Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster have stealth dropped onto Steam – WGB

Well, this is a nice surprise. Publisher Bandao Namco and developer Logicalbeat have released Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster onto Steam with absolutely no warning,

It’s priced at £44.99/$49.99 but has a 10% launch discount which runs until July 1. Furthermore, if you buy it before that date you’ll get the Month 1 Edition at no extra cost, giving you access to a digital artbook. Be warned, the artbook is in Japanese. According to the Steam page, the art book may also be made available again at a later date.

This is surprising launch because the package, which bundles together Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins, was previously exclusive to the Nintendo Switch where it launched last year. That made sense because the games originally launched on the Gamecube in 2003 and 2006 respectively, and have never been available on anything outside of a Nintendo platform. Until now, that is.

In fairness though, we did get a potential hint of a PC release last year when a South African ratings board mentioned it alongside a few other titles such as the Borderlands Compilation: Pandora’s Box. But nothing ever came of it, so people forgot that it had even happened.

Based on the Steam description this seems like a straight port of the remaster that launched last year with no PC exclusive features or options. However, that’s just an assumption because Logicalbeat and Bandia Namco still haven’t put out any form of press release. It seems like there might be a few tweaks under the hood though, because a few users have reported that the game can now run at up to 120fps.