It takes 337 hours to 100% complete this role-playing game on Gamecube… and we're talking literally a world record!

Game news It takes 337 hours to 100% complete this role-playing game on Gamecube… and we're literally talking about a world record!

337 by 100%

Can you spend more than 300 hours in the same game to reach 100%? This is what Baten Kaitos requires, which requires a significant investment of time which is clearly not within everyone's reach. For veteran and experienced players, It is possible to speed up the game and reach 100% in about 337 hours and 55 minutes.. This is also the world record recently set by Japanese speedrunner “hyphen_m” in 2023. For those interested, the tale is told at the end of this video from the DoctorSwellman channel.

One of his rivals, a Frenchman, even praised the feat, praising the player's achievement in a Reddit thread: “After missing a run last month (he got 342 hours due to a 5 hour error). Today, hyphen_m set the new Baten Kaitos 100% Speedrun world record in 337 hours and 55 minutes, beating the previous record by more than 48 minutes!before adding:
“You may know me as a 100% regular runner in the game. But the truth is, I was never the best runner in the game. Hyphen is a huge fan of the game/series, has a great deal of knowledge about the subject matter, and has done a lot of research and documentation since the game came out almost 20 years ago. Naturally, when he came to talk to me a few years ago, he shared a lot with me.Frenchman Julien “Pavan” Jafferis spent 342 hours, 19 minutes and 56 seconds in front of his screen, that is, about 14 days. A story told in the Vice columns in 2016 This in particular explains the huge wait time to upgrade items: just Shampoo, for example, requires two weeks of gameplay, or 336 hours.

To achieve 100%, any glitch you can make without external cheat codes is allowed, but Baten Kaitos has almost no glitches. So patience is required. On Speedrun.com, hyphen_m is in first place with an exact play duration of 14 days, 1 hour and 55 minutes. If you try this experiment, plan your water and food supply.

Cult game on Gamecube

For those who don't know, Baten Kaitos is a role-playing game on Gamecube where you lead a group of heroes whose destiny is to save the world. The setting is set in a time when the land and ocean were nothing more than myths and where vast islands rising high into the sky had replaced the continents. This game, developed by Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo, distinguished players with its original combat system and immersive world. But it didn't achieve the commercial success expected. The sequel, Baten Kaitos Origins, failed to reverse the trend and the franchise fell into obscurity, leaving Monolith Soft to focus on the Xenoblade Chronicles series. However, for several years, rumors have been circulating about a possible return of Baten Kaitos in the form of a remake on the Nintendo Switch, which would naturally be excellent news for fans of the series.