The heroes of Eternal Wings and the Lost Oceannote
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, also known as Baten Kaitos I, is an Eastern RPG/Card Battle Game hybrid and the first game in the Baten Kaitos duology. Originally released for Nintendo GameCube in 2003, it would later receive a prequel in the form of Baten Kaitos Origins.The story follows Kalas, a young Anti-Hero with an artificial Wing of Heart to replace his missing one. He travels the Sky in the hope to avenge the murder of his grandfather and brother by soldiers of The Empire. One day, he meets a Mystical Waif called Xelha, who is on her own quest to recover five End Magnus, that contain the body of a long-dead evil god Malpercio, and prevent the Empire from using their power. After learning that the murderer Kalas searches for is also responsible for collecting the End Magnus, the duo joins forces in their search for the End Magnus in five Great Nations of the Sky.
Gameplay of Eternal Wings resembles a traditional Eastern RPG, mixed with Card Battle Game. Each character has their own deck of magnus, each of which contains a weapon to attack with, a piece of armor to protect themselves, or an item to use. Each card has associated "spirit numbers", which increase damage of the whole combo when arranged into a straight or pairs. The same principle applies to defence and healing. Elemental affinities of weapons are also important, as opposite elements will simply negate each other if used in a combo together. Finally, each character has a set of finishers - powerful attacks, which can only be used after a combo of certain length, and automatically end the user's turn.
Tropes:
- Action Commands: On higher levels you have limited time to select your attacks. Defence is like this from the very start, as the enemy won't wait while you select defence magnus. The first attack in enemy combos comes out particularly fast, often resulting in you having one less defence magnus against their attacks.
- Alien Blood: At one point a hypothetical creature with blue blood is used as a metaphor for Kalas's Artifical Human status making his "magnus"/soul unnoticeable to a mystic. Apparently, people of Baten Kaitos never heard of mollusks or crabs.
- The Artifact: 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.
- Barrier Change Boss: The Final Boss, Awakened Malpercio, starts out weak to Light, but strong to Darkness, and can switch his elemental resistances and weaknesses through the battle.
- Big "NO!": In the opening movie Kalas lets out one, while holding his dead grandfather. That's not how the actual scene in the game goes.
- Block Puzzle: The Tower of Zosma is essentially one large puzzle. Its blocks can float in the air, and display peculiar physics when pushed and colliding. Kalas can climb onto these blocks, which prevents you from locking yourself, but opens up tons of posssible variations to get confused. During Mizuti's side quest one puzzle even relies on not pushing a block into its "proper" place so you can progress.
- Body Horror: When Geldoblame uses the power of the End Magnus, he becomes a giant, headless torso, with tentacles in place of legs, malformed arms - right too big and left too small, breasts, and disgusting fleshy "wings". Where his head used to be, he gets a hole with an abnormally long tongue sticking out. And all of that jiggles.
- Boss Remix: "The True Mirror", the normal battle theme, has a guitar version that plays during several plot-important boss battles.
- But Thou Must!: Averted at one occasion, where you can tell Kalas to go and help Xelha, instead of abandoning her. But then again, Kalas runs into a two-person lock a bit later, an he has no choice but to go help Xelha anyway.
- Caught with Your Pants Down: In the Imperial Fortress, you can walk in on a soldier who's having some alone time.
- Character Level: Each character actually has two types of levels - normal level and "class". The former can be raised with experience, earned from battles - although you need to visit the Church to do so. The latter, however, can be raised only with special magnus, unique for each character. While level raises the character's attributes, their class governs the size of their deck and hand, maximum length of their combo, and the time avilable to choose your first magnus in the turn.
- Collapsing Lair: Cor Hydrae is sucked into a dimensional rift after Malpercio is defeated.
- Collection Sidequest: There are three major sidequests, and all of them consist of you finding stuff.
- Star Map sidequest spans the entire game, and has you searching for Constellation Magnus - stored starlight, used in decoration of the church where you level up. Each Constellation nets you a unique reward, as do certain milestones (10/20/30 pieces, as well as all 12 Zodiac Constellations).
- Quzman's Family Tree is a request from a dying old man to find his entire extended family and bring them to him for a family reunion. It also takes up the entire game, and many of these people are either not easily found, or have to be persuaded to come back.
- Animal Collecting is a late-game sidequest that requires you to collect several animals to populate the land of Wazn. You need to backtrack to nearly every major location, and collect just about every creature that doesn't attack you and is not called "greythorne".
- Cultural Translation: Several magnus, mostly food-related ones, are familiar only to Japanese players. Thus, in other releases they were replaced with Western delicacies. The most notable change of this sort is replacement of dango with shish kebabs. A non-food example would be a Japanese seal, which is used to sign a document.note It was replaced with a fountain pen.
- Darkest Hour: After the party goes into Lava Caves to get the final End Magnus they find out that Geldoblame is already here, and he uses End Magnus to go One-Winged Angel. The party manges to defeat him, but then Melodia shows up, reveals that she was the one who manipulated Geldoblame, and that Kalas was allied with her from the very beginning. Kalas then powers up with Malpercio's energy and banishes the Guardian Spirit, i.e. you, the player. They then proceed to awaken Malpercio. The party, meanwhile, is captured and trapped inside four dimensional cracks.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Used as a joke in 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."
- Disc-One Final Boss: Geldoblame is set up as the main villain, wanting to use the End Magnus for his own ends, as well as being the leader of The Empire, and thus related to Kalas' revenge quest. However, after he collects the End Magnus, he mutates into a horrible creature, and is killed by the real villain - Melodia, who used him to collect the End Magnus in order to ressurect Malpercio. She then serves as ananagonist util the end of the game.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Combos with long straights. They are far harder to pull off than regular pairs, but what's the reward for 1-9 "Rising Sun" combo? Quadruple damage for this combo, that's what!
- Disney Death: Near the end of the game, after the continents return to the surface, Xelha, as the last of the Ice Queens, sacrifices herself to release the Ocean and Disappears into Light. Shortly before the credits roll, Xelha emerges from her pendant alive and well. Apparently, the Great Whale brought her back.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Someone has been manipulating both the party and The Empire to get their hands on the End Magnus. It turns out that person is... the sugary sweet ex-Damsel in Distress Melodia.
- Duel Boss: Played with. Xelha fights a boss alone during the main storyline, while Mizuti does the same during a late-game sidequest. However, both of these "fights" are tests, and they use a different - and completely random - battle system.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Averted. Kalas refuses to rescue Xelha in Rodolfo's mansion, and only goes back to help her when he runs into a door that requires two people to open. You, however, can choose to enforce this trope and persuade Kalas to go help Xelha right away.
- Easily Forgiven: Forgiveness is more or less a running theme in the game, and even pretty heinous villains are let off the hook rather easily.
- Ayme and Folon get no punishment, despite the former almost killing King Ladekahn under the cover of negotiations.
- Kalas is forgiven almost immediately after his betrayal, and the party outright works to help him overcome his possession, despite Kalas being completely willing to accept it in the first place. Even the Guardian Spirit forgives him, and bonds with him again.
- 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.
- Equipment Spoiler:
- You can find knuckle attacks before Savyna shows up
- You also start getting swords again just before Kalas comes back.
- Eviler than Thou: During The Reveal Melodia brings a platoon of soldiers at Lava Caves and has them shoot a mutated Geldoblame, who plummets from a cliff to his fiery doom. While she didn't it personally, as she is not a fighter, it demonstrates how competent she is at swaying people to her side, and her scheming nature.
- Fake Difficulty:
- You don't get levels from experience right away. Instead, you must find a blue save flower, go to the church, and "reflect upon your experience". In practice, this means that you usually arrive to the boss slightly underleveled.
- There's no way to mass-discard magnus from your hand. It means that if you happen to draw a couple too much armor or finisher magnus, the character will be unable to attack. You can discard them one by one by selecting unusable magnus, but this way you'll be able to discard only one card per turn.
- Duel Boss battles. You are given several magnus, uncluding a camera. They are all turned face down, so you don't see them. Of these, only one will damage the boss, camera will take the picture, and the rest will hurt you. If luck is not on our side, these battles may take forever to sit through.
- Finishing Move: Finishers (properly called Finishing Moves and Arcane Spells) are usually stronger than normal weapons at the point when you get them, and require to be preceded by a combo of certain length. They will also automatically end the character's turn when used.
- First-Person Snapshooter: Taking photos of enemies and selling them is the only way to make money in the game, as any other magnus sell for a pittance at best. For this end, you have camera magnus, which, in fact, is one of the few items that can't be thrown away or sold. Taken photos must be given a bit of time to "develop", so you can get their full price. Most arcanely, quality of photos depends on amount of Dark and Light magnus used at the time when the photo is taken. Too much Darkness makes the photo too dim, and Light makes it too bright. Both of these conditions lower the photo's price.
- Foreshadowing:
- Xelha jokes that 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.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Near the end of the game Geldoblame comes back as a giant head in the ground. He claims that he merged with the fabric of the world and attacks Kalas and Xelha. They soundly beat him, and this event is never brought up again.
- God Was My Copilot: Greythornes, including Xelha's cute pet Meemai, turn out to be the great whale, the god of this universe.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Each continent has an End Magnus sealed somewhere on them. Now, go and collect them.
- Guide Dang It!: The Outer Dimension Unexpected Shmup Level has one Permanently Missable item that drops from an enemy defeated by Mindeer's cannons, as well as several similarly missable magnus that drop from enemies that you fight on foot, when they reach the ship. To collect all magnus in the game you must know exactly, which enemy can be safely fought by the party, and which must be shot down.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: An NPC will give Kalas a brief rundown on the various facets of the battle system if you ask him to.
- Holy Burns Evil: Literally. Corrupted Kalas starts sizzling and steaming like bacon in a pan when shown the Ocean Mirror.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Outer Dimension is a black void, populated by hordes of monsters, including a Gnosis.
- Ice Palace: Kaffaljidhma, the royal palace of the land of Wazn, seems to be made completely of ice, including furniture.People actually do live there, seemingly not very affected by cold.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Skull equipment. They they grant near-total invulnerability (99% protection) to every status effect in the game at the cost of inflicting perma-Confusion on the character. They are given out in the end of characters' personal sidequests (which are relatively easy to find and complete), but are inferior to another set of equipment.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The final set of equipment. They provide insane bonuses, even stronger than the Skull set, but each of them, sans Kalas', can be acquired only by completing a sidequest, one of which is missable. Good luck trying to find these without a guide. Their downside is lack of protectionnote against status effects, something that Skull equipment covers.
- Interface Screw:
- Two of the Status Effects, Headache and Confusion, inflict some change in the battle controls for the afflicted character. The former makes spirit numbers appear along edges of the card instead of corners, while the latter makes these them rotate around the card's edges.
- Coccolith, the maze that guards the End Magnus of Mira. Its actual layout is very simple, but you look at it through small "windows", that resemble shards of a broken mirror. Each "shard" shows the maze from a different angle, some - large portions, some - only a small patch of ground. If you figure out which direction you have to go, it can be completed in less than a minute - the main problem is figuring it out.
- 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. As soon as you figure out that it essentially simulates a Faux First Person 3D game, the dungeon becomes much more tolerable.
- Interface Spoiler: Used intentionally, as a foreshadowing. The Key Items menu tells you when you lose the Che End Magnus several scenes before the characters realize.
- Item Crafting: An unorthodox method. To get some magnus, you need to use several magnus in a single combo together. After the battle, the result will be available as a drop. These "SP Combos" are rarely intuitive, but you can find recipes for some of them
- The worst one is the Yell crafting chain. To get [X] Yell Lv 2 you'll need to combine a specific magnus and two Yells Lv 1 of the same element. Lv 3 requires another magnus, followed by three Lv 2s. And Lv 4 needs yet another magnus, followed by four Lv 3s. Oh, and said "specific magnus" sometimes are products of combos themselves.note And Yells decay over time, ultimately rendering the crafting chain pointless.
- The Sweatband and Karate Headband require just as many combos as Chronos Yell 4 (the other five yells require more) — 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.
- 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.
- Lazy Backup: Eventually, you get twice as many characters as the game allows on the battlefield, but reserve won't help the battle party in any way.
- Level Ate: Parnasse is an entire town made out of sweets.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At one point the Guardian Spirit, aka you, the player, is told "your game is over". That's not an uncommon saying, but it sounds way too much like your typical Game Over message.
- Load-Bearing Boss: Exaggerated. Defeating Awakened Malpercio causes his lair, Cor Hydrae, to collapse, and then the Five Great Nations come crashing down from the sky, as the End Magnus no longer exist, and their lingering power has been exausted to break Cor Hydrae's barrier.
- 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, unless you grind for Random Drops.
- Luck-Based Mission
- 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: Subverted. Giacomo reveals that Georg, Kalas' grandfather, is Giacomo's father. However, Kalas later turns out to be an Artificial Human, and Georg essentially adopted him. Thus, Giacomo an Kalas are not related at all.
- MacGuffin: End Magnus are essentially cards with pieces of an evil god sealed inside. The bad guys desire them for their supernatural power, and the good guys try to prevent bad guys from getting their hands on them.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: Played with. 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: Wings of the Heart seem to disappear when the Ocean is released at the end of the game. This is weird, given that Wings are more or less a part of a person's soul. We also don't see the party lose theirs Wings. Curiosly, actual magic stays in place, as Mizuti still floats in the ending.
- The Man Behind the Man: Geldoblame is the obvious central villain. However, Melodia turns out to have been manipulating everyone, Empire and heroes included, since before the game even begun. Where Geldoblame tries to obtain the End Magnus for power, Melodia collects them for a greater purpose - the revival of Malpercio. Once Geldoblame is of no use anymore, she disposes of him and claims her place as the actual villain of the story.
- Marathon Level: Cor Hydrae, the final dungeon. It has five paths, two puzzles, five minibosses, and two-form final boss. At least there's a save point in its center.
- Missing Main Character: There's a section where the player has to take control of Xelha, while Kalas, the main character for most of the game, in unavilable.
- No Periods, Period: Averted. There is a flashback that involves Melodia getting her first period.
- Ominous Floating Castle: Cor Hydrae, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, floats somewhere in-between five continents, and constantly sends waves of monsters at the outside world.
- Optional Boss: Each personal sidequest has a boss in the end. You are not required to beat these sidequests, but it's the only way to get level VIII finishers.
- 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.
- Party Scattering: After Kalas reveals he was Evil All Along, the party is reduced to just Xelha, locked in a prison. She then has to rescue the other party members, who are locked in dimensional cracks.
- Permanently Missable Content: Oh, so, so many of them. About 150 (out of 1022) magnus can be missed in one way or another.
- Aging magnus can be subject to this if you let a leaving character keep them, and they age twice before you get the character back. The most obvious victim is [X] Aura magnus, of which there are only one copy of each in the entire game.
- Sidequest which give you unique magnus can be sometimes screwed up. Aura magnus are also one of these, as is Mizuti's best equipment, Broken Birdie.
- Combination magnus can be missed, if you fail to mix them before one of their ingredients ages into something else. For example, Beautiful Hair can be made only with Shampoo, which may evolve into Splendid Hair before that. Sure, it will take 336 hours of the game running, but it's still technically missable.
- All bosses and limited-time enemies have pictures, which can also be missed, if you failed to draw a camera in time. A good example is Imperial Soldier - they appear only in Rodolfo's mansion, and dissapear once you finish it. Two photos of Mizuti can also be missed, as she fights without her mask on for exactly one battle. You'll need to take a photo of her at least twice, if you want to add both Maskless Mizuti and Mega Rare Mizuti Pic to your Gathering.
- Plot Armor: Noted in-universe and exploited when Kalas powers up with Malpercio's power. Geldoblame, who did the same minutes ago, was turned into an ugly monster. Kalas, however, is fine - the Guardian Spirit protects him, even when he is in process of betraying everyone, including the player.
- Plot Coupon That Does Something: The Sacred Artifacts - Earth Sphere, Ocean Mirror, and Sword of the Heavens - are strong battle magnus of the Light element. Sadly, they end up broken during the plot, but even the broken versions are pretty useful on their own rights.
- Poison Mushroom: There are several items that can be used to inflict ststus effects on the enemy. If you use them to defend, you get inflicted with the very same effect.
- Post-Climax Confrontation: During the game's ending, after Malpercio has been dealt with, Geldoblame suddenly reappears as a giant head in the earth. Kalas and Xelha confront him alone, giving them a chance to kill the bastard, who was previously only defeated by Melodia. After that, the ending proceeds as if nothing has happened.
- The Power of Friendship: Turns out this trope is in full effect to the benefit of the enemy. Turns out, bonds of friendship of the party give them power that rivals that of an End Magnus. Thus, it provides a perfect fabric for merging the End Magnus into one and forming the body of Malpercio.
- Pronoun Trouble: While you can select the Guardian Spirit's gender, corresponding pronouns are used only in text. Every time when character are about to say the Spirit's name or pronoun, the sound makes ab abrupt pause.
- Public Domain Artifact: The Earth Sphere, Ocean Mirror, and Sword of the Heavens are blatantly based on the Imperial Regalia of Japan.
- Random Drops: Ye gods. The game can have as many as TEN droppable magnus 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. Oh, and you can choose only one randomly dropped item from every given battle - that includes SP Combo results and photos, although they do register into Gathering regardless of whether you actually pick them.
- Remembered I Could Fly: When Kalas and Xelha chase after a departing airship, they jump good thirty meters into the air with their Wings, and easily reach it. This is especially noticeable, as the game has a huge Acrophobic Bird problem.
- Rousseau Was Right: Kalas is a raging Jerkass, a result of being a failed Divine Child prototype, which gave him a large number of human flaws; pride, arrogance, and relentless dickery included. However, he eventually grows out of it and develops the "Heart of Gold" in Jerk with a Heart of Gold, a testament that humans are fundamentally good, if flawed.
- Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: Malpercio's body is divided into several parts, with each one sealed in a separate End Magnus. Each Magnus is hidden somewhere on islands, to prevent someone from claiming their power. Subverted when they do come together. It's revealed that each part is taken from a different god, which is why its power is so unstable and dangerous. It requires a great power to even fuse this "gruesome patchwork of divine limbs and body parts" together, and the result, while powerful, is not nearly the god of destruction it's been hyped up as.
- Shout-Out:
- One dungeon is modeled almost perfectly after The Tower of Druaga, complete with slimes, tools, and 8-bit graphics and sound.
- There are a couple of references to Xenosaga. There's a Magnus with a KOS-MOS action figure, and a boss called Gnosis.
- The names of Xelha's bodyguards, Gram and Leon, are references to Chrono Trigger; 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, which gets its corners torn off as it takes more and more damage from the party.
- 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.
- Spider Tank: Both Iron Beetles are walking multi-legged mecha. The II version is six-legged, and the V version is four-legged. The latter can even jump.
- Spoiler Opening: The opening is a collection of parts of plot-important scenes, rendered in CGI and put together. While not all of these scenes happen the same way in the game, they still can spoil the plot if you pay some attention to them.
- Status Effects: While the game doesn't bother separating them, there are two types of status effects:
- "Normal" status effects do pretty much the same thing as in any other game. Poison and Burning are Damage Over Time, Sleep, Paralysis and Freeze prevent actions, and Instant Death is, well, One-Hit Kill.
- Besides normal effects, the game also has two Interface Screw statuses - Headache, which makes spirit numbers appear along edges of the card, rather than corners, and Confusion, which makes these numbers rotate around the magnus.
- Storybook Opening: The intro cutscene shows a book, titled "The History of Baten Kaitos: Endless Wings and the Lost Sea", which opens to briefly go over the world's backstory.
- Thanking the Viewer: In the end, the party, completely in character, thanks you for sharing and helping them in the adventure as they bid you farewell. Unlike most other examples of this trope, this sendoff flows naturally in the context of the story and makes complete sense in the universe of the game.
- Tomato Surprise: Most players will conclude that the game's blatant implications about a spy in the party are a Red Herring. Experienced players might 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.
- Trauma Inn: You can "rest your wings" for free in any shop, which fully heals the party.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: At one point the party gets stuck in an outer dimension, and you must fight your way back by steering Mindeer and firing its cannon. Enemies return fire, and will attack the party on foot if they collide with you. You aren't given any HP meter, but if you lose sight of you guide, Mizuti, it's a Game Over. Naturally, this minigame has several missable magnus, unique to both enemies that you shoot down, and those that you fight on foot.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: On board of Goldoba there is only red save flower, which allows you to save, but not level up. You can't leave the ship without beating a difficult boss. If you save over your only save file, and can't beat the boss, then you've just softlocked yourself. Thankfully in the remaster you can simply turn on instant KO mode for this one fight, making it impossible to actually softlock yourself, although you won't get the satisfaction of actually fighting the boss.
- 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.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Cor Hydrae, a dark castle floating in the center of the game's world.
- 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).
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Giacomo hits pretty hard, and has a finisher - the first enemy in the game to pack one. He also loves to make two turns in row, forcing the player to always keep both party members at high HP.
- Wham Line: With this line, the game not only makes a large reveal, but also breaks every expectation that players could have had about plot development:Kalas: It's me. I worked together with Melodia.
- We Buy Anything: Downplayed. Shops will buy this rotten food off you, but you'll get 1G for it. Even actually good items won't fetch you more than several dozens of G. The only things that shops are actually interested in are photos of monsters - the rarer the better.
- 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.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: During the Wham Episode Kalas decides that with his newfound power he no longer needs a Guardian Spirit, and banishes you. Naturally, he can't kill the player, so banishing the Spirit is the closest thing he can do.
