YMMV / Baten Kaitos Origins

• Angst? What Angst?: Sagi. In stark contrast to Kalas, Sagi is upbeat and cheerful through most of the game, although he does have a few moments.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Quaestor Verus, despite being a tricky Puzzle Boss, goes down in a few good hits once you expose his weakness. His death is somewhat anticlimactic too unless you jumped through a few hoops in the story...
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Frigid Queen's Festival is so overpowered that there's seldom any need to use anything else.
• Complete Monster:
  • Wiseman is a raging psychopath, with a purely sadistic edge and a Lack of Empathy for all living beings. Wiseman, a millennium before the series began, began to believe existence of the body was flawed. He fell to evil and began devouring the energy of his followers before embarking on a war of conquest that look the lives of men, women and children. To spite a group of heroes who stood against him, Wiseman killed near everyone in their hometown, and left only two survivors. He attempted to convert the world to energy and absorb it within himself. Despite failing, Wiseman was not destroyed and possessed the willing Verus, influencing all of the latter's atrocities, causing mass death and the torture of his former lover. When forced to reveal himself, Wiseman declares his intents to devour the heroes' hearts and rule over their world for eternity.
  • Quaestor Verus himself, while acting under the guise of a Reasonable Authority Figure, coldly masterminds the plot to become the Emperor by taking advantage of everyone else. Before the game's events, he uses a just born baby Sagi—whom he may have fathered through rape—in a lethal experiment that fuses pieces of dead evil gods with living beings. During the game, he orders Shanath—no angel himself—to take Sagi's mother Gena's wings off in the public election speech, just to smear the reputation of someone getting in his way. Later on, just as Baelheit is about to consider a Heel–Face Turn, Quaestor Verus shows up, murders him, and starts gloating about all his deeds.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • There's a bunch, but Machina Auto-Turrets take the cake. Fast, resilient, powerful, and that Fusillade special is devastating. Enjoy losing over an hour's progress through Tarazed every time you run into one of these.
  • The last levels have several that fit the bill, but the most dangerous one is the Hercules Dragon. Remember those powerful Dragon enemies you fought in the Battlefields of Atria? Well, these guys are super cyborg versions of those! They retain the party-wide normal attack, get the ability to pump up their already high attack and defensive power, get the ability to heal themselves, have a ton of health and also get an extremely strong Wave-Motion Gun special. Normal encounters with these guys are often solo-encounters, and for good reason: a single one can utterly ruin your day if you're unlucky or aren't careful enough around them. Thankfully, they always appear asleep in the field, so if you tiptoe around them, you can safely avert their encounters...which means you have to deal with the other Demonic Spiders nearby, who'll rejoice at the chance to jump you because you don't want to fight that Hercules Dragon.
    • It can get worse. All the hardest rounds in the Colosseum, save one, feature Hercules Dragons paired up with the other most dangerous enemies in the Tarazed Core. The hardest of these even has you fight two of them at the same time!
• Even Better Sequel: Origins expanded on the backstory of Eternal Wings, explored the setting much more, revamped the battle system to remove the more frustrating luck elements, had better voice acting, and had an even better soundtrack.
• Game-Breaker: The Apotheosis and Frigid Queen's Festival combos border on this. Their incredible damage is offset by the difficulty of effectively assembling the combos without getting the party wiped, as it usually means a few turns either discarding useless cards or attacking sparsely to build up MP. Mind you, this is without factoring in the many possible ways you can chain this up with Relay attacks. In fact, with enough setup and with a good enough relationship with Sagi, the Guardian Spirit can stack the deck enough that on an MP Burst, you may end up chaining one of said Game Breakers into the other one. We guarantee that nothing in the game will survive it^note  Except Verus, but only if you do it while they're protected, but for added hilarity and overkill, make sure to equip each character's respective Infinity +1 Sword beforehand to further increase the damage you deal. When the dust settles—well, that dust WAS your opponent, a few seconds ago.
• Goddamned Boss: Wiseman, who steals your HP and MP with his basic attacks and uses it to spam his specials, one of which breaks any Magnus you have equipped and knocks the whole party down.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Shanath leaps over it when he kidnaps main character Sagi's beloved mother and orders his men to "Tear this heathen woman's wings off!" And he does it right in front of Sagi, specifically to torment him.
  • If Verus didn't cross it by killing Baelheit, he sure as hell does so when he retroactively claims responsibility for the above-mentioned event. And reveals he was behind Sagi being a part of the malideiter project. And to cap it off, calls Gena a whore.
• The Scrappy: Wacho and Tik, two annoying kids that force you through a dull sidequest early on.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Origins removed most of the luck and a lot of the Fake Difficulty from the first game, then got a lot harder to compensate.
• That One Attack:
  • Verus-Wiseman's Magnus of Life, which hits the whole party and inflicts all status ailments.
  • The Black Dragon's Crimson Catharsis, which will almost always kill one or two of your characters. If you're underleveled, weakened or particularly unlucky, it may even cause a Total Party Kill. By the time you can have a rematch with it in the Coliseum, you can kick it's ass fairly quickly, but this attack will still deal a lot of damage.
• That One Boss:
  • The Holoholobird in the original release, a hard-hitting Flunky Boss whose flunkies love to heal the big bird for tremendous amounts of HP. It's also fought immediately after a Point of No Return, which can screw you over big time. Of course, there's no need to switch CDs in the HD version, so this encounter becomes much easier.
  • The Godcraft, who is tremendously overpowered and has devastating specials that can destroy your whole party if you're unlucky. Doesn't help that the cutscene beforehand is about five minutes long, so if you Rage Quit (which you will), you have to sit through it all again.
  • The Black Dragon, who has so much power it can kill your characters simply by using a full combo on them. Not to mention its special attack, which can damn near cause a Total Party Kill if you're unlucky.
• That One Level:
  • Tarazed featured mazes of identical corridors and four aggravating puzzle/maze rooms.
  • Not too many people are fond of Nekkar, which teems with Queen Alraunes, is covered in irritating pit traps, and has a maddening sidequest involving pushing humanoid rocks through the level.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Pac-Man sidequest is more time-consuming than everything else in the entire game combined (it requires at least of two playthroughs!). Also, have fun spotting every single potential Permanently Missable quest magnus, 'cause you need to feed Pac-Man 147 of them to finish the sidequest.
  • Beating all the Colosseum battles, thanks to the Demonic Spiders present at the hardest levels. "The Wicked Gawd" is a noticiable example that pits you against Arma Prototype M (who is very tough on its own) and two High-Mobility Cannons. Their party-hitting Fusillade, combined with the Arma Prototype's extreme attack power and relentless assault, means that a Total Party Kill is not only extremely likely, but nigh-inevitable without some fast smart thinking, a very strong deck and a good helping of luck.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Besides the obvious removal of the English voice actors in the HD remake, there are several changes to the menus that make for a worse experience. Namely, the font for the card descriptions and flavor text for the field guide is so small that it's practically illegible. Plus, the field guide no longer lists what enemies attack with and are weak too, severely undercutting its usefulness.
• Too Cool to Live: Sir Rambari, the badass leader of the Diadem Knights who takes a sword to the chest to save King Ladekhan.

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