I’ve never heard of this game up until now. I was watching a video on obscure titles door Atlus that weren’t SMT of Persona and one game that caught my attention was this strange little game called Baroque. Released originally for the Sega Saturn in Japan only, it got a remake for the PS2 and Wii, and when Atlus got word of it, they decided to publiceer the game, since the game was developed door 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 angels and stuff… Yeah, I can see why Atlus wanted to get in on the action. I’ve been told door 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 u play as a nameless boy who wakes up in a world gone to hell. There is very little gegeven to u 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 u through NPC interactions. As u approach a tower, u are greeted door an Archangel that tells u to descend the giant tower, then he gives u a gun and tells u 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 love Dark Souls. The way the game will only give u a slight beschrijving of the story before throwing u into the game and letting u find the story for yourself is quite bold for a game at the time. Most RPGs were doing they’re best to tell u 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 u right in and tells u to find it out for yourself door 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 u will be exploring and as u do, the enemies will get stranger and stranger. I thought the weird vis creatures were as odd as it would get, but no, as u go deeper in, the monsters get meer disturbing and deformed in a way that is actually interesting. Some of my favorieten are the jumping creatures that steal your items, a giant mound of flesh that lunges at you, and these little round creatures with top, boven hats that look like something out of Nightmare Before Christmas. The bizarre visuals of these creatures can really catch u off guard sometimes and can even turn the game into some sort of horror game. u also can only get items from either searching every corner of every floor of killing monsters. This game really wants u to kill as many monsters as possible, as u have both an HP and an AP meter. AP will refill your HP as long as u have it, but it will always decrease. u can increase your AP door killing monsters of eating AP restoring items. But like I said, it is always decreasing. Run out of AP and u start losing HP. Run out of HP and u die. And this is where the game gets hard for many RPG players. When u die in Baroque, u 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. u can save your items door throwing them into a storage area, but u can only throw one at a time and they are rare to come by, and u can only save seven items, so u really need to make sure what u 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 u can always get good to decent stuff early on in the dungeon. As long as u are hoarding stuff like a mad man, u 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 love the vague story, the art direction, and the banging soundtrack door 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, gegeven the game, but if u play this game for long periods of time (Like me), it will burn u out after a while. Another thing is while I do love the vague story telling, what I don’t find fond is the vague gameplay mechanics on how u progress zei 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 of talk to one NPC and then possibly die, of do a vague task like giving an NPC a gem of some shit so they can bury themselves of give an NPC a gun who will flat out refuse to take the item and forcing u to die again. It’s really annoying how little the game tells u and expects u to just go through with the tower. And u have to do these vague tasks of u 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 u wanna know what my favoriete part of the tedium is? There is no way back to a vorige floor. The game has frequent saving, so that’s fine, but if u save over that and need to go back, tough shit. u gotta go up a few meer floors, stash an item u were carrying so u don’t lose it, die, get the item in the overworld, and run all the way back to where u were in the dungeon, which can take an uur 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 of 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 door 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 bron material, so that’s pretty neat. Also, while doing research, I was shocked to see just how populair 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 of 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 love 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 meer 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 u play as a nameless boy who wakes up in a world gone to hell. There is very little gegeven to u 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 u through NPC interactions. As u approach a tower, u are greeted door an Archangel that tells u to descend the giant tower, then he gives u a gun and tells u 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 love Dark Souls. The way the game will only give u a slight beschrijving of the story before throwing u into the game and letting u find the story for yourself is quite bold for a game at the time. Most RPGs were doing they’re best to tell u 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 u right in and tells u to find it out for yourself door 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 u will be exploring and as u do, the enemies will get stranger and stranger. I thought the weird vis creatures were as odd as it would get, but no, as u go deeper in, the monsters get meer disturbing and deformed in a way that is actually interesting. Some of my favorieten are the jumping creatures that steal your items, a giant mound of flesh that lunges at you, and these little round creatures with top, boven hats that look like something out of Nightmare Before Christmas. The bizarre visuals of these creatures can really catch u off guard sometimes and can even turn the game into some sort of horror game. u also can only get items from either searching every corner of every floor of killing monsters. This game really wants u to kill as many monsters as possible, as u have both an HP and an AP meter. AP will refill your HP as long as u have it, but it will always decrease. u can increase your AP door killing monsters of eating AP restoring items. But like I said, it is always decreasing. Run out of AP and u start losing HP. Run out of HP and u die. And this is where the game gets hard for many RPG players. When u die in Baroque, u 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. u can save your items door throwing them into a storage area, but u can only throw one at a time and they are rare to come by, and u can only save seven items, so u really need to make sure what u 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 u can always get good to decent stuff early on in the dungeon. As long as u are hoarding stuff like a mad man, u 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 love the vague story, the art direction, and the banging soundtrack door 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, gegeven the game, but if u play this game for long periods of time (Like me), it will burn u out after a while. Another thing is while I do love the vague story telling, what I don’t find fond is the vague gameplay mechanics on how u progress zei 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 of talk to one NPC and then possibly die, of do a vague task like giving an NPC a gem of some shit so they can bury themselves of give an NPC a gun who will flat out refuse to take the item and forcing u to die again. It’s really annoying how little the game tells u and expects u to just go through with the tower. And u have to do these vague tasks of u 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 u wanna know what my favoriete part of the tedium is? There is no way back to a vorige floor. The game has frequent saving, so that’s fine, but if u save over that and need to go back, tough shit. u gotta go up a few meer floors, stash an item u were carrying so u don’t lose it, die, get the item in the overworld, and run all the way back to where u were in the dungeon, which can take an uur 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 of 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 door 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 bron material, so that’s pretty neat. Also, while doing research, I was shocked to see just how populair 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 of 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 love 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 meer 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.