Why is Baten Kaitos Origins so difficult?

A major reason why Baten Kaitos Origins is so frustrating to many people is the deck system, or rather how it breaks when players use 40 cards or more. This video is meant to shed some light on the issue while also providing some insights into the battle system and how to make it more enjoyable. Expand description for more battle tips.

0:00 Deck building
1:39 Conclusion
2:48 60 card battle
5:53 30 card battle
7:32 20 card battle


Collect Mountain Apples in Cebalrai to increase your party's HP by 5% per apple. Note that the HP bonus only lasts one hour because the apples will start to rot.

If you desparately need healing items, keep mashing B until you draw one.

Press C-left or C-right to switch characters.

Pressing X (or C-left/right) while selecting or discarding magnus will cut the turn short. This avoids having to wait for the timer to run out.

Pressing X otherwise will make your character pass. The word "PASS" will be displayed below their HP and delay gauges until you press X again to unpass. This can be useful in situations where you're waiting for a specific character and want to select their cards immediately without switching characters.

If weapons keep cluttering your hand, equip a weapon, press X to end the turn, and then continue discarding.

Attacking with a weapon equipped does MUCH more damage than without one. This is especially true for standard attacks.

Most armor magnus aren't very useful. They come at the cost of not having a weapon equipped, and with a small enough deck, you can already draw healing items relatively quickly. However, there are four shields that make enemies target the user, which may be helpful: Round Shield, Coin Shield, Devil Tower Shield, and Mellow Shield.

If you open the target menu with L or R, you can take a look at the enemies' delay gauges.

You can press X to cancel a relay combo. This makes it so the first character starts acting immediately and doesn't have wait for the other characters. Attacking before the enemy may be vital to winning a battle. This also gives you a chance to target a different enemy instead of wasting a turn on overkill.

After an MP burst, the MP gauge will be stuck at 0 for 35 seconds. For this reason, you should carefully consider when to use an MP burst. It's only worth the risk if you can chain together enough special attacks, and if some of them require level 3 or 4. If your deck class is high enough, you may not even need an MP burst for a 4-5-6 combo since you'll gain enough MP from the cards before it.

Press down on the control stick or D-pad to rearrange cards in your hand.

Useful magnus:
Warrior's Scarf: increases MP by a decent amount and protects the wearer from knockdown and unconsciousness
Taunt: increases MP by a decent amount and makes all enemies target the user
Cross Pendant: automatically revives the wearer one time

Use bombs wisely: If despite your best efforts, you're still outmatched by the enemies, try trading some valuable magnus for a Bomb. This item has a 40% chance to instantly kill the target. If it fails, the user loses 90% of their HP (relative to max HP). Bomb doesn't work on bosses, except that one only found in the coliseum. A 10 card deck with just bomb(s), healing items, and MP chargers for artifacts makes battles easy to win. Add an escape card for an easy way out if needed.

The state of the wingdash gauge affects the start of a battle. If it's yellow, you'll gain some MP. If it's orange, you'll gain even more MP. However, if it's red (or orange during heartwing exhaustion), you'll be unable to select cards for about 10 seconds.


Tool displaying battle info: https://github.com/Exchord/Baten-Kait...

Spreadsheet showing draw chances: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

"Crush": This value increases with each hit a character receives, gradually reducing their defense. If it reaches a certain threshold, the character will get knocked down or unconscious at the end of the combo. After a combo ends, crush is reset to 0, restoring the initial defense.

Battle conditions: Deck class 17, Sagi level 34, Guillo level 34, Milly level 33, no auras, no beneficial quest magnus, spirit score 100

The game feed and the deck viewer aren't perfectly synced all the time. This is because I used two different recording methods: Dolphin's frame dump for the game feed, and OBS's live capture for the deck viewer.