I’ve never heard of this game up until now. I was watching a video on obscure titles par Atlus that weren’t SMT ou Persona and one game that caught my attention was this strange little game called Baroque. Released originally for the Sega Saturn in Japon only, it got a remake for the PS2 and Wii, and when Atlus got word of it, they decided to publier the game, since the game was developed par Sting, and got it released in North America. And honestly, looking at this game, with a post-apocalyptic setting and all this talk of gods and anges and stuff… Yeah, I can see why Atlus wanted to get in on the action. I’ve been told par many that this is also one of the hardest JRPGs of all time. Baby, you’re talking to the guy who beat Lucifer on the first try in SMT Nocturne. I think I can handle it. And yes, I am going to brag about that. I have very little, give me this. So with that said, let us get on with Baroque. Also, I will be playing the Wii version because of the better visuals and plus the first person perspective of the PS2 version just did not excite me.
So the game has toi play as a nameless boy who wakes up in a world gone to hell. There is very little donné to toi from there. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of the story of this game because it’s so vague but all the pieces are sprinkled for toi through NPC interactions. As toi approach a tower, toi are greeted par an Archangel that tells toi to descend the giant tower, then he gives toi a gun and tells toi to go kill the god in the tower and leaves. Honestly, I’m not only getting SMT vibes from this game, but also Dark Souls. And that’s a good thing, because I l’amour Dark Souls. The way the game will only give toi a slight description of the story before throwing toi into the game and letting toi find the story for yourself is quite bold for a game at the time. Most RPGs were doing they’re best to tell toi the world, the story, the characters, what size shoe your best friend’s dad had on, doing what they could to keep your attention. But Baroque just throws toi right in and tells toi to find it out for yourself par going into the Neuron Tower. But let’s talk about the Neuron Tower for a second.
This tower is massive. There are a lot of floors toi will be exploring and as toi do, the enemies will get stranger and stranger. I thought the weird poisson creatures were as odd as it would get, but no, as toi go deeper in, the monsters get plus disturbing and deformed in a way that is actually interesting. Some of my favoris are the jumping creatures that steal your items, a giant mound of flesh that lunges at you, and these little round creatures with haut, retour au début hats that look like something out of Nightmare Before Christmas. The bizarre visuals of these creatures can really catch toi off guard sometimes and can even turn the game into some sort of horror game. toi also can only get items from either searching every corner of every floor ou killing monsters. This game really wants toi to kill as many monsters as possible, as toi have both an HP and an AP meter. AP will refill your HP as long as toi have it, but it will always decrease. toi can increase your AP par killing monsters ou eating AP restoring items. But like I said, it is always decreasing. Run out of AP and toi start losing HP. Run out of HP and toi die. And this is where the game gets hard for many RPG players. When toi die in Baroque, toi lose everything, and I mean everything. All your items, all your weapons and gear, your current level, and your progress in the dungeon. All you’ve got is story progress and that’s it. toi can save your items par throwing them into a storage area, but toi can only throw one at a time and they are rare to come by, and toi can only save seven items, so toi really need to make sure what toi get is good. Does this create a challenge? Yes. Is it hard… No. Honestly, I find the game too easy. At least in the way the game intends. Fighting enemies, getting the proper gear, and staying alive is made easy thanks to the fact that enemies are abundant and toi can always get good to decent stuff early on in the dungeon. As long as toi are hoarding stuff like a mad man, toi can always expect to stay alive in this game. No, there are other ways this game becomes a pain in the ass, which we will get to now.
Yeah, as much as I l’amour the vague story, the art direction, and the banging soundtrack par Masaharu Iwata and even some of the dungeon crawling, this game has a massive flaw with tedium. It’s such a problem that it kinda prevents me from wanting to play the game for a long time. One problem is this game's desire for one button combat. It’s not terrible, donné the game, but if toi play this game for long periods of time (Like me), it will burn toi out after a while. Another thing is while I do l’amour the vague story telling, what I don’t find fond is the vague gameplay mechanics on how toi progress a dit story. In the Neuron Tower, there are a lot of NPCs to come across, a girl near a fountain, a nurse, some little angels, and many more. This requires going into the dungeon at times to collect one item ou talk to one NPC and then possibly die, ou do a vague task like giving an NPC a gem ou some shit so they can bury themselves ou give an NPC a gun who will flat out refuse to take the item and forcing toi to die again. It’s really annoying how little the game tells toi and expects toi to just go through with the tower. And toi have to do these vague tasks ou toi will reach the bottom of the tower but be sent back to the start. And going back and forth from the very start of the dungeon starts to get tedious, especially with the similar level design. This isn’t hard at all, this is just obnoxious. But toi wanna know what my favori part of the tedium is? There is no way back to a précédant floor. The game has frequent saving, so that’s fine, but if toi save over that and need to go back, tough shit. toi gotta go up a few plus floors, stash an item toi were carrying so toi don’t lose it, die, get the item in the overworld, and run all the way back to where toi were in the dungeon, which can take an heure to get back to. This game is just a constant stream of tedious gameplay and I don’t find myself enjoying the game as a result. All the fun parts of the game that there is is ruined thanks to this stream of backtracking.
Thankfully, unlike say Yanya Caballista ou Drakengard, my prayers have been answered with Baroque. Whenever I talk about those other games, I always say that they should exist as something other than a video game. Baroque got the message across that the game is not exactly fun to play, so it was turned into a manga par Shinshuu Ueda. Now I have not read the manga and the art style for it certainly doesn’t have a unique style to it, but I have heard that it is very much vague like the game and sticks to the source material, so that’s pretty neat. Also, while doing research, I was shocked to see just how populaire Baroque was in Japan, with a prequel visual novel game that was on Playstation 1 and recently released for iOS and Android, a shoot em up spin off and a fucking typing game. Seriously, this game has a typing spin-off game. Yeah, let’s kill god with the power of our keyboard. Mavis Beacon was the true rival to god!
So that is Baroque, an interesting game, which gets a 10 outta 10 at everything… except the gameplay. Yeah, if I ever intend to experience the world of Baroque again, it will probably be from the manga ou maybe with a friend to endure this with me, because that gameplay does not do it for me. With that said, I’m giving this game the award of Endurance Test. With all the great stuff in this game, I really had to grit my teeth just to experience it, and that should never be something in a game. I l’amour everything about Baroque except the gameplay and I really wish it was better. I do want to see if they would try their hand at plus to this series in the west, but considering the poor sales in North America, I don’t see that happening. Maybe this is what we’re left with here.
So the game has toi play as a nameless boy who wakes up in a world gone to hell. There is very little donné to toi from there. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of the story of this game because it’s so vague but all the pieces are sprinkled for toi through NPC interactions. As toi approach a tower, toi are greeted par an Archangel that tells toi to descend the giant tower, then he gives toi a gun and tells toi to go kill the god in the tower and leaves. Honestly, I’m not only getting SMT vibes from this game, but also Dark Souls. And that’s a good thing, because I l’amour Dark Souls. The way the game will only give toi a slight description of the story before throwing toi into the game and letting toi find the story for yourself is quite bold for a game at the time. Most RPGs were doing they’re best to tell toi the world, the story, the characters, what size shoe your best friend’s dad had on, doing what they could to keep your attention. But Baroque just throws toi right in and tells toi to find it out for yourself par going into the Neuron Tower. But let’s talk about the Neuron Tower for a second.
This tower is massive. There are a lot of floors toi will be exploring and as toi do, the enemies will get stranger and stranger. I thought the weird poisson creatures were as odd as it would get, but no, as toi go deeper in, the monsters get plus disturbing and deformed in a way that is actually interesting. Some of my favoris are the jumping creatures that steal your items, a giant mound of flesh that lunges at you, and these little round creatures with haut, retour au début hats that look like something out of Nightmare Before Christmas. The bizarre visuals of these creatures can really catch toi off guard sometimes and can even turn the game into some sort of horror game. toi also can only get items from either searching every corner of every floor ou killing monsters. This game really wants toi to kill as many monsters as possible, as toi have both an HP and an AP meter. AP will refill your HP as long as toi have it, but it will always decrease. toi can increase your AP par killing monsters ou eating AP restoring items. But like I said, it is always decreasing. Run out of AP and toi start losing HP. Run out of HP and toi die. And this is where the game gets hard for many RPG players. When toi die in Baroque, toi lose everything, and I mean everything. All your items, all your weapons and gear, your current level, and your progress in the dungeon. All you’ve got is story progress and that’s it. toi can save your items par throwing them into a storage area, but toi can only throw one at a time and they are rare to come by, and toi can only save seven items, so toi really need to make sure what toi get is good. Does this create a challenge? Yes. Is it hard… No. Honestly, I find the game too easy. At least in the way the game intends. Fighting enemies, getting the proper gear, and staying alive is made easy thanks to the fact that enemies are abundant and toi can always get good to decent stuff early on in the dungeon. As long as toi are hoarding stuff like a mad man, toi can always expect to stay alive in this game. No, there are other ways this game becomes a pain in the ass, which we will get to now.
Yeah, as much as I l’amour the vague story, the art direction, and the banging soundtrack par Masaharu Iwata and even some of the dungeon crawling, this game has a massive flaw with tedium. It’s such a problem that it kinda prevents me from wanting to play the game for a long time. One problem is this game's desire for one button combat. It’s not terrible, donné the game, but if toi play this game for long periods of time (Like me), it will burn toi out after a while. Another thing is while I do l’amour the vague story telling, what I don’t find fond is the vague gameplay mechanics on how toi progress a dit story. In the Neuron Tower, there are a lot of NPCs to come across, a girl near a fountain, a nurse, some little angels, and many more. This requires going into the dungeon at times to collect one item ou talk to one NPC and then possibly die, ou do a vague task like giving an NPC a gem ou some shit so they can bury themselves ou give an NPC a gun who will flat out refuse to take the item and forcing toi to die again. It’s really annoying how little the game tells toi and expects toi to just go through with the tower. And toi have to do these vague tasks ou toi will reach the bottom of the tower but be sent back to the start. And going back and forth from the very start of the dungeon starts to get tedious, especially with the similar level design. This isn’t hard at all, this is just obnoxious. But toi wanna know what my favori part of the tedium is? There is no way back to a précédant floor. The game has frequent saving, so that’s fine, but if toi save over that and need to go back, tough shit. toi gotta go up a few plus floors, stash an item toi were carrying so toi don’t lose it, die, get the item in the overworld, and run all the way back to where toi were in the dungeon, which can take an heure to get back to. This game is just a constant stream of tedious gameplay and I don’t find myself enjoying the game as a result. All the fun parts of the game that there is is ruined thanks to this stream of backtracking.
Thankfully, unlike say Yanya Caballista ou Drakengard, my prayers have been answered with Baroque. Whenever I talk about those other games, I always say that they should exist as something other than a video game. Baroque got the message across that the game is not exactly fun to play, so it was turned into a manga par Shinshuu Ueda. Now I have not read the manga and the art style for it certainly doesn’t have a unique style to it, but I have heard that it is very much vague like the game and sticks to the source material, so that’s pretty neat. Also, while doing research, I was shocked to see just how populaire Baroque was in Japan, with a prequel visual novel game that was on Playstation 1 and recently released for iOS and Android, a shoot em up spin off and a fucking typing game. Seriously, this game has a typing spin-off game. Yeah, let’s kill god with the power of our keyboard. Mavis Beacon was the true rival to god!
So that is Baroque, an interesting game, which gets a 10 outta 10 at everything… except the gameplay. Yeah, if I ever intend to experience the world of Baroque again, it will probably be from the manga ou maybe with a friend to endure this with me, because that gameplay does not do it for me. With that said, I’m giving this game the award of Endurance Test. With all the great stuff in this game, I really had to grit my teeth just to experience it, and that should never be something in a game. I l’amour everything about Baroque except the gameplay and I really wish it was better. I do want to see if they would try their hand at plus to this series in the west, but considering the poor sales in North America, I don’t see that happening. Maybe this is what we’re left with here.