LogFAQs > #909082911

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

Phenomenal game and I love it, but the card system is just too unwieldy especially as the game nears the end.
You have like 7 characters, EACH with their own 70 card deck. So each will require their own healing items in said deck and oh by the way they age and go rotten over time, so you may go into battle only to find out your healing fruit card is now moldy and no good.
You have to change out cards in each area because enemies will have different elemental strengths/weaknesses, and if you use two opposing elements (like fire and ice) in the same combo the damages will actually NEGATE each other (so if you did 40 fire and 50 ice damage total, the end result of the combo would be 10 ice damage, for example).
You have to keep in mind what spirit numbers (a # between 1 and 9) are on the card, potentially 4 of them on each card (on in each corner) because you need to set up decks where you can draw the numbers in ascending or descending order, get sets of pairs, or other poker-like combos, in order to get damage multipliers critical towards actually winning boss fights.

It's just a nightmare to maintain by the end, and I don't think I could ever play it again. It doesn't help that the prequel basically fixed the deck management issues, so I have even less incentive to play the original when the prequel that came after has gameplay much like it, but so much better.