YMMV / Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

• Anti-Climax Boss: The Post-Final Boss, despite having a mountain of HP, has weaker attacks than most regular enemies and no defensive capacities whatsoever. And if you know the One-Hit Kill trick (use a Spirit Attack magnus), well!
• Base-Breaking Character: Some players consider Xelha a likeable character (or just don't have anything against her), while others consider her a Creator's Pet for having more screentime than anyone else and for having a spectacularly obnoxious voice in the dub. Her garish outfit doesn't help, either.
• Catharsis Factor: As annoying as his Boss Fight can be, Angel of Darkness Kalas can be greatly satisfying once you've prepared enough, and want to wail on him for being such an ass before his Face–Heel Turn.
• Ending Fatigue: There's several places where it feels like the story is wrapping up (the Lava Caves, the Imperial Fortress, Algorab Village), but there's always something more. Granted, the game does manage to pull everything together beautifully, but 60+ hours is an extremely long time.
• Game-Breaker: Wonder Momo Magnus. Second-best healing in the entire game, 100% cure on every status (including death) in offense, 100% resistance boost to every status in defense. Best of all, unlike Deluxe Sushi and many other recovery Magnus, it never wastes away, eliminating the need to go make more. Even better, you can get these as soon as you hit Anuenue, since they evolve from the Momotaro Magnus, which evolves from the relatively commonly dropped Peach Magnus in the Ancient Library. Get a handful, leave your game turned on overnight for a few days, and barring a stroke of the worst luck possible, you'll have to actively try to lose. Hell, just having one or two on each character makes even the otherwise really tough Final Boss a joke.
• Goddamned Boss: The Gnosis you fight in the Outer Dimension. It has -100% to Darkness and -50% to everything else; despite not having much in the way of offense, its defense means the fight takes forever.
• Narm: Eternal Wings is a beautifully written game marred by badly animated character models and hilariously bad voice acting.
  • What's even worse is that there are different voice actors for the game's intro, who are far superior to the voice acting in the game itself (with the possible exception of "DAMN! The BASTARDS!" and "Who cares?").
  • Then there's this bizarre sound filter over the voice acting in the game that makes it sound distorted. While this is supposed to simulate being a Guardian Spirit, all it really accomplishes is just making the voice acting sound much worse than it actually would be without it.
  • The whole exposition on the Earth Sphere, a serious topic, is kind of ruined with the clucking of the Cluckers in the background.
• Les Yay: There is a period where the player is in control of Xelha in Anuenue. The Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear message for checking the locker in the magic school doesn't change.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Sure, Kalas being Evil All Along was shocking. But did anyone actually think that the protagonist you've been playing as since the beginning of the game would stay evil and that you'd have to actually kill him?
• Memetic Badass: Mizuti. The GREAT Mizuti.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Item Crafting system, which was time-consuming, irritatingly luck-based, and never explained very well in-game.
  • Eternal Wings also had an irritating level up system, requiring you to visit a blue flower and talk to a priest to gain your hard-earned levels. The system can also render the game Unwinnable at one point if you're underleveled enough, thanks to the game trapping you on an airship with a red flower (which only lets you save) and one of the hardest boss fights in the game.
  • Because the deck is random from a pool which you set, it's *very easy* to have a largely offensive deck on defensive turns, and vice versa; unlike Origins, where you can move a card to the bottom of the deck if it's not needed at the moment with the press of a button, there's no simple way of doing so in Eternal Wings. Selecting a card that will do nothing on an attacking turn will automatically end the turn and draw one card, meaning this is your only recourse and you wasted a turn.
• Shocking Moments: The revelation that Kalas was Evil All Along and The Mole, which was hidden from you due to you technically playing as the Guardian Spirit rather than Kalas himself is often cited as one of the most shocking plot twists in RPG history.
• Squick: When Geldoblame goes One-Winged Angel. Hardly any enemy in the game matches this level of disgusting.
• That One Attack:
  • Geldoblame's Forfeit Your Life, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The Angel of Darkness' Binding Winds, which is practicaly guaranteed to paralyze you. Worse, he'll immediately follow this up with a combo ending with Fangs of Darkness, which the paralyzed party member will be completely unable to defend against.
  • Agyo's Seal of Agyo, which is a single attack that deals a ludicrous amount of damage. There's no way to tell if he's going to use this or a combo, so it's basically impossible to effectively defend against.
  • Fadroh's Orb of Magical Offense. It turns a rather tame fight into a Curb-Stomp Battle... in which you are in the receiving end of. Worse, it's use is completely random. It's a Luck-Based Mission: Either he doesn't use it and you kick his ass, or he uses it and obliterates yours. If he uses it early on in the fight, you might as well restart.
  • His counterpart, Sowzana, has the Orb of Magical Defense. The thing is that this one gives him a milder power boost...in exchange for ludicrous defensive power, turning this into a Damage-Sponge Boss that hits rather hard. The fight comes down to who can eat the most damage before keeling over. He also seems to always use it, so it's basically coming down to how soon he gets it.
  • Malpercio's skills. Dark Arrow inflicts all status effects, Enchanted Blade is a Life Drain that heals back a lot, which he'll later use on the entire party in sequence to heal a ton of damage, and finally, Seal of Entropy, which defines this fight as a Barrier Change Boss, meaning you're forced to include every element into the fight in order to optimize you damage output or chip away at him until he decides to use Seal of Entropy again, hopefully to an element you can exploit.
• That One Boss:
  • Fadroh. Will he start off with his empowering orb, increasing his attack to a ridiculous level and attacking twice in a row ^note dealing over 1000 damage at a time when most players have around 2000 HP per character without grinding, or will he give the player a chance?
  • Giacomo, Ayme, and Folon, which is a fight that seems to be designed to screw the player over as much as possible, not least because they're fought shortly after you lose access to a blue flower. How do you access a blue flower to level up? Beat them and move on to the next area. Many players have softlocked their game at this part due to not grinding enough before hand.
  • Geldoblame, who heals himself nearly every round and combines paralysis (removing defensive ability) with a One-Hit Kill attack (which seldom hits unless you're paralyzed).
  • The Goddess of Ice and the Wizard Shadow, both of which follow a completely different set of rules from the rest of the game's fights and are completely luck-based.
• That One Level:
  • The Tower of Zosma had irritating block puzzles that had to be completed in a certain amount of time.
  • The Labyrinth of Duhr, thanks to a serious Event-Obscuring Camera that made navigating the maze confusing. Just to add to that, the labyrinth comes shortly after the fights with Fadroh and the Angel of Darkness, and is followed by Zosma Tower, which is topped with Ugyo and Angyo.
• That One Sidequest:
  • As if Zosma Tower wasn't bad enough, Mizuti's sidequest reveals it's got a basement. Five more floors of sheer pain, and a luck based boss fight at the end.
  • 2 weeks of leaving the game on for the Shampoo to change? Way to screw with completionists, Monolith!

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