The upcoming Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster reveals QOL changes and its file size, along with confirming the omission of the original English dub. There were rumors regarding Baten Kaitos since 2021. It finally came ahead earlier this month during a February 2023 Nintendo Direct, where Bandai Namco, Monolith Soft, and Nintendo announced a remastered bundle of the two cult classic titles. While there’s no specific release date yet, this bundle will be arriving later this summer.For the uninitiated, the Baten Kaitos games are JRPGs that were developed by Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo, with both games published by Namco as exclusives for the Nintendo GameCube. While they were a hit with critics, the game didn’t sell very well. With the Baten Kaitos games coming to Switch, it gives these overlooked JRPGs another chance. A recent Q&A from Bandai Namco reveals what improvements and specifications that fans will need to be aware of for the remaster.One thing that caught many people’s attention is the omission of the game’s original English dub. While others believed it was a good call, considering that many found the original dub lacking, others thought the cheesiness of the English dub was charming, along with Baten Kaitos Origins' dub being a significant improvement. Another subset of fans lamented the publisher wasn’t going to produce a new one with different actors. On a language related note, while the first game provides support for English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, the second game will only feature an English text track.
In terms of the improvements, the graphical fidelity and UI elements have been overhauled, making things clearer and more visually appealing. Not only that, the frame rate has been stabilized for Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster, which targets 30 fps. New features are also added, such as turning off the random encounters, auto-battle, a cutscenes skip function, and an auto-save, making it accessible for new players. Both games feature 30 separate save slots to choose from, with a microSD card required.
These are looking to be two faithful remasters of Baten Kaitos and Baten Kaitos: Origins, as while they won’t feature any new content, nothing has been removed from the original either. There looks to be no DLC planned either. The Baten Kaitos remasters file size was also revealed, adding up to 8 GB in total. For comparison, Monolith Soft’s biggest title on the Switch is Xenoblade Chronicles 3 at 14 GB, with the other two Xenoblade games on the console being slightly less than that.
Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster will release in Summer 2023 for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Bandai Namco
