Strangely attracted to Baroque despite the reviews? Click here to read the real deal...
The story behind the world of Baroque is often described as vague and unintelligible, and while it certainly is convoluted to an extreme, a thoughtful player will quickly begin to make sense of it. To offer a beginner's sense of understanding without giving too much away, this is what's going on: a fanatic religious cult began doing some wild experiments that had terrible results. The experiments distorted reality in a way that living in it caused everyone a great deal of grief. This event is known as the "Blaze". In order to survive, the world's inhabitants imagined up their own realities (an escape mechanism, in other words). Their imagined realities are known as "Baroques". However, in the new, distorted reality, Baroques have the effect of warping people physically and mentally. The tower in which the cult conducted their experiments is full of people whose Baroques eventually turned them into monsters, and you alone have to power to extract their original personalities from them when you destroy them. The act of destroying someone and extracting their original personality is called "purification". When you manage to purify a monster in the game, a small glowing sphere pops out for you to take.
Your character was directly involved with the experiments, and it seems almost everyone blames him and him alone for the Blaze. However, he remembers nothing, but carries a deep sense of guilt inside. To resolve this guilt, he is charged with a mission to fight his way to the bottom of the tower where the experiments were conducted and purify the very bottom floor of the tower. During your exploration of the tower, you will find rooms where you'll receive bits and pieces of information that slowly become a clearer and clearer picture.
Let's talk about the graphics. The graphics can be summarized as better than PS1, but not quite PS2. The resolution is the worst thing about them, but they aren't that hard on the eyes either. Everything has a grainy appearance, and the distance is mostly shrouded in darkness, which provides an ambience to the game. On the positive side, all of the gear you wield or wear has its own individual apperance, which makes finding new items exciting.
Baroque might be said to be Phantasy Star Online's dark, distant cousin. Much of the gameplay and gear has a PSO likeness to it, mostly having to do with the swords and the imitation wings. I have played Baroque for over ten hours and have had zero problems with the camera. The camera rests at a perfect verticle angle, so all you'll be doing is turning the view left or right as you run around. Your sword attacks have a fairly wide range to them, and it isn't hard to hit your enemies even if the action is not directly in your view for a moment. The camera is fine.
And now for the most misleading rumors about this game... before I bought the game, I was attracted to the words, "hardcore dungeon crawler", and the fact that Gamespot described it as "fiendishly difficult". What the other reviews make it sound like is that you're fighting your way to the bottom of this tower, and after all your hard work, you lose all your items and your levels and start all over again. If you die on your way down the tower, you lose everything and start all over again as well. Sounds pretty stupid, right? Well, here's what they didn't tell you:
First, getting to the bottom of the tower is not difficult. If you've just started playing the game, you're more likely to die, blow yourself up, or simply not know how to use your items most effectively. There is actually a training dungeon with voice tutorials to get you started. Once you start getting the hang of things, you'll learn how to circle around enemies while attacking so that you rarely ever get hit, and you'll discover that you can use your items to gather every enemy on the level into one room and then blow them all up at once. In fact, there are items you can consume that will make you temporarily invincible. What Gamespot neglected to mention is that you can make it to the bottom of the tower several times in one night. The more you play, the better you get at it, and if you're crafty, you'll start to feel like a pretty tough guy.
What happens when you reach the bottom of the tower, without giving too much away, is that you basically reset the world so you can try to make things right again. So, what's happening is like the movie "Groundhog's Day". There are important characters in town and in the tower that you can interact with in certain ways to make things happen, but you can't get all the items you need in just one or two runs through the tower.
Now... about the items! Yes, you can lose all of your items upon dying or resetting the world. However, as mentioned in the main review, you can take a "handful" of items with you into the next reset world. This is done by throwing whichever items you like into "consciousness orbs". The thing is, you will be finding these orbs in several places in the tower-- however, you can only transfer up to five items at first. On the bright side, you'll find that most of the items you'll have aren't worth keeping, as they can easily be found again... so, a handful of items typically covers everything you absolutely have to keep, such as a weapon you've been customizing or personality orbs you've acquired. You're always afforded the chance to stash two items on the second to last level, and because the only item you need for the last level is given to you when you get there, you won't need your super cool weapon or favorite armor. You always get to stash them away for the next run through, provided you still have one or two of your five spots open. You can upgrade your item slots to 10 eventually, but the main thing is, you can keep your favorite gear every single time if you manage your items right.
So, then you're thinking, "Geez... it really sucks to lose all your levels every time." The other reviews make it sound like levelling up is difficult. What you'll find is that gaining levels is easy, and after you go through tower from top to bottom twice (or maybe sooner), levelling will cease to be a big deal to you at all. There's even an item that levels you up instantly! The main focus of the game seems to be on getting items. If you're a loot addict, you will probably love this game. Indeed, you do have the potential to become insanely powerful, although it would take a little work. An example of how it works is, let's say you have a favorite sword, and you keep it with you every tower run by using the consciousness orbs. You can find items that up the attack power of your sword, so over time, you can make the sword stronger and stronger and deal a huge amount of damage.
Then what is "fiendishly difficult" or "hardcore" about Baroque? Well, here's the thing: there are so many things that can happen each trip through the tower, and so many ways that you can use items, your situation can get switched up very easily. Sometimes a particular monster will steal one of your items and run away (you have the chance to catch it). Or, as has happened to me, you might find a very rare item and have it your inventory, only to step on a disk that instantly transforms your rare set item into a piece of food. Sometimes an enemy can wear down the attack or defense power of an item when you get hit, but you can also find items that have a repair effect. Fortunately, you have a chance to save your game every time you descend a level, so if things don't go your way, you can reset and try again.
There is a lot to learn about Baroque, and just when you think the game is going to start repeating itself, new kinds of levels appear along with different monsters, and you discover something totally cool that you can't help experimenting with. The only thing to consider is the price Baroque has started out at, which was $40 new, where I live. You might consider Baroque worth the price in the sense that it's a new game that few people seem to understand-- it's something you can get really good at, deck out your character, unravel the story and get that feeling that you're part of something secret, cool, and exclusive. However, when it comes to the game's content, it clearly is not worth $40. You could get two PS2 "Greatest Hits" for $40 and get way more bang for your buck.
Then again, Baroque has already lasted me longer than some of the higher rated games. In conclusion, I'm giving Baroque a 7.5. Baroque could use more content and suffers from aged production values, but like a game of Monopoly, the elements of Baroque are so finely crafted that it offers major replay value and the excitement of unpredictable possibilities every time you play. I'm actually proud to have this game in my collection.