graphics and music, stating that ", the world feels alive. The colorful graphics depict storybook settings teeming with movement, complete with swaying leaves and moving clouds. I felt like a child with a picture book, all of the substance and subtlety falling by the wayside in the face of breathtaking environments, slick character designs, and terrifying creatures" and calling the soundtrack "amazing" and "a masterpiece". GameSpot agreed with the notion, stating that it was " a beautiful game with a captivating world, a unique art style and... a great place to go for a nice fairy tale". Game Revolution singled out the game's card-based battle system as a stand-out quality in the game, praising the combination of collectible card games, poker-based moves, and action based combat; concluding that "it becomes quite obvious that the developers put a tremendous amount of time and energy into it. The unique combat is very addictive and a welcome aspect to the RPG genre." IGN similarly praised the game's graphics and battle system, concluding that "Monolith Software has crafted a beautiful and thoroughly engrossing game filled with great characters, impressive visuals and solid combat." GamePro praised the freedom given to the player through the game's many side-quests and ability to avoid random battles. Despite the overall praise, Game Informer criticized the game's storyline and poor voice acting. Baten Kaitos received a runner-up position in GameSpots 2004 "Best Role-playing Game" award category across all platforms, losing to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Legacy Impact and other releases While the game was generally well-received critically, it wasn't seen as having sold very well, Publisher Namco had set a sales-goal of 500,000 copies sold worldwide, and initial sales figures fell well-short of it; it had sold only 80,000 copies in Japan after 2 weeks, and only 161,000 copies in North America after its first month and a half on the market. It also sold poorly in comparison to Tales of Symphonia, Namco's other JRPG released along the same time period for the GameCube; which had sold 290,000 copies in Japan, and 285,000 copies in North America. Namco's senior executive officer Youichi Haraguchi stated that the company feared that the title has not fit well with the Gamecube's userbase at the time. Despite this, the game was still considered to have accumulated a "cult following" in the years following its release. The game was initially created in hopes of