Baroque
- Hardcore dungeon crawling RPG action
- Many ever changing levels and perverse monsters
- each time your character dies more secrets are revealed
- deep customization options with vast amounts of weapons
- aquire powerful stat boosting parasites to multiply their potency
Product Description
You awaken to find the world in ruin, your heart plagued with unexplained guilt. A cataclysm has ruined the cities and empires of men and disfigured the spirit of humanity. In this nightmare, it cascade to you to descend a mysterious tower in search of absolution. Battle merciless foes in treacherous dungeons, scour for new items to aid you in your travels, and unlock the secrets of a devastated land. You will find death in the depths, yet learn that death is not the end of the tale; in the twisted world of Baroque, it is only the beginning.
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I don’t know exactly what the creators of this game were trying to accomplish. The Baroque cycle started in Italy in the early 17th century and is known for extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted styles. This game is certainly convoluted.
You start the game; an angel appears and you are told you have to atone for your sins. What sins, you question? Well, I’m still asking. After that the game just becomes one huge ancient mess. Your character doesn’t speak. (REVIEWER’S NOTE: It might speak; I didn’t stick around to find out). And you just do a lot of wandering and running around the lower level of…SOMETHING.
If ever a guide should have been written for a game, this is it. Not fun and quite dull[...].
Rating: 1 / 5
If Baroque appears to be a generic looking, run of the mill RPG to you, you’re pretty much spot on. Boasting generic characters and a dull, amnesiac-based storyline, Baroque does what RPG’s tend to usually do: pit you in maze-like dungeons and face-off against hordes of enemies. The game’s combat system is unadorned enough to get into, but that’s really because there isn’t a whole lot to it. On the presentation side, Baroque looks pretty decent for a late in life PS2 RPG, although there are some glitches and blurry moments. The music sounds splendid and there is in fact some decent voice acting to be heard in Baroque as well, but that is pretty much where the excellent points of the game come to an end. There really isn’t a whole lot else to say about Baroque, other than there is a certain degree of charm to the game that makes it worth a look for hardcore RPG fans, but for the rest of us, Baroque is best left on the shelf; especially when there are better recent and upcoming RPG’s to be found on the PS2.
Rating: 2 / 5
Oh dear, what to say about this game…The cover is really cool o_0 But seriously this game is geared toward a VERY specific group here. It is a dungeon crawler, and when you die, say goodbye to all your items, weapons etc.. Part of the game is to die in order to reveal more tale. Not my favorite. Not recommended for newer gamers/those new to dungeon crawlers as this game will kick you down and laugh at you as your on the floor crying
Rating: 2 / 5
Have you ever seen that movie Groundhog Day? That’s the one about the guy who gets stuck in a time loop and has to do again the same day over and over again. Well, Baroque is the video game equivalent of Groundhog Dog.
Baroque takes place in a post-apocalyptical world where the few remaining survivors have been twisted into weird forms, are haunted by guilt and madness, and remember only perplexing fragments of what happened to them. It is this world that your silent avatar is plopped down into and told by the leader of the survivors, the Archangel, to lug a bulky rifle down to the bottom of Neuro Tower, a gargantuan structure that towers over the ruined landscape, and use it to purify the creature held intent down there.
That is pretty much all the management you are going to get. Baroque is all about letting the player learn things for themselves. Normally, this would be a excellent thing. But, progression is made as unintuitive as possible. For example, triggering certain events causes Neuro Tower to enlarge and contract. In RPG’s, the traditional way to do this is to hide clues in the things NPC’s say. Now presume a game where say very bizarre things and its only after you talk to them about fifty-odd times that a method to their madness becomes clear. Also presume the one key clue only has random chance of being revealed after you’ve gone on the same fool’s errand about ten times.
This is really what makes Baroque so frustrating. In most sports meeting, the point is to complete a task without dying. In Baroque, dying is a key component of game play. You have to walk into Nuero Tower multiple times and either clear the dungeon or die trying just to get the tale to go by the side of ever so slightly so you can figure it out without a walkthrough guide.
Every time I managed to piece together a puzzle, the payoff was meager. I was just handed a new puzzle (or at least I reflect I was. The game is mean enough to throw something completely pointless at you.) and no or limited new information. In a way, Baroque is lot like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without any reference to what its supposed to look like when complete and all the pieces are buried in an Olympic pool-sized sandbox.
Baroque is game played trapped in a time warp. Each time you clear the tower or die, you are transported right back outside into the town at level one with your inventory stripped from you. You have to go right back into the tower and start everything all over again. As I said before, dying has no real penalty. In fact, it is a necessity for making progress. You could say that players don’t lose at Baroque, they only stall. Or you could also say that players don’t win at Baroque either, since, win or die, the outcome is the same.
But still, as frustratingly random as I found the game, I did make it to the end. The tale starts as perplexing clap-trap, but it does clear some of itself up by the end. But, if you have ever played Digital Devil Saga, you have already heard this plot and heard it better with superior characterization, presentation, and cohension.
Baroque is an action RPG. The mute protagonist must penetrate the tower bare handed and search for weapons, tools, and the NPC’s that dwell there while fighting swarms of monsters. In Baroque’s favor, combat is not terrible just simplistic. Customization is the key to victory as there are all sorts of accessories and items to collect to boost strength. Essentially there are two shape meters, the HP gauge, that decreases as monster injury you, and the vitality gauge which steadily decreases over time and must be refilled with the crystals dropped by killer monsters. The addition of the vitality gauge makes it necessary to search the levels quickly yet thoroughly.
Baroque also boasts lots of tools but most of the thing you come across of marked as ‘unidentified’ meaning you either have to use them on faith and hope you didn’t just inject yourself with a lose a level potion or throw an invincibility item at an enemy or find an appraisal parasite to reveal what the item is. But, the appraisal parasites are few and far between and one use only, so you will be lugging around a bunch of unidentified items in your limited inventory. Items also have lots of other nasty tricks such as armor that doesn’t come off or armor that unequips itself every time an enemy comes near.
If I had to pick one really excellent thing about Baroque is that it has an brilliant atmosphere and it really gets you to identify with the characters as they live owing to their repetitious Purgatory-like world. After traversing the tower for the tenth time, I felt like the poor tormented creature trapped in the basement of the dungeon, repeating “Don’t go crazy” over and over again.
Baroque is ATLUS’s yearly turkey, that one title they seem to place every year that tries to be innovative and off-the-cuff without considering if the end result is a fun game. This is not a hardcore RPG in the sense that the term usually means, which is to say hard (It’s really simple) and one that you must place some real effort into. This is a game that will only appeal to people who can like repetition like the most obsessive compulsive personality. Not recommended.
Rating: 1 / 5
Baroque is a dungeon-crawler RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world in which you, the main character, have lost your memories, yet have an unexplained feeling of guilt weighing down on your heart.
Dungeon-crawlers aren’t really my cup of tea, yet Baroque had a sincere creepiness to it as I descending down into the dungeons. It was enjoyable, and kept me on edge due to the ever-changing dungeon rooms. Every time you entered the tower, it was different.
If you’re a fan of sports meeting like Diablo, you’ll delight in Baroque. Not my thing, but it may be yours.
Rating: 3 / 5