Kaitos II in Japan). Set twenty years before the events of Baten Kaitos, it tells the story of a Power Trio that find themselves on the run when a faction within the Empire attempt to rid the world of the "Wings Of The Heart" in favor of soul-eating mechanization. They are: Sagi, a elite soldier of the Empire who finds himself framed for the murder of the Emperor; Guillo, a sexless humanoid weapon animated by magic who (unusually) has a degree of sentience; and Milly, an enigmatic and spunky noblewoman. Under the command of the Empire's chief spymaster, they must work together to unravel the various conspiracies that plague the bureaucracy of the Empire and clear Sagi's name.

Unfortunately, the game was released during the death throes of the Gamecube (it actually holds the dubious honor of being the final original game released for the system outside of Japan), so it received almost no press or consumer attention either in Japan or the West, and was unreleased in PAL territories.

Monolith Soft's staff previously worked on both Chrono Cross and Xenogears during their days at Square; wheras Xenosaga series could be considered a Spiritual Successor to Xenogears, the Baten Kaitos games could be considered a Spiritual Successor to Chrono Cross.

Over the years, both the games have gotten some recognition as excellent RPGs for a system that didn't have too many. And the soundtracks of both games are often collectively considered Motoi Sakuraba's finest work.

A third installment for the Nintendo DS appeared on a list of games in production, but it never got past the early stages of production and was later officially canceled. Since then, there has been very little news of a new Baten Kaitos game, only unsubstantiated rumors, although fans have not lost hope for another installment.

A Compilation Rerelease of both titles, Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster, was announced in 2023 for the Nintendo Switch.

Baten Kaitos has representation in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, in the form of a remix of Origins' battle theme "The valedictory elegy", which plays on Gaur Plain (rather fittingly, considering Xenoblade and Baten Kaitos were both created by Monolith Soft) and Boxing Ring.

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This series provides examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: After Sagi transforms into an afterling and is transported back for the final confrontation with Past!Guillo, Milly and Guillo are there in battle, despite being nowhere near Sagi when Mental Time Travel kicked in. But who would want to fight Past!Guillo alone? A couple of cutscenes later, Milly does mention that they were both sent back with him.
• Action Commands: In the defense round, you have a limited time to apply a defensive card in response to an attack. If you miss the first chance, your defense can still be applied to subsequent cards in the attack combo.
• Action Girl: Women in this duology aren’t exactly known to sit around gettin manicures when evil is afoot. Case in point:
  • Savyna in the first game is an ex-soldier who fights like a beast, while Xelha and Mizuti are powerful mages.
  • Milly in the second game takes great enjoyment in fighting baddies, to the point that she joins a battle in her first appearance. And she’s damn good at it to boot.
• After the End: Technically this for both games, as they take place after a war with an evil god destroyed the land, forcing humanity to live in the skies.
• Alien Blood: While no character actually has this (as far as can be told), its used as a metaphor for Kalas's artifical status making his "magnus"/soul unnoticeable to a mystic.
• All Myths Are True: Partially subverted as the War of the Gods in the legend turned out to be the war among humans with too much power, and the evil gods who started the war according to the legend were actually good guys trying to stop it. Played straight in Origins, where the gossip magazines Milly dismisses as "each shadier than the last" all describe things players of the first will know are true.
• And I Must Scream: So the pieces of Malpercio are still alive after all these years, and they retain who they once were. And the lion's share are placed in magnus and sealed within the islands. If you were fond of Seph, Thoran, Pieda, Ven, and Marno, you might want to stop thinking about this now.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Died to a normal enemy? Game over. But died to a boss? Not only can you always restart from the beginning of the fight (no five minute cutscene every time the Godcraft slaughters you), but you can also access the menu first, letting you modify your decks and character order, read up on EX Combos, etc.
• The Artifact: While the quality normally isn't high enough to make out, a direct rip from the disc reveals the book in the opening gives the title as "Endless Wings and the Lost Sea," the title of the game during its first reveal. Said intro also shows a few scenes with noticeable differences from how they occur in-game.
• Auto-Revive: Cross Pendants in the second game.
• Bad Powers, Good People: The members of Malpercio, who despite making a devil's pact for power, are just desperate to stop the true evil, Wiseman. Sagi may qualify as well, but after the power awakens, it seems to be cleansed.
• Barrier Change Boss: Eternal Wings's Final Boss.
• Batman Gambit: In Origins, Ladekahn comes up with a fairly detailed plan to escape the Nashira storehouse, which is being occupied by Imperial soldiers, based entirely on how he expects the soldiers to react. It works.
• Beast Folk: Catranne has a human head on a turkey body, Trill has chicken-like tail feathers, and various stock NPC models have animal parts, such as snail shells, bird torsos, and flippers. Despite their very obvious animal parts, they have fully human behaviors and don't appear to be Half-Human Hybrids.
• Big "NO!": In the first game's opening movie.
  • Celsica, when Rambari is fatally wounded.
  • Milly, when Guillo sacrifices itself.
• Bittersweet Ending: Origins; Verus and Wiseman are both dead, Tarazed was destroyed, and Sagi marries Milly and leaves for Mira on their honeymoon, but Baelheit and Guillo are also dead and Geldoblame, driven insane by Verus's betrayal, has just been nominated emperor.
• Black-and-White Morality: The first game.
• Block Puzzle: Damn you, Tower of Zosma!
• Body Horror: Geldoblame, when he uses the power of the End Magnus and becomes a hideous monster.
  • Take a look at some of the enemies in Tarazed's core...Yeesh.
  • Verus-Wiseman, the True Final Boss of Origins, is a hideous chimera monster.
• Bonus Boss: Several for various character quests in the first game.
  • Several in Origins. Most of them wrap up plot threads, but there's also the absurdly hard final boss of the Coliseum, Arma Prototype M.

• Boring, but Practical: The Final Boss of the first game is a Barrier Change Boss, but beyond that doesn't really have any special offensive gimmicks and only one finishing move. But he hits really hard. Hard enough to slowly wear you down the longer the fight drags on.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Queen Alraunes and Herculean Dragons in Origins. The former has more HP than most Mooks, hits hard and can hit the entire party as well as poison it with its Poison Breath attack. It can also use a Fast Ball Special attack with a Slave Balloona to deal very high damage to someone, doubly so if they're currently on fire. The latter is the enemy with the highest HP count outside of bosses, has a regular attack that hits the whole party, can buff its defenses up so it becomes even more of a tank, can restore a lot of health back on command, and its Hercules Laser attack deals absurd damage and will almost assuredly inflict Knockdown or even Unconscious status. And you get to fight two of these at the same time, plus a Lycaon, in the Coliseum. Have fun!
• Boss Remix: Both games contain boss remixes of the regular battle theme "The True Mirror."
• Boy of My Dreams: Xelha first sees Kalas in her dreams. She felt a great deal of sympathy for Kalas and wanted to help him, even if she never met him before.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • Collecting all the magnus in both games is extremely difficult and utterly pointless.
  • The reward for completing the Pac-Man sidequest in Origins, permanent critical hits, is obtained by feeding Pac-Man every quest magnus in the game. By the time you get it, there's nothing left to do.
• Broken Bridge: In a few places. Sometimes even literally, even though most of the main characters have wings and therefore really shouldn't be as affected by them.
• But Thou Must!: Picking the right answers allows you to battle more efficiently, but there are no plot alterations.
  • Though it's played straight in one scene in Origins where you are actually forced into making a deal with the devil the Dark Brethren for power.
  • In a later scene, picking the wrong answer results in a Non Standard Game Over. Poor Sagi...
  • Also played with throughout Origins when the dialogue window appears, but the game will select an answer. It's an early hint there's another spiriter besides Sagi, and the dialogue hints that it's not Verus.
• Came Back Wrong: The reason why the island of Mira is the way it is, according to a myth shared by an NPC in its capital, Balancoire. It was nearly swallowed up by a dimensional rift before being pulled out by a group of extremely powerful wizards.
  • More traditionally, Melodia died during a disease outbreak and was revived using the power of the Bo End Magnus. As a result, a part of Malpercio bonded itself to her, manipulating her thoughts and actions until it convinced her to fully merge with it.]]
• Camera Screw: The Labyrinth of Duhr, where the camera changes angles based upon how you enter a room, making an otherwise simple maze a nightmare to navigate.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: In the Imperial Fortress, you can walk in on a soldier who's having some alone time.

• Character Development: Every party member gets a dose in both games.
• Character Level: Played with. Your characters gain Experience Points as normal, but — in a twist more like God of War — you essentially have to trade them in for levels later by praying at Save Points. Origins reverts to the more standard JRPG setup.
• The Chosen One: The spiriters. Somewhat deconstructed in that while spiriters are said to be able to "sway the fate of the world" and held in high regards, this does not mean swaying is for the better as Kalas in the first half of Eternal Wings and Baelheit in Origins demonstrate.
• Child Soldier: Nasca. He's not fully aware of the consequences of what he does, and picks sides based on what people he looks up to picks. Sagi, too counts as one, though he doesn't act like it.
• Cliffhanger: Origins ends on a recursive one: A wounded, mentally ill Geldoblame staggers back to Mintaka and is greeted by the senate, who elect him in desperation. Cue the beginning of Geldoblame's descent into a power-mad dictator. Anyone who's played the first game knows how that ends.
• Climax Boss: Lots of 'em — the most notable ones are definitely the Angel of Darkness in the first game and the Godcraft in the second.
• Collapsing Lair: Cor Hydrae is sucked into a dimensional rift after Malpercio is defeated.
  • Tarazed breaks apart and falls out of the sky after the final battle.
• Combos: The battle systems are completely different in the two games, but in both the object is to play long chains of cards to rack up percentage-based damage bonuses.
• Continuity Nod: The description for the Power Helmet in Origins mentions grains of rice stuck to it, referencing the helmets use in the uncooked rice->rice recipe in EWatLO
• Convection, Schmonvection: Naturally, the party has no problem with standing close to lava in the Lava Caves, and in one in-game cutscene, there's lava splashing too close to Xelha, but it does nothing to her. And naturally, lava can be stored in a Magnus, too, and is actually required for a sidequest. Though it cools into stone if you take too long.
• Cool Mask: The Children of the Earth all wear unique masks.
• Crazy-Prepared: The royal family of Wazn.
• Darker and Edgier: While the first one has its share of darkness, the prequel arguably outdoes it. The plot begins with our hero being sent on an assassination mission, the majority of the plot involves failing at preventing the villain's plans of promachination, meanwhile experiencing the creation of the series' main villain, after perfectly noble people make a pact with evil in order to gain revenge. Perhaps most brutal of all, after seeing Sagi's mother be forcibly stripped of her wings, it is revealed that the guardian spirit (the player)is not benevolent like in Eternal Wings, but rather a part of Malpercio. This is shortly followed by [[spoiler:Sagi essentially being brutally murdered by his best friend, a character who will later sacrifice themselves for him. For the final note, the ending is bittersweet at best, with the Empire twisting into the force of evil that it is in Eternal Wings.
• Darkest Hour: After the Lava Caves in Eternal Wings, Emperor Geldoblame is dead, Lady Melodia and Kalas have revealed their true colors as pawns of Malpercio, and have succeeded in at least partially resurrecting him. Meanwhile, Xelha is locked up in the Imperial Fortress, the Guardian Spirit is disowned by Kalas, and the rest of the party is trapped in four dimensional cracks.
  • In the prequel, the second round of speeches flashes quickly between Gena losing her wings, the revelation that Sagi houses one of Malpercio's afterlings, flashing to seeing the death of Seph and company, revealing that the player has been a part of Malpercio all along, fighting Guillo and watching Sagi get murdered by it, and then locking Sagi up in Tarazed where he needs to face the connection between him and Malpercio.
• Dark Reprise: A slow, ominous version of the Mintaka theme in Eternal Wings is played over The Stinger in Origins.
• Demoted to Extra: Bizarrely, the entire island of Mira falls victim to this in Origins; it's only mentioned in conversation a couple of times, and only becomes plot-relevant when Sagi and Milly elope there in the end.
• Department of Redundancy Department: An example in the first game; the description of the Cursed Grimoire enemy: An old evil book made more evil with evil power. Great evil power dwelled evilly in this strong, evil book, but now, it's really, really evil.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Wiseman in Origins.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Milly's 'Secret Queen' and 'Secret Queen II' combos, which are hard to set up but deal out tremendous damage with only one or two cards.
  • The entire battle system in Origins is this; figuring out how to build combos and structure your deck effectively is the key to victory. Otherwise, you'll just be chipping away.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Geldoblame in Eternal Wings.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Lava Caves in Eternal Wings, and later the Imperial Fortress.
• Disc-One Nuke: If you know a few EX Combos, the first disc of Origins gets quite a bit easier.
• Disney Death: Xelha, as last of the Ice Queens sacrifices herself to release the Ocean after defeating Malpercio and the continents return to the surface. Shortly before the credits roll, Xelha emerges from her pendant alive and well. Apparently, the Great Whale brought her back.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When trading with Inca Rose, she says you seem like the type with "a nice magnus package" and that she'll show you hers if you show her yours. Upon canceling a trade, she'll remark that you didn't last long enough, and she'll treat you real nice next time.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Someone has been playing both the main characters and The Empire to get their hands on the end Magnus. As it turns out, that character is... the sugary sweet ex-damsel-in-distress Melodia?
• Doomed Hometown: Sheraton isn't destroyed, but Sagi, Guillo, and Milly return to town after investigating monster sightings at Lake Botein to discover it's being occupied by Imperial troops, and after an unwinnable fight, Valara ends up using her machina arma's laser cannon to blast a large chunk of southwest Hassaleh clean off. This becomes the impetus that leads Sagi to working for Verus.
• Double Entendre: In Origins, when Lolo glomps Sagi after he agrees to find pieces of the Celestial Tree for her, he stammers incoherently "I'll...get wood. (Beat.) At the tree! Tree wood!"
• Dreaming of Things to Come Essentially what causes Xelha to set out in her journey and put the story in motion in the first game. Partially subverted as that event was actually happening while she was having a dream about it. Ironically, her having that dream is mentioned at the end of the game after all important events are finished.
• Dual Boss: Giacomo, Ayme, and Folon in the first, and Valara, Hughes, and Nasca in the second.
  • Sagi vs. Baelheit.
  • Xelha and Mizuti get Duel Boss fights in the first game (Mizuti's is optional, Xelha's first one is not). The fights have a completely different battle system, though.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Subverted and eventually justified in the first game; Kalas initially refuses to rescue Xelha from Rodolfo's mansion, but when he runs into a door he can't open, he has to double back and find her.
• Dysfunction Junction: Everybody has some kind of past issue or insecurity.
  • In Origins, there are only three main protagonists. So they get a ton of characterization, including problems.
• Early-Bird Boss: The second boss fight in Origins is a brutal slugfest against Giacomo, which tends to be a bit of a stumbling block for new players.
• Easily Forgiven: Melodia. Even after all she did, Kalas still puts himself in extraordinary danger to pull her out of Malpercio. That being said, this character was at least partially possessed throughout the game.
  • The Angel of Darkness is forgiven almost immediately after the big reveal, and the party thinks very little of what he did to them. Even the Guardian Spirit forgives him, at least enough to bond with him again.
• Eldritch Abomination: Several, but let's note the most important and eldritch ones:
  • Guardian spirits are incorporeal fairy-like Energy Beings from other dimensions who can bond with a person to give them incredible power and knowledge, their magic can also be used to make powerful artifacts. The player is one.
  • Malpercio is the setting's resident God of Evil and Destroyer Deity. After being defeated and sealed away, he returns as the Big Bad. He is actually 5 ancient heroes fused together, including Marno, the player in Origins.
  • Wiseman is Malpercio's Archenemy and one of the most unknowable and weird characters in the franchise.
  • The Dark Brethren are a group of monsters who are collectively the Satanic Archetype of the verse. and the Greater-Scope Villain to Malpercio
• Eldritch Location: Mira, which exists in a flux between dimensions, and is home to several exceedingly bizarre locations, such as a town made of candy, a village with brightly colored 2-dimensional scenery, an odd garden with hallways that look like an old video game, and an elaborate maze of broken mirrors. The island itself is both vertically and horizontally symmetrical, looks like a bizarrely shaped disco mirror ball, and has colored paths that look like a Candy Land game board. It's also the only island whose world map is set at night. It's implied to have once been similar to the island of Sadal Suud before nearly being consumed by a dimensional vortex.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Taken to extremes in the first game — using two attacks with conflicting elements in the same combo caused them to cancel each other out.
• Empty Shell: In Origins, it's shown that removing the wings of the heart can turn a person into this.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The endgame shows you scenes you saw from Kalas's viewpoint from Xelha's instead, adding some interesting context to the game.
• Equipment Spoiler: You can find knuckle attacks before Savyna shows up and start getting swords again just before Kalas comes back.
• Evil All Along: Kalas, although later they have a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Quaestor Verus in Origins.
• Evil Is Hammy: Geldoblame, the Angel of Darkness, and Baelheit.
• Evil Laugh: Several of the villains. Actually, most of the villains.
• Evil Versus Evil: In Origins, Wiseman is clearly evil, but so are the Dark Brethren, who give Marno and his friends the power to defeat him.
• Evolving Weapon: Most Magnus change over real time. This is de-emphasized in the sequel, where your battle Magnus remains the same.
• Facial Composite Failure: In Origins, the protagonists find that The Empire has put up these kinds of posters around Pherkad. The descriptions on the posters accuse Guillo of kidnapping children, Milly of rampant kleptomania, and Sagi of marriage fraud. Their reactions are priceless.
• Failed a Spot Check: Sagi, when you let the mysterious stranger you find in the Emperor's room walk free, it might behoove you to notice the fact that the Emperor is dead.
• Fake Difficulty: The first game did not allow you to reap the benefits of leveling up until you used a blue save flower to visit a church and "reflect upon your experience." In practice, this meant that you had to exit the dungeons and return to town to reap the benefits of everyday leveling so you could stand a chance against the boss fight at the end. Origins returned to the more standard JRPG setup.
  • Eternal Wings also lacked a way to discard unwanted Magnus from your hand. This meant that it was possible for a character's hand to end up filled with armor and finisher Magnus with no Magnus that could initiate a combo, resulting in a situation where they were incapable of attacking until they managed to draw a few weapon Magnus. In a tough fight, this could mean the difference between winning or losing.
    • In addition, used-up cards were not added back to the deck. When the deck for a character ran out, that character wasted a turn reshuffling their deck. Less irritating than it sounds, though, as this also applied to the enemies.
  • In Origins, many bosses and some late-game enemies have multi-target attacks programmed a certain way. Instead of hitting all three characters with a single powerful attack, they will hit the party at random with multiple weaker attacks (up to ten times). This is fairly manageable if all three party members are up (although it sucks when the Random Number God decides it hates one of your party members and piles all the attacks on that one), but if one of your members is down, it still hits the same number of times, often utterly annihilating them. Translation: Unless you like sudden, unexpected party wipes, prioritize revival over anything else.
• Fetch Quest: More then a few in both games, some of which are as long as the main storyline.
• Fight Like a Card Player: All fights are done with Magnus.
• Finishing Move: First game only, super moves automatically end all combos even if you could play more cards.
• Fireworks of Victory: Sagi begins competing in the coliseum specifically because a bedridden little girl—the granddaughter of the coliseum's proprietor—wants to see fireworks. And the way to get them? Becoming the coliseum's champion.
• First-Person Snapshooter: This is the only way to make money in the first game, besides selling your old useless crap, which is worth next to nothing anyway.
• Flat Character: Most of the party members in the first game don't get much in the way of development in the main story. They do get some development and additional insight in optional late-game sidequests, though.
• Floating Continent: Five of 'em!
• Foreshadowing:
  • Xelha jokes she always wanted a Guardian Spirit of her own and Kalas suggests you hop into her for a bit. That's what happens during Kalas's evil stint.
  • An early plot point involves a mole in the party passing a Plot Coupon to the bad guys. Every character but Kalas has an alibi. The only reason Kalas is supposedly beyond suspicion is that he's the Player Character.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Used to great effect towards the end of Origins, where Sagi is caught in a trap that locks his heart and effectively breaks his bond with the guardian spirit (you). A menu pops up giving you responses to his pleas for help... but you are unable to select any of them.
• Forgot About His Powers: Averted. Upon seeing Giacomo's airship leave as they reach the roof, rather than stand helpless as most characters would do, Kalas and Xelha run after it and shortly take off with their Wings.
  • That said, there are more straight examples of this in the game in the form of Insurmountable Waist Height Fences.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: In Origins, you can do this with certain Greythornes, provided you have some saltwater.
• Gambit Roulette: Wiseman/Verus's scheme in the second game.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: You, as the guardian spirit, occasionally answer questions asked by the characters using a menu. At a few key moments in the second game, you see the menu while a character is talking to their own, different spirit, and the game answers automatically for that spirit. Also, near the end of the game, Sagi is caught in a trap that incapacitates his heart, and as such you aren't allowed to select any options, despite being given the menu.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Many of the storyline facts about Magnus don't make sense gameplay-wise. For example, living beings can't be put into magnus, or they'll die. This is an important plot point, but it's hard to remember when you're hitting enemies with live Roosters from your deck, or how so many of the magnus evolutions use it (Plants grow and meat gets maggots).
  • In Origins, characters in the Age Of The Gods cannot see or hear Guillo and Milly. However, their attacks still affect enemies there, and enemies are perfectly capable of seeing and attacking them, despite nobody else noticing their presence.
  • In Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, there are a few quirks, namely Wazn ostensibly having no contact with the outside continents for centuries, but finding a Quzman relative there (and Quzman...isn't centuries old) and normal people not venturing into the Taintclouds because they're poisonous, yet finding another Quzman relative beneath them.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Present in both games. In Origins, Wiseman returns after you beat Verus (assuming you already defeated Wiseman in the past), with almost no foreshadowing or buildup whatsoever — just like Geldoblame in the first game, who briefly returns as a giant head in the ground for a last post-final boss fight.
• Global Currency: Five floating continents, each with their own culture, all use the same currency.
• God Was My Copilot: Greythornes, including Xelha's cute pet Meemai, turn out to be the great whale, the god of this universe.
• Gone Horribly Right: Sagi qualifies. Baelheit tried to make artificial spiriters by bonding pieces of Malpercio to human hearts. Baelheit must have been impressed when Sagi, one of the subjects bonded with a piece of Malpercio, trashed all his machina arma and kicked his ass.
• Gotta Catch Them All: End Magnus, first game.
  • Collecting all the magnus in both games, an extraordinarily difficult and frustrating task.
• Guide Dang It!: The Outer Dimension has mutually exclusive Permanently Missable items (do perfect on the minigame for one item, but you have to do badly to get into a fight against an exclusive monster with a unique drop and photo). Nowhere is it hinted you need to choose to restart the minigame (which can't be done manually, you have to fail, which is actually rather hard) to get both.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Marno is a major figure in the past portions of Origins, but he's never seen. Sagi fills his role, because his "Guardian Spirit" is actually a fragment of Marno's soul, and Sagi is experiencing Marno's memories. The swordsman in the intro cinematic is most likely Marno, but even then, his face is mostly concealed by a Cool Mask.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Way overdone in the second game. Storywise, all the bosses (with a handful of exceptions) are pretty much invulnerable until about two-thirds of the way through the game, so you fight them essentially just to give the player something to do. Of course, when you do start winning fights, it's all the more satisfying.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: In the first game, an NPC will give Kalas a brief rundown on the various facets of the battle system if you ask him to. Averted in Origins, where the battle system is left to the player to figure out.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The guardian spirit's name, chosen by the player, appears in the text but not the spoken dialogue. More prominent in the first game, where there was always a pause in the dialog. The second game toned it down a bit by working around it with pronouns.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Guillo and Rambari in the second game.
• Hidden Elf Village: Anuenue, much more in the second game.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Origins has a couple that are both hopeless and optional, where the bosses in question are available long before the player has the capabilities to defeat them. One is expected to come back there after story-related power is unlocked.
• Holy Burns Evil: Literally. In Eternal Wings, Kalas starts sizzling and steaming like bacon in a pan when Xelha uses the Ocean Mirror on them.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Ladekahn, who believed The Empire, which had just attempted to besiege his nation based on flimsy, baseless claims, would honor their ceasefire agreement.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Trail of Souls and the Outer Dimension the party stumbles into when they get lost in it very much qualify.
• Ice Palace: Kaffaljidhma in the first game.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Just about everyone in this world has these. The playable cast, the other major characters, the minor characters...even the NPCs without names or portraits. It must be normal in this world.
• Incendiary Exponent: The Balloona enemies in Origins can do this, considerably raising their attack power. This comes to a head with the armored versions of this species, which tote around flaming spiked armor.

• Infinite Stock For Sale: Stores had limited items, though after a while they would restock.
• Infinity -1 Sword: In the first game, all characters will get their second-strongest Finishing Move/Special attack after completing their Side Quest.
  • Kalas: Chaotic Illusion
  • Xelha: Water Seal, drowning the enemy for a One-Hit Kill.
  • Gibari: Nemesis Fall
  • Lyude: Presto
  • Savyna: Hellblood's Hammer
  • Mizuti: Alias Fall, a Colony Drop... with a mask.
• The second game has only Sagi, who gets Blast Tooth — the other two characters get their strongest attacks.
• Infinity +1 Sword: In both games, all characters ^note Except Xelha and Mizuti, because they attack with chains of the same spells with varying intensity. will obtain their strongest weapon by doing their Side Quest near the end of the game:
  • Kalas: Void Phantom
  • Gibari: Balgora's Paddle
  • Lyude: Vishnu^note Technically, the horn with the highest overall attack power is the Shining Trumpet, but the game slots elemental weapons into the weapon lists as though they dealt half as much non-elemental damage as they actually do, which means that both the Brahma Eupho and Vishnu are treated as higher-tier weapons.
  • Savyna: Phoenix's Crest, combined with a chance of a One-Hit Kill
  • Sagi: Laevateinn the Flameking.
  • Guillo: Deluge the Seabane.
  • Milly: Vajra the Indestructible.
  • Also, in the first game, you can obtain their Skull Equipment; they grant near-total invulnerability (99% protection) to every status effect in the game at the cost of inflicting perma-Confusion on the character. The Skull equipment is actually inferior to their other endgame equipment option, which all offer ludicrous stat increases in exchange for providing the absolute minimum protection to status effects (1% protection).^note With the exception of Mizuti, whose Broken Bird actually blocks instant death completely, but still confers Confusion like her Skull Birdie.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Egregious. The characters have wings, fences that don't cover from ceiling to floor shouldn't even be a part of society. And yet you still have to solve jumping and bridge puzzles.
  • Eventually lampshaded in Origins, where Sagi remarks he could jump over a boulder blocking the path but is angrily dissuaded by a nearby NPC.
  • Origins justifies this; people's hearts were once powerful enough to let them fly, but the power of heart has atrophied so much since then that wings are only good for brief periods of time.
• Interface Spoiler: In Eternal Wings, the Key Items menu tells you when you lose the Che End Magnus several scenes before the characters realize.
• Item Crafting: In the first game; often stacks. Gets totally ridiculous at some levels, like the work required just to create a single fourth-level elemental "Yell"—use the appropriate item on the enemy followed by the appropriate first-level yell twice to create a level 2 yell, do this three times so you have at least three level 2 yells, then use a different item followed by the level 2 yell three times to create a level 3 yell, you have to do this at least four times because that's how many times you're going to have to use the yell following yet another type of item to create the level 4 yell. Oh, and after time, the Yells decay back down to the lower levels.
  • The Sweatband and Karate Headband require just as many combos as Chronos Yell 4^* The other five yells require more, since the "appropriate items" for Light Yell 2, Dark Yell 2, Wind Yell 3, Fire Yell 4, and both Aqua Yell 3 and Aqua Yell 4 are themselves the products of combos—4 to make the Sushi Rice, 2 to make the Deluxe Wasabi Root, 1 to make the Deluxe Green Tea, and 1 to combine those three items with a fish.
  • Also was in Origins, but you mixed your Quest Magnus instead of Battle Magnus.
• Jiggle Physics: Geldoblame's One-Winged Angel form. It will make you want to claw your eyes out.
  • In Origins, a few of the (thankfully female) shopkeepers have jiggle physics. They aren't particularly well-implemented; it looks like their chests are made of Jello.
• Just Before the End: The Age of the Gods, which you visit in Origins.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Both games, but it's much more notable in the first, where you examine every square inch of every building looking for stuff.
• Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear: A few times you find mentions of clothes, including one that chastises you for looking through a schoolgirl's closet. Amusingly, this doesn't change when you're in control of Xelha. However, since you're actually playing as the Guardian Spirit, whose gender depends on who you are, this means the game is actually scolding the player directly rather than Kalas or Xelha.
• Lazy Backup: Eternal Wings is a particularly irritating example.
• Level Grinding: Although the levels themselves aren't as important as the Randomly Drops, you end up doing a lot of it anyway.
• Limit Break: In Origins, once you reach a specific class level, maxing out your MP meter gives you the option to perform an MP Burst, which gives you infinite MP for the duration of the combo you're executing, then shuts the meter off for a few turns.
• Load-Bearing Boss: In the first game, defeating Malpercio causes Cor Hydrae to collapse in on itself, the Taintclouds to disperse, and the islands to return to earth.
  • In Origins, defeating the final boss causes Tarazed to implode and fall from the sky.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The world map themes in both games, stunningly beautiful songs which you'll probably hear the first five or ten seconds of unless you purposefully wait around and look at the Scenery Porn.
• Love Triangle: Or Love Quadrangle, as Guillo puts it, between Milly, Lolo, and Guillo for Sagi. Played for Laughs, for the most part.
• Low-Level Advantage: Leveling up in blocks of 10 gives better stats boosts than otherwise. Class up items, if used when first found, will often force their user to add outdated and or conflicting Magnus to their deck to keep it full if you don't grind for Randomly Drops.
• Luck-Based Mission: Sort of; due to the card-battling system, you're always at the mercy of the luck of the draw. Less so in Origins, where the Guardian Spirit can actually stack the deck in your favor, and used cards are shuffled right back into the deck.
  • Xelha and Mizuti's Duel Boss battles are pure luck; you are shown a card of a certain element and given seven face-down cards to pick from. If you pick a card of the same element, you damage the boss. If you pick a card of a different element, you take damage. Even more luck based if you are going for 100% completion and need to take a picture of the boss.
  • There's also the boss fight against Fadroh, which is this because of his goddamn Orb of Magical Offense, which not only allows him to act twice per turn, but buffs up his damage from a relatively tame 400-500 per half-blocked combo to a ridiculous 900-1200 per fully blocked combo, twice per turn. The kicker is that there is absolutely no specific event that triggers the use of the Orb of Magical Offense. He might use it on the first turn and murderize your party, or he could use it five turns in, after he's already been pounded into hamburger.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Sort of; after the first battle with Giacomo and his gang, Giacomo reveals that Georg, Kalas' grandfather, is Giacomo's father. However, Kalas and Giacomo aren't related at all.
  • Origins heavily implies Verus is Sagi's father if you do a certain sidequest.
• MacGuffin: End Magnus in the first game and arguably Malpercio's afterlings in the second game.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Played with in the first game. It turns out that no matter which side gains all the End Magnus, they'd all end up in Melodia's hands due to Kalas being a traitor and Geldoblame being her pawn.
• The Magic Goes Away: Say goodbye to your wings! Hope nobody needed them for anything.
• The Man Behind the Man: Melodia in the first game. The second game has two - Verus and, if you remembered to go back in time and kill him, Wiseman.
• Marathon Level:
  • Tarazed. Four different 'blocks', each of which is a maze where every room looks alike. Just to add to that, to complete every block, you have to complete an actual maze room, which are all maddeningly difficult. And the nearest save point is inconveniently located. And you can expect to get wiped at least once or twice by the Machina Auto-Turrets that roam the halls. The only good thing about this level is the music.
  • Cor Hydrae in Eternal Wings, while not as long as Tarazed, is still very long, with five minibosses and a two-form final boss.
• Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: Origins has Sagi, a boy, as the main character, Milly, a runaway noblewoman who accompanies him, and Guilo, Sagi's oldest friend and a puppet animated by ancient magic who is voiced by both a man and a woman.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Baten Kaitos" is the traditional name of the star Zeta Ceti, which in Arabic means "The belly of the whale," the center of the constellation Cetus. Incidentally, most of the towns in the games are also named after stars, albeit relatively obscure ones. The only exceptions are Anuenue — all of its locations are Hawaiian words — and the town of Reverence in Mira, which is just sort of randomly pulled out of nowhere.
  • Xelha, in Yucatec Maya; may or may not be of the prophetic variety. Kalas, meanwhile, is a romanized version of the Japanese karasu, which means raven. Ravens are associated with omens; Geldoblame gave Kalas the name after Georg explained that he was a failed prototype.
  • Daimon, the guardian spirit serving Baelheit in BKO, is named after the "daimon" (most commonly spelled "daemon") beings in Classical mythology, some of which were ordered by Zeus to become guardian spirits to mortal beings: "The daimon of venerated heroes, were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to restlessly wander, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects."
• Mirroring Factions: Promagnation vs. promachination in the second game. Both campaigns are at the opposite ends of the spectrum but they both end up demanding people to give up essential parts of themselves (body for promagnation and hearts for promachination) in order to supposedly ascend to superior beings and will not take no for an answer.
• Missing Main Character: There's a section in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean where the player has to take control of Xelha while Kalas, the main character for the other 95% of the game, does various spoiler-y things.
• Money for Nothing: In the second game, you get loads of money...but there's hardly anything to use it for. You only ever need about forty or fifty attack magnus, there's no consumable items, and all the best specials and weapons are found in treasure chests or are boss drops. The only thing money's good for is upgrading weapons and armor.
• Money Spider: Second game only.
• Monster Arena: The Coliseum, second game only.
• Mood Whiplash: The end of Origins, which goes from the escape from Tarazed and death of Guillo, to a heartwarming scene between Milly and Sagi, and finally to Milly going Tsundere on Sagi and a borderline "Everybody Laughs" Ending.
• Musical Nod: In Origins, the final boss's theme is an orchestral version of the first game's battle theme.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Angel of Darkness.
  • Wiseman.
  • The Dark Brethren.
• The Needless: This is part of why Wiseman wants to turn everyone into Magnus in Origins.
• Nintendo Hard: Origins hits this once the second disc rolls around.
• No Endor Holocaust: Tarazed, a continent sized airship full of people that explodes and falls out of the sky. The fate of the people onboard is never hinted at.
• No Fourth Wall: as mentioned, the player does not directly control the party members. Instead, the player takes the role of a "Guardian Spirit," a helpful fairy creature of some sort whom the characters consult with. Within the first minute of the first game you'll see Kalas turn towards the screen and address you directly. This can seem a bit hokey at first, especially since it doesn't happen all that often, but it also plays into at least one major Plot Twist.
• Non Standard Game Over: At one point in Origins, picking the wrong answer nets you one of these. The implications for Sagi aren't pretty.
• No Periods, Period: We see Melodia get her first period in a flashback at the end of the first game. It has also been interpreted by some fans as the bleeding usually expected after losing one's virginity (on girls, of course); they also say that Geldoblame was the one guilty for that one. Such a nasty interpretation, indeed.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: At the end of the second game; Milly is blasted off of the Tarazed by an explosion and Sagi flies down after her and grabs her close. The two are falling at high speeds... Only to be saved by the timely arrival of the Sfida. However, such a fall should have still killed them.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Party members' journals, second game only.
• Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: The first game combines this trope with The Man Behind the Man. Geldoblame is the apparent Big Bad for most of the game; he sends his minions after you and is attempting to reassemble the End Magnus. But in fact, Geldoblame is being manipulated by the seemingly-helpful Melodia, who is the real Big Bad. The true instance of this trope, however, comes shortly after: there is a mole in your party, and it is none other than Kalas, The Main Character himself! This character and Geldoblame have both been working to assemble the End Magnus, the latter openly, the former in secret
• Offscreen Inertia: All Bonus Bosses of Origins are characters that, earlier in the story, were unbeatable. They all remain in the same place you last saw them.
• Offstage Villainy: You hear a lot about the Dark Brethren in Origins, but the only thing they do onscreen is grant Seph and co. their power. However, considering the damage that Seph and co. AKA Malpercio ended up causing, this may have been their intention all along.
• Ominous Floating Castle: Cor Hydrae, the first game's example of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• One-Hit Kill: Bombs in the second game, which kill pretty much anything, but have a chance of misfiring and killing you instead.

• One-Woman Wail: The Final Boss theme in Origins. Listen carefully and you can hear screaming and crying during the quieter parts of the song. Yeesh.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Origins, when Milly is preparing to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save Sagi from a machina trap, she has a quiet talk with Guillo about her feelings towards Sagi. Guillo quickly picks up that something's not right.
• Overly Long Name: The full name of the game itself, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean.
  • And this was later outdone by the prequel. The original Japanese name of Baten Kaitos Origins is translated as Baten Kaitos II: Beginning of the Wings and the Heir of the Gods.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Savyna is supposed to be an absolute terror on the battlefield, but joins much weaker than the rest of the party. She also executes her combos at a much higher speed than the other characters, which is a Bad Thing because it gives you less time to choose cards to extend her combo, especially since you'll be used to the pace of the other characters.
• Party Scattering: After Kalas reveals he was Evil All Along, the party is reduced to just Xelha, who has to rescue them all. With the exception of Kalas they come back fairly quickly.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Quite a few cards in the first game. Plus, you have to take pictures of every single enemy in the game, including bosses, for 100% Completion, some of which appear only at specific times.
  • Party members. There is exactly one battle in which Mizuti fights without her mask on; taking a photo of her in this state is considered unique from a photo of her regular, masked state.
  • This was pointedly averted in the second game...well, almost. Only 1 Field Guide entry could be lost forever thanks to the Coliseum, and only 3 Quest Magnus (and of these, 2 of them practically had their owner say "this will be lost forever soon"). The one Quest Magnus that did not was only required for one sidequest...and you'd probably be using a guide for that anyway.
• Physical God: Gods from the legend are actually humans who became too reliant on their powers of hearts and ended up waging the war that destroyed most of the world.

• The Plan: Melodia's scheme in Eternal Wings. And it would have worked too, if Xelha hadn't been Crazy-Prepared.
• The Player Is the Most Important Resource: In both games, the player is the protagonist's "Guardian Spirit," a being from another dimension said to grant incredible power. Both games milk this for all it is worth, using it for some very powerful plot twists. The strength of Guardian Spirit's connection to Kalas or Sagi, as determined by how the player answers questions during cutscenes, also affects your luck in battles.
• Player Tic: Origins lampshades this, where other Guardian Spirits select their dialog from the same style of option box as you do; naturally, just like you, their pointers do not sit still.
• Plot Coupon That Does Something: The Broken Earth Sphere, Ocean Mirror, and Sword of the Heavens all count as this. The usability of the latter two is greatly diminished after they're broken by the plot.
• Poison Mushroom: Certain items in the first game were used to inflict status ailments on enemies. If you used them to defend, you could get that same status ailment.
• Post-Climax Confrontation: Bet you weren't expecting Geldoblame to suddenly pop up out of the earth during the ending, huh?

• Power Gives You Wings: The Angel of Darkness always has his wings out after his Face–Heel Turn.
• Power Trio: The player characters in Origins.
• Precision F-Strike: Sagi has this to say to Shanath after the latter ripped Gena's wings off, which shows how royally pissed Sagi is.
  Sagi: Go to hell, you son of a bitch! You hurt my mother!
• Pretty in Mink: A mink coat is sealed into a card as armor (and protects against cold attacks).
• Pronoun Trouble: The gender-based pronouns for the Guardian Spirit do not appear in the non-Japanese versions. As a result, there is absolutely no impact to their gender in the English version, as no one uses third person pronouns for the GS either.
  • On the other hand, Origins frequently refers to the Guardian Spirit using pronouns, in order to avoid the first game's awkward breaks in the voiced dialog whenever the Guardian Spirit's name was spoken. The Guardian Spirit is still supposed to be the player like in the first game, but this time their gender is fixed as male, likely to avoid having to record two sets of dialog. Later justified in-universe when it's revealed the "Guardian Spirit" is actually part of Malpercio, specifically a fragment of Marno's soul, and Marno was a man.
• Public Domain Artifact: The Earth Sphere, Ocean Mirror, and Sword of the Heavens are based on the Imperial Regalia of Japan.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted... just not in the normal way. The Guardian Spirit can have its sex selected at the start of the first game, but as the GS is you (thus you never see the GS), and the text doesn't use a single pronoun for you. All it does is change the color of the save file (blue for male, pinkish-red for female). Origins gives you a fixed gender in order to use pronouns in voiced dialog to work around the Guardian Spirit's name being entered by the player. This also turns out to be a plot point, when the Guardian Spirit's true nature is revealed as a piece of Malpercio, specifically a fragment of Marno's soul.
• Puzzle Boss: The Post-Final Boss from Eternal Wings; while he can be defeated normally, it's much quicker to just string together a chain of attacks long enough to make a Spirit Attack appear, as using one will end the battle immediately.
  • Quaestor Verus from Origins; if even one of his flunkies is still alive, it'll shield him from damage. Nothing like assembling The Apotheosis just to have him revive one right before Sagi's turn comes up.
• Random Encounters: Averted. All enemies can be seen on the overworld.
• Randomly Drops: Ye gods. The second game is rather tame with this, with each enemy having no more than two droppable items. The first one, however, can have as many as TEN per enemy. And there's a few enemies that drop an item that can be Permanently Missable if the player doesn't pick it up before leaving the dungeon it's in.
• Real Time: Sort of. It's obviously not real time, and there are definite skips, but the magnus that change form must be mentioned. Items can change in a matter of a few seconds (the fortunes) or take as long as two real-time weeks to appear (Splendid Hair, which Shampoo turns into after 336 hours—and which does nothing within the game, but does unlock the sound test).
• Recurring Boss: Giacomo in both games — he's a serious villain in the first game, but seems to have started out as an Unknown Rival in the prequel.
• Relationship Values: The Guardian Spirit's bond with Kalas or Sagi is measured based on how the player answers questions during cutscenes, and affects certain things during battles. In the first game, a card in Kalas's hand would sometimes turn into an extremely strong elemental attack during an offensive combo, happening more or less frequently depending on the bond value. In the second game, a higher bond with Sagi meant a better chance of drawing cards that were useful for your current combo or your party's health.
• Retcon: While it does somewhat explain the Alfard Empire's Start of Darkness, Origins creates quite a few awkward continuity issues for Eternal Wings, ranging from Malpercio being evil in the first place to Savyna's hair color.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The greythornes, very much so.
• The Right of a Superior Species: This idea is enforced by the government schools of Alfard.
• Scenery Porn: Oh yes. The graphics for towns, dungeons, and overworlds look more like fantasy landscape paintings than video game backdrops.

• Science Is Bad: Sort of. A subplot in the second game is the conflict between machina and the Functional Magic brought on through The Power of Friendship. Compromising evidently does not occur to either side. Both played straight and subverted as it also shows what happens if people become too reliant on their hearts. It never quite reaches a level where you could call it An Aesop, though.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: In the first game, the End Magnus. In the second game, Malpercio's afterlings are sealed inside human hosts.
• Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: Malpercio would only be revived if the End Magnus of Ar, Le, He, Che and Bo were brought together. There's a bit of a hint when Bo is pronounced like Bah that there's something going on, and its later revealed that the names are short for Arms, Legs, Head, Chest and Body respectively.
  • It's actually a subversion, though. Origins reveals the 5 are actually 5 separate, benevolent, people who, as a group, were known as Malpercio (after their childhood home). Connecting the 5 in Eternal Wings does make a nice vessel for the Dark Brethren who now own their bodies by way of Deal with the Devil.
• Sequential Boss: The final boss of the second game. Notably, this is the only boss in the entire game that fights like this, discounting the Coliseum.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In Origins, once Sagi unlocks Marno's power, you can travel back to Atria and stop Wiseman from escaping. Doing so unlocks the True Final Boss.
• Shoot the Medic First: If you want to nail the Holoholobird, put it to sleep and tackle its chicks — they can replenish 2000 HP.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: If you don't kill Wiseman in Origins, then Seph's story becomes one of these.
• Shout-Out: One dungeon is modeled almost perfectly after The Tower of Druaga, complete with slimes and tools. And 8-bit graphics and sound.
  • There's also one Magnus that looks suspiciously like KOS-MOS.
    • And one of the bosses in the first game is called Gnosis.
  • In Origins, Guillo comments on an unconscious soldier after a cutscene, where Gibari throws a barrel at him.
  • There are also several Pac-Man magnus; in the first game, it can be crafted out of various items, while in Origins...well...
  • The names of Xelha's bodyguards, Gram and Leon, are references to the Chrono series; they are the Japanese names of Masa and Mune, who together form the weapon Masamune ("Grandleon" in Japanese).
• Shows Damage: The Magnus Giganticus boss, unlike every other boss in the first game, which gets its corners torn off as it takes more and more damage from Kalas and his party.

• Smug Snake: Just about every significant bad guy in Origins, except Baelheit; especially the arma users and Wiseman.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: When Kalas briefly leaves the party, this character takes everything in their deck with them. Can lead to Permanently Missable Content if they have one of the defensive auras in their deck and it changes form twice before you get them back.

• Spoiler Opening: Do not watch the opening movie of the first game if you want to enjoy the plot.

• Start of Darkness: The Stinger of Origins serves as one for Geldoblame, the Disc-One Final Boss of the original, and Giacomo, whose obsession with power comes from his inability to defeat Sagi.
• Status Effects:
  • Poison, confusion, headache, sleep, paralysis, burning, frozen, and instant death.
  • Origins had stun, poison, burning, frozen, sleeping, blindness, and knockdown.

• Summation Gathering: Part of an early quest in Origins, when Sagi's investigating a series of terrorist bombings.
• Theme Naming: Kalas and Sagi are both named after birds. Kalas's name is a romanized version of 'karasu,' which is the Japanese word for raven, while Sagi's is the Japanese word for heron.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The source of the Wham Episode in Origins: Sagi is a successful malideiter.
• Tomato Surprise: Most players will conclude that the first game's blatant cutscenes about the possibility of a spy in the party are a Red Herring. Skilled players might take it a step further and conclude there really is a spy precisely because it seems like so much of a Red Herring, albeit with a twist such as the spy being forced to spy against his or her will. Nobody will conclude the spy is not only real and utterly unrepentant, but the main character.
• Torture Cellar: An NPC alludes to it, but it’s only possible to see it for yourself once you’ve learned that Quaestor Verus was Evil All Along. At that point, if you go back to Verus's estate, you can pass through a door that was never accessible before, previously blocked by a Mook who claimed was where Verus met with his guardian spirit, and find out exactly how someone so evil kept up the façade for so long.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Azha in Origins; despite how happy it seems when you first visit it, you later learn that the townspeople are being worked to death by The Empire and are currently harboring a terrorist.
• Treacherous Advisor: Verus, second game.
  • A villainous example in Shanath, given how he was spying on Baelheit for Verus.
• True Companions: In both games, your party will end up like this. This is part of Melodia's plan in Eternal Wings.
• True Final Boss: Origins has Verus-Wiseman, which is accessible by finding and killing Wiseman on the Battlefields of Atria.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Two remarkably similar cases, one in each game: in the first, the player can use a Red Flower (where they can save but not level up) on board the imperial airship, which can't be left until That One Boss (well, those three bosses) is beaten. In Origins, the Holoholobird attacks just after a disc change which included a save prompt. In both of these cases, underleveled or underequipped characters without a spare save file will be unable to defeat the bosses and continue on.
• Useless Item: A number of quest Magnus have no purpose except to be registered in the gathering and make you wonder which of your limited blank Magnus to keep.
• Useless Useful Spell: Averted in the case of Spirit Attack finishers; at maximum power, they're almost twice as powerful as the most powerful 'normal' finisher available.
  • Played straight with status ailment cards; pretty much anything that isn't immune to them isn't worth using them on.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Cor Hydrae in Eternal Wings and Tarazed in Origins.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can choose to kill Nasca, Heughes, and Valara after defeating them in Origins. Sparing them opens up extra cutscenes where they help Sagi and Milly escape Tarazed as it falls from the sky.
• Villainous Friendship: Valara shares a genuinely close bond with Nasca and Heughes.
• Villains Never Lie: Averted, Kalas instantly dismisses Giacomo's claim he's the son of Kalas's "grandfather", even though it turns out to be true (An NPC will mention Georg had a son named Giacomo casually).
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Guillo and Milly in Origins develop into these.
• Voice of the Legion: Mizuti in the first game, Guillo in the second.
• The War Sequence: The Battlefields of Atria.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Giacomo, in both games.
  • The Holoholobird is a mid-game example; it's the point where Origins leaves 'rather challenging' and dives headfirst into Nintendo Hard territory.
• We Buy Anything: Averted in the first game, anything not meant to be sold as its primary purpose sells for less than a dozen gold while photos sell for 1000s, and you flat out can't sell some items.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Baelheit wants to prevent people from relying too much on their powers of hearts so that they may not wage war with the said power again. However, he does so by waging heat on the other islands with machina and forcibly taking off people's wings of the heart, which bring unhealthy side effects such as concussions and the inability to feel and taste. He is willing to go as far as blowing up all islands, which used the power of hearts to float, when his attempt to machinate those islands fails.
• Wham Episode: The Lava Caves in the first and the election speeches in the second.
• Wham Line: Several, chief among them being Kalas's line, which changes the context of the entire game up to that point:
  Kalas: It's me. I worked together with Melodia.
  • Origins has several, but the whammiest of all is Pieda's bombshell:
  Pieda: Well, how about Malpercio, then?
• Wham Shot: At the climax of Origins, Baelheit shoots Milly in the face, revealing that she's a machina cyborg.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Aside from a brief hallucination, Lyude's siblings Skeed and Vallye never appear again after the confrontation in Mintaka. Becomes Fridge Horror when you realize they were probably killed when Malpercio revived in the Imperial Fortress, or they were executed for treason for leaving their mansion without prisoners.
• What the Hell, Player?: If you select the wrong answers to dialogue options, Kalas and Sagi will call you out on it.
  • Story-wise, Sagi delivers an absolutely blistering one to the player during the Heart-to-Heart scene, as well as a less direct one an hour or two before.
• Winged Humanoid: Just about everyone (execpt for Alphard residents in the first game) has "Wings of the Heart," and what exactly they look like are unique to the individual person, ranging from bird wings to butterfly wings.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: The first game uses its unusual setting device to invoke this in the player. Normally The Mole would have no chance whatsoever of being the main character, purely because the story couldn't continue otherwise. Too bad Kalas is only the main character, not the Point of View one.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Averted: Opposing elements being paired together lowers the total damage. Played straight in Origins; several EX Combos involve pairing opposing elements like light and dark together.
  • More traditionally, two characters in the first game have weapons and finishing moves that focus exclusively on conflicting elements- Lyude with light and darkness, and Savyna with fire and water. Both characters are difficult to use effectively as a result.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Partially subverted in that it's Kalas, the main character, who does this to his guardian spirit, the player, after his plan to resurrect Malpercio succeeds. Fortunately, Xelha becomes the new holder for the guardian spirit.
  • In Origins, Verus does this to Geldoblame after The Reveal.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The collective populace of Azha feels this way about the Mourning Mistral.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: The Dark Service meets their demise when their machina slaves get upgraded and begin to question why they take orders.

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