Rewrite this title for a blog post. Remove any site names from it The title is: It takes 337 hours to complete this Gamecube RPG 100%… and that's literally a world record!

Game news It takes 337 hours to complete this Gamecube RPG 100%… and that's literally a world record!

337 for 100%

Could you spend more than 300 hours on the same game to reach 100%? This is what the game Baten Kaitos asks for, which requires a considerable investment of time that is clearly not within everyone's reach. For seasoned and experienced players, it is possible to rush the game and reach 100% in approximately 337 hours and 55 minutes. This is also the world record, which was recently established by the Japanese speedrunner “hyphen_m” in 2023. For those interested, the anecdote is told at the very end of this video from the DoctorSwellman channel.

The feat was even applauded by one of his competitors, a Frenchman, who saluted the player's feat on a Reddit topic: “After missing a run last month (he got 342 hours due to a 5 hour mistake). Today, hyphen_m got the new Baten Kaitos 100% Speedrun world record in 337 hours and 55 minutes, beating my previous record by over 48 minutes!”before adding:
“You may know me as the usual 100% runner in the game. But truth be told, I was never the best runner in the game. hyphen is a huge fan of the game/series, extremely knowledgeable about it subject, he's done a lot of research and documentation since the game came out almost 20 years ago, and naturally when he came to talk to me a few years ago, we shared a lot“. The Frenchman Julien “Baffan” Jaffrès, for his part, will have spent 342 hours, 19 minutes and 56 seconds in front of his screen, or around 14 days. A story told in the columns of Vice in 2016 and which is explained in particular by a colossal waiting time for the upgrade of objects: just the shampoo, for example, requires two weeks of play, or 336 hours.

To achieve 100%, all glitches that you can perform without external cheat codes are allowed, but Baten Kaitos has almost no exploits. So patience is required. On the Speedrun.com website, hyphen_m is in first place with a precise playtime of 14 days, 1 hour and 55 minutes. If you try it, plan your water and food reserves.

A cult game on Gamecube

For those unfamiliar, 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 Earth and the Ocean are nothing more than legends and where vast islands levitating high in the Sky have taken the place of continents. This game, developed by Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo, marked players with its original combat system and its immersive universe but never achieved the expected commercial success. 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. For several years, however, rumors have been circulating about the possible return of Baten Kaitos in the form of a remake on Nintendo Switch, which would naturally be excellent news for fans of the franchise.