Summary
Once you’re introduced to Xelha in theBaten Kaitos Remaster, and she becomes a part of the party, you’re exposed to a different form of attack. Instead of using weapons, she uses various spell cards. At the beginning, your access to these spell cards is limited.
But as you continue to fight through the game, you can find and purchase additional spell cards to fill both Xelha’s and Mizuti’s decks. But which of the spell cards is the best and most useful to these magic-wielding characters?
6Fire Burst
Fire is just one of the six elements that the spell cards focus on. While they can all be paired up with additional attacks, how much damage they do is widely dependent on the type of monster or boss you’re fighting and what they’re strong against.
And, unfortunately, fire is on the bottom of that damage food chain because of how many enemies are resilient against it or have no weakness to fire.
The six damage types are Fire, Water, Light, Dark, Chronos, and Wind. In addition to the traditional spell cards, there are also Yell cards that utilize one of these damage types.
You have early access to Fire Burst, and after Xelha’s introductory fight, the next boss is weak to fire. However, a lot of the enemies in the surrounding area are strong against it. And the next area.Andthe next boss. There are sections of the game where Fire Burst is still very helpful, but there are dry spells for this spell card’s usefulness.
5Dark Flare
For reasons similar to Fire Burst, the dark-based spell cards are often met by enemies that are strong against this type of damage. That’s what happens in a lot of JRPGs, right? Fighting evil forces that happen to utilize dark energy or power.
But, the thing that does set Fire Burst and Dark Flare apart is that there are many monsters and random encounters that aren’t strong against dark.
In these cases, it’s just treated as neutral damage. And, the way that defense works in Baten Kaitos is that in order to block elemental damage, you have to have a shield of the opposing, or opposite type. So, foes would need to have some sort of light-based shield or armor. Monsters who are neutral to dark won’t have these protections to block your Dark Flares and Dark Yells.
4Wind Blow
Water, earth, fire, air. Well. Wind. Wind Blow is not available to Xelha right away, not until you start to explore the Lord’s Manoron the first islandin the game. But once you find it, it’s a good idea to give it a space in your deck. Wind and chronos are both damage types that can cut foes deeply.
Similarly to Dark Flare, there are a lot of random encounters that are neutral to wind damage. Butsome of the most fearsome bossesin Baten Kaitos are weak to Wind Blow and any other card that makes use of this element. And, at least as Xelha is concerned, most of her special attacks don’t compete with Wind, making it a strong addition to her deck. For Mizuti, however, Chronos Blow is the way to go.
3Chronos Blow
Chronos Blow and Yell utilize the magic of wrapping time around your enemies and using it to attack them. Of the opposing damage types, wind and chronos are the closest to each other in terms of usefulness. And, although some of the bigger bosses in the game have a weakness to wind, many random encounters and lesser bosses and foes are weak to chronos instead.
You really can’t go wrong with walking into an area with a number of Chronos Blow cards or Chronos Yells to test out what the nearby creatures are weak to. A majority of the time, you’re going to find that creatures are either neutral towards it, or they are weak to it. Just be ready to change tactics when you’re facing down some of the biggest baddies in the game.
2Water Burst
There are a couple of sections in the game, particularly around the Celestial River, where Water Burst is going to be weaker than Fire Burst. All the enemies there are water-based. But for the majority of the game, water damage is going to be more useful. There are just more enemies in the game that are weaker to it than firein combat.
It is also utilized by both Xelha and Mizuti well as they both have one finishing move that is water-based and one that is fire-based, making it easy to swap out or stack up this elemental type without causing too much of a disturbance when it comes to how damage is calculated. So, get used to water, you’re going to be seeing a lot of it in your deck and battles.
When damage is calculated after your rounds of combat, any opposing damage cards you used will, unfortunately, cancel themselves out. Using Fire Burst and Water Burst in the same turn, for example, means that the base neutral damage will stack, but that your elemental damage values will subtract from each other.
1Light Flare
Well, well, in a game that pits you against the dark forces of an evil god, harnessing the power of light is the strongest damage type? That’s soooo strange. In all seriousness, Light Flare doesn’t just get its power from coming up against bosses and other monsters that are weak to it.
Xelha has four finishing moves that are light-based, meaning that Light Flare in her deck can lead her to run away with encounters easily as she deals massive amounts of light damage.
Meanwhile, Mizuti only has one dark finishing move and no light ones. So they can use these light-based cards, but Xelha gets so much more utility out of them. And, of course, many random encounters are neutral to light, meaning they have no protections to use against it. There are very few times that Light Flare and Light Yell will fail you.
