Baroque [US Wii]

[NoelEdwards]

Baroque first came out on the Saturn back in 98 and was ported to the PS1 in 99 and now it?s been remade for the PS2 & Wii.

I picked up the Wii version since rpgs are bit thin the ground for the Wii at the moment.

Baroque's is set after a world-altering cataclysm called the Blaze that took place. The world is now in a twisted state and is full of Meta-Beings, creatures that were once human but that have lost their hearts and minds to the Baroques inside them.

Your goal is to reach the bottom of the Neuro Tower to heal your sins & heal the world.

You?ve got two options for controlling The Protagonist Nunchuk & Wii Remote or Classic Controller. I opted to use the Nunchuk & Wii Remote and it works quite well.

So off I went inside the Neuro Tower to explore the many dungeons, once in the dungeons you find items and equipment scattered around at random and you get item by defeating enemies. Defeating enemies gives you experience points to you can level up and become stronger.
One thing worth mentioning is that if you die before reaching the end of the dungeon, you will be chucked right back to the start with all equipment stripped from you and if that wasn?t bad enough you?ll be level 1 again as well. The only way to combat this by using the consciousness orbs that found in the dungeons.
You?ll also need to keep an eye on your two life gauges one is for hit points & the other is vitality. The vitality constantly drains during the game once its empty the hit point gauge will start to drain. Both gauges can be toped by eating flash for hit points & hearts for vitality.

It?s also worth pointing out more of the plot is revealed each time you die & restart with certain part of the story only being shown if you have died or reached the bottom.

While graphically its not going to win many fans I think it?s worth taking a chance since it offers some thing different to the rpg genre.

[Kenshin Br]

I'm playing this game now.

It is very good, but very simple too. Well, it's a roguelike game... I like this style of RPG.

[briareos_kerensky]

Got my copy today, here are some quick impressions.

Strange. F***ing strange. Art direction is good, extremely weird in some places and it complements the hermetic storytelling.
Screenshots usually make the game look bad: it's not a technical masterpiece (especially in corridors where the camera tends to get struck a lot) but it moves smoothly with no drops in framerate and it's quite detailed. A bit monotonous, but good. Items like weapons and armor change the Protagonist aesthetically and they are clearly visible on floor, although they're divided into categories (weapons, armors, items).

Basically the game is a roguelike, you lose all items and levels when you die unless you've found an item to keep and redeem them to one of the various frea...characters in the Outer World. It's not extremely hard (at least, it's not on the first 6 floors) and right now the biggest problem is its sluggish rhythm, maybe if it was a bit faster it would have been more enjoyable.

I agree that the Wiimote+nunchuk controls work fine. At first I was a bit skeptical about the layout, as A calls the menu, 2 is for the on-screen map and B is used for attacking. However, with the camera mapped to the d-pad and the constant need of moving it (Z moves the camera back to third person but there's a confusing transition), having the attack button mapped to B makes thing easy and the on-screen map is always on until you press again the 2 button.
The map is very simple and does not obstruct the main screen.

[briareos_kerensky]

Gave the game a quick go with the Classic Controller. Quick because I never expected to find the Wiimote/nunchuck combo better for this game. Probably it's due to the CC iteself, good for VC games but too small when compared to the Dualshock: with analogs moving your character and the camera, thumbs often come in contact and you have to decide between handling the camera or using the attack button, when you can do both at the same time with the Wiimote.
An other minor control nitpick: it would have been better to use the C button as a shortcut to use the selected item and mapping a vertical swing to the Wiimote for item throwing.

[Rock]

This is out in PAL land for those who want to try it out - nicely priced too. I picked it up having had a vague poke at roguelikes before, and was pretty overwhelmed to begin with - you're running around with your vitality bar constantly decreasing worrying if you're about to die soon in a town where noone really seems to make sense aside from the voice telling you to "go to the Neuro Tower". You get there, fight a bit (which feels a lot like Phantasy Star Online to me), die, and that's where I assume a lot of reviewers put it down and gave it 5/10. It gets so much better after that.

The training dungeon sets you out nicely with a few items and a weapon to tackle the Neuro Tower with, along with some amusing lines from the Coffin Guy involving 'goddammit' being thrown around a lot for no apparent reason. Anyway, you go back into the Neuro Tower and it's all a lot more tolerable, you gradually learn what stuff does, and that the items need to be identified before you know what they do - often by trial and error, in true roguelike style. And you're hacking stuff to bits, finding random people in the dungeon with things to say, which'll likely make a lot more sense after i've died a ton and got these weird intermissions that seem to be revealing a bit about who you really are. And you're having fun while doing it!

Quite liking things so far, doesn't seem like the kind of game worth being spoiled or read into too much. I only really read Hardcore Gaming 101's writeup about it previously, which was enough to get me interested.