Video Games : Baroque

In association with Amazon.com
  

from: Atlus Video Games

: Baroque
variant image variant image variant image variant image variant image
List Price: $39.99
Amazon.com's Price: $29.99
You Save: $10.00 (25%)
Prices subject to change.



Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
More Information


This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years
Amazon Minimum Age: 144 months
Binding: Video Game
Brand: Atlus
EAN: 0730865530250
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
Label: Atlus Video Games
Manufacturer: Atlus Video Games
Model: BA-53025-0
Platform: PlayStation2
Publisher: Atlus Video Games
Release Date: April 08, 2008
Sales Rank: 2292
Studio: Atlus Video Games

Features:

Related Items:

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
You have just awakened in a world of ruin, having lost your memory. The world has been devastated by the "Blaze", which twisted the laws of nature. Meta-Beings now wander the barren land. In order to survive the world, people cling to their delusions, called "Baroques" and become warped by their own ideas. You must descend upon a mysterious tower, fighting through the foul denizens. The tower is constantly distorting, so you'll be in a new labyrinth every time you enter a room.

Acquire powerful stat-boosting parasites and combine them to multiply their potency



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Oh, the ways in which I've died...
Finally, a game for roguelike fans! This game is essentially a Japanese realtime Nethack with a unique storyline -- it's incredibly fun, in a masochistic way. Consequences for dying? Who would have come up with such a thing!

I admit that I was skeptical of this game when I bought it. I've played my share of crappy, run-of-the-mill Japanese RPGs that drag on for hours in endless tedium.

But after having played Baroque for at least 15 hours and having died at least 7 times, my hope for RPGs has been restored! The game is pure anti-tedium. The wealth of randomly discovered items and actions make each attempt like a new game. The rule of thumb is: "Use your items or die!" No point in hoarding!

Sure you lose everything. But when you die, your effort does not go unnoticed... A deterrence from save/reload! (thank you god).

I can see how players can be quickly put off by the bare-essential graphics before they have a chance to unlock the depth of strategy. Anyone who is familiar with the genre knows that graphics are primarily there for reference. The PS2 and Wii versions can both be played in 480p (assuming use of PS3), and the main difference becomes optional widescreen mode and slightly worse controls for Wii.

If you are a fan of roguelike games (Nethack, Toejam & Earl, ADOM, original Diablo) and you keep an open mind about graphics and game direction, then you must buy Baroque. Going into a game store, I now automatically compare all other games to Baroque -- nothing measures up.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - throw aside preconceptions, and Baroque becomes a unique and rewarding experience
Baroque is by no means for everyone, but if one wishes for a bizarre, surreal, and unique experience, Baroque is a good choice.

First, Baroque is actually a remake of an original Sega Saturn release. Baroque's development team, Sting, is probably better known for their Sega Dreamcast series, Evolution, and their more recent offerings on hand-held platforms, including Yggdra Union for the Gameboy Advance. This team is not a large one, and their inexperience with more recent 3-dimensional game systems shows. Often games of this sort are never picked up for an English localization.

Gameplay: From the outset, Baroque is befuddling, as it gives the player no obvious instruction and sends them blindly into the Neuro Tower. The tutorial dungeon is not opened to the player until after his first death or successful decent, and further tutorials are unlocked after further attempts at the Neuro Tower. Baroque is an action-RPG with quite a bit of hidden strategy. Much of the fun comes from devising creative uses of the items one finds while wandering the Tower and planning for future attempts by storing items for later use. One particularly amusing combination of items I found was to use a 'Summon Torturer' followed by an invincibility and experience bone, then boom bones to wipe out every enemy on the level I was on. One must never get too attached to the player character, as he and his inventory reset with each attempt at the Tower. Perhaps the weakest element of the gameplay is the player's attack repertoire, which consists only of a weak combo attack, a fierce attack, and throw options. Still, there have been successful games that have offered less.

Story: The story plays out through dialogs triggered by approaching NPCs and walking into 'Plot Rooms' scattered throughout the Neuro Tower. There is no obvious linear plot, but this is not a Final Fantasy style RPG. All cutscenes and dialog can be reviewed under the database available with each Baroque game save. Some may find the amnesiac lead character trite, but in reference to the story, it is appropriate; everyone in the world of Baroque is fractured in some way, the player's character is just more distorted than he physically appears. Some may be put off by the treatment of a fictitious faith based on Christianity, but one must remember that the developers of Baroque live in a country where people of Judeo-Christian faiths are the minority.

Graphics: The graphics in Baroque are relatively spartan, belying its small budget and small studio origins. Though the bestiary are rendered with a low polygon count, the texture maps are quite detailed, effectively displaying just how horrific the 'Metabeings'/'Grotesques' are. At some points, I wonder just how this game managed to slip by with only a Teen rating, with just how disturbing and provocative some of the monsters are. There are a variety of dungeon themes, some more aesthetically pleasing than others, but all are quite industrial. The environment is limited mostly by the random generation of the dungeon.

Overall, this game is not intuitive or obvious, but that is its challenge and fun. Players are most often shocked and frustrated by the odd mechanics that occasionally encourage strategic deaths. Once one lets go of expectations and actually plays Baroque as it was designed to be played, the game becomes a surreal, nightmarish, and philosophical experience.


Side Note: The artistic term Baroque actually fits this game's aesthetic quite nicely; Baroque period art and literature was known for its drama and grandeur, but is often remembered for being grotesque, horrific, and extreme, as exemplified by Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. The word Baroque is derived from a French term for an irregular or misshapen pearl, which the game's developers applied to the irregular and misshapen beings formed by 'The Blaze'/'The Great Heat'.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Fun, but very repetitive
I loved the whole theme of the game. At the start, the game was incredibly fun, but after about 8 hours or so started becoming very repetitive since all you really do is play through the same dungeon over and over. The dungeons are randomly generated the way Diablo I & II dungeons are. Loved the gameplay, sort of didnt like the fact that you had to "start over" at certain points, but I got over that bit. Overall, I would say I initially enjoyed playing it, but I got bored halfway through.


Rating: 1 out of 5 stars - Baroque Indeed
I don't know exactly what the creators of this game were trying to accomplish. The Baroque period 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 ask? Well, I'm still asking. After that the game just becomes one big old 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 out of 5 stars - Baroque Sounds An Awful Lot Like "Broke" Doesn't It?
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 repeat 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 strange forms, are haunted by guilt and madness, and remember only confusing 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 captive down there.

That is pretty much all the direction you are going to get. Baroque is all about letting the player discover things for themselves. Normally, this would be a good thing. However, progression is made as unintuitive as possible. For example, triggering certain events causes Neuro Tower to expand and contract. In RPG's, the traditional way to do this is to hide clues in the things NPC's say. Now imagine 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 imagine 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 games, 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 story to move along 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 think 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 story starts as confusing clap-trap, but it does clear some of itself up by the end. However, 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 enter 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 health 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 slain 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. However, 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 good thing about Baroque is that it has an excellent atmosphere and it really gets you to identify with the characters as they live through 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 put 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 difficult (It's really easy) and one that you must put some real effort into. This is a game that will only appeal to people who can love repetition like the most obsessive compulsive personality. Not recommended.


see more


More Information
Browse for similar items by category:

 

HOME

Car Credit - Info Videos - Credit Cards UK - Payday Loans - Loans