Baroque

"Is it fun to wander through a haze to discover yourself?"

Introduction

Baroque is the latest product from Sting, which is being brought to the US by Atlus, although this fact isn't immediately obvious from looking at the box as you see Atlus slapped all over it. This is a fact that those who are fans of Atlus games may wish to keep in mind when considering this game, as this isn't your standard Atlus designed fare. The game was originally designed for the Sega Saturn. This release never made it to the states. Then there was a port to the Playstation. This also never had Stateside release. Now you have the PS2 and Wii versions being released at the same time. There isn't much difference between the two except the Wii version supports widescreen and of course use of the wiimote, though this feels kind of tacked on. You'll probably be more comfortable with the classic controller if you have that. I haven't tried it out though since I don't have one so I'm not an authoritative source on the classic controller scheme. This game is a dungeon crawl that can be played in either third or first person for whichever preference you may have. I haven't really gotten into the first person mode, just because it is more enjoyable to enjoying the changing looks of your character. It is also important to point out that this game falls into the 'rougelike' genre. What's a rougelike? Well back in 1980 the game Rogue was released in BSD UNIX 4.2 to the world which welcomed it with open arms. Rogue borrowed many ideas from D&D and Adventure and attempted to give a unique experience with every play. The key to this was the random dungeon generation. Every time you played through the dungeon would be completely different. This is where the whole roguelike genre springs from, the idea of random generation of dungeon. The game starts out with a stylistic FMV that aptly sets the mood of a world gone to pot and your struggle for survival. Though survival may not always be in your best interests. Why? Well let's take a look at that in a moment.

Gameplay 4/5
Read that manual first because that's all the introduction you are going to get when you are tossed right into the thick of it. You start off in a gritty and industrial looking ruins with a red haze all around. And here is where you'll notice one of the very first game mechanics. You have two meters, a health meter and a vitality meter. While you have points in your vitality meter your health meter will slowly heal during play. But keeping points in your vitality meter is the hard part here. Reason being that as soon as the game starts your vitality meter starts depleting at a slow yet uncomfortable rate. When that meter is exhausted then your health meter starts depleting. When that runs out -- you die. Which leads us into another mechanic of the game, death.

But before we delve into death too much let's talk a bit more about some other aspects of the gameplay. When you are done exploring the ruins and talking to the residents then you get to the meat of the game, the Tower. When you approach it a winged and blonde haired pretty boy appears before you, gives you a really cool looking gun, and tells you to go to the tower because you know what to do. You do? That's certainly going to be news to you, with no elaboration for a while. But now you enter the Tower, where all the fun truly begins!

In the Tower you are attempting to travel to the bottom of the tower. The tower is randomly generated each time, so don't bother mapping it out. Though you will see familiar sets of areas and certain special rooms are unique to each floor. But there are certainly a lot of floors between the top and the bottom. Those floors are none too friendly either. Each floor has a plethora of enemies, usually in gangs, that will rush you and attempt to take you out. Available to fight them you will have your fists, swords that you find, and of course the big gun that you will be carrying around that the pretty boy gave you. Though the down side to this gun is that it only carries five shots. The first few floors aren't too difficult and give you an opportunity to build up your items, which you will definitely need. But after that it will be a struggle to survive, because your vitality is going down and it is hard to get it back up. Any enemy that you kill that doesn't drop an item will drop a heart that you can eat which will restore a little bit of your vitality. There are also items dropped that can be used to restore your vitality and your hit points, and some can be used to increase your vitality as well as your hit points. Hording these is what will keep you alive in those later levels, because those enemies just keep hitting harder and harder and it will be a fight just to keep your hp and vitality up.

As you defeat enemies you will level up, which will give you a slight hp increase, but that seems to be all that you get from leveling up. Your attack and defense only go up as you find better swords and better armor and stat boosting items. You have to be careful though because some items will lower your attack and defense. Which really hurts on those lower levels and sometimes you might just find yourself racing through a level with a horde of enemies tailing you while you desperately search for the exit.

Then there is the really important mechanic I mentioned earlier -- death. Another aspect of being a roguelike game is the death mechanics. In roguelikes when you die that is it, game over for that character, time to start over from level 1 with a new character without any stats or items or experience or anything carrying over. This game embraces that concept as well. When you die in the Tower you will be back at the starting point without any of your hard earned equipment, without any experience points, or anything else. Sting was a little forgiving though. You are allowed to save at each port to the next level, so you can just reset and go back to the main menu and restore from your last save point. This is frowned upon though because it goes against the whole roguelike experience. There are also times where you need to die to advance the story. So don't always be afraid of that death. This is probably the biggest stumbling block to accepting the game. It is demoralizing to have made it so far only to have to start over. But it is ok, as when you make it to the bottom of the tower you start over at the top anyhow to go through again. There are ways to avoid losing all of your items though. There are Consciousness Orbs strewn around the dungeon that you can toss items in to retrieve the next time you are back at the beginning. At first you will only be able to store 5 items though, so choose carefully.

So how does this all add up to fun? Well the combat is kind of slow. You have a regular attack, a special attack, and a charge attack. There never is much call for anything beyond the regular attack though. It is kind of slow, and the camera mechanics have been implemented rather clumsily. The camera follows you as you move around, but when you lock onto an enemy the camera just stays fixed and you have to manually rotate it to keep the enemy on the screen. This isn't always practical though so sometimes you just have to keep slashing until the enemy is dead and then reposition the camera. This could have been implemented better. I don't know about the classic controller since I don't have one but for the wiimote/nunchuk combo you have to rotate the camera with the d-pad on the wiimote. It is clumsy and gets in the way sometimes, but overall it isn't too bad. But how fun is the combat you ask? Well, it is very fun actually. Running around slashing everyone can get rather monotonous but there is actually a lot of variety available. Where is this? Combos! Not from your sword though, but from your items. This game gives you a huge number of items to use, and some of them work together with others really well. You can even wipe out every enemy on the level with combinations of certain items. Finding all of these great combinations is what makes the combat in this game fun. You can even make it really easy if you can get a hold of the right items that will grant you a huge amount of stat boosts. Always be on the look-out for combos. How about the defeat of death? Well it was kind of demoralizing at first, but that's ok. I come from a background of roguelikes so after dying for a while I eventually got the hang of the game. Building your character back up from the ground up is pretty exciting. It actually appeals a bit to my play style because in rpgs that give me the chance I love to spend a good half-hour creating a character, play them for 10-15 minutes, then start over with a tweaked style of character, and so on until I have the character that appeals to me most. This game appeals directly to that style of play with the myriad items to use. But it may not be everyone's cup of tea. If the thought of starting over from the beginning makes you cringe, you may wish to look somewhere else for your entertainment.

Overall I really liked the gameplay mechanics. I would have liked some more complexity in stat building, but that's ok. Repairing the camera would also be great. I give it a 4/5 for gameplay. This game isn't for hours upon hours of play, but an hour here and there can keep it really exciting. You also have a highscore board to look at to see how you compared to your previous dungeon attempts.

Story 4/5
Now the story, is this any good? You start off basically naked and thrown right into the thick of everything without knowing a thing. Get used to this, you won't know a thing for a while. The storytelling is very non-linear. You run into characters in the town and throughout the dungeon that will give you little tidbits of the story. It is like a puzzle that you have to carefully craft together. This will take a while, but it will be worth it. Learning everyone's story as well as your own is all told in a really interesting style. The characters are all very well crafted and each feels unique. Some are rather annoying though for their lack of expanded vocabulary. The coffin maker that guides you through the practice dungeon (which is not available until you attempt the main dungeon first by the way) is portrayed as foul-mouthed but there is no real creativity used in this portrayal. He just liberally takes God's name in vain, which may bother some of you. It is possible to completely avoid him though, and nobody else seems to have the same foul mouth. If you have the patience for it, the story will reward you will through its telling. I will also give the story a 4/5. It loses a point because you don't always know how to advance the story and sometimes will just have to stumble onto it by blind and dumb luck.

Graphics 3/5
The style of the graphics really contributes to setting the mood. The red haze around town contributes to the whole post-apocalyptic feel of everything. The world really feels destroyed and drained of hope. Everything is painted in muted and carefully controlled tones and shades. This unfortunately is also a bit of its downfall. After playing through for a while everything begins to look the same. Which is true, there are a lot of repeated textures all over. It doesn't detract, but after protracted play it can grate a bit. The atmosphere is very nicely set at first though so be sure to savor it for as long as you can. If the gameplay doesn't drive you away the graphics will make you put the game down for a while at least. The detail level of the models isn't terribly high. You can definitely tell that it is a port of the PS2 version. The textures on the models have some good details but the models themselves are rather lacking. The character designs are all good though. You can feel the innocence in some and the malevolence in others. The designs greatly embody the character's personality. In the end though I will have to give it a 3/5 for graphics. They could have pushed their palette and lighting farther I believe, as well as used the Wii's graphical capabilities more thoroughly.

Sound 3/5
The music in the game is a pretty good mix of techno-metal along with more ambient pieces. Some levels have some rather tiring musical pieces though, but none are truly nerve jarring. The ambient pieces are great and really suit the atmosphere of the game. I just wish they would have pushed them more. The more action packed pieces don't quite feel like they fit in. Nothing will be left really sitting in your mind though, which may be a good sign or a bad sign.

The sound effects aren't quite on the same level though. There is a good variety of sound effects throughout the game, but the quality of them aren't quite as good. Nothing particularly memorable. I just wasn't particularly impressed by the sound effects.

There are the voice overs though! Every line in the game is voiced over, which is impressive since not many games do that these days. Unfortunately the quality of the voice acting fluctuates. And even more unfortunately there is no option for the original Japanese voices. Some voices really suit the characters but there are many more that are just mediocre. Then there are some that are truly unimpressive. I did not care for the coffin maker at all.

Overall it scores 3/5. Saved by the music.

Replayability 5/5
Replayability this game has in spades. You will find yourself going down through the dungeon many times to unlock the rest of the story. Also the changing nature of the dungeon along with the nearly overwhelming plethora of items and combos you can use with them makes it a fun and unique experience each time. Many games screw up the random dungeon thing and so I'm usually wary of it outside of the old school roguelikes, but this game has it done right. Very fun, very very. 5/5 here.

Final Recommendation
The game mechanics are what will make or break this game for you. Does dying over and over frustrate you? Do you hate starting games over? Do you need instant gratification in terms of story? This game is definitely for a niche market. You may want to make sure this niche matches you. Go try Nethack or Linley's Dungeon Crawl for a bit and see if that is enjoyable. If it is? Go buy Baroque now! Otherwise you'd probably be best off passing this one over and saving yourself the frustration. Or go find yourself a rental and try it there first. For me? I love the game and don't regret having bought it at all. Overall score is 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/08

Game Release: Baroque (US, 04/08/08)