Baroquen Spirit: Atlus imagines eternity in gaming limbo, and it ain't pretty [REVIEW]

Posted by Gary Hodges at 1:13 AM Apr 23, 2008

"Oh, and you were 'Girlfriend of the Year'?"

First of all: God bless Atlus. As a publisher devoted to bringing obscure little Japanese gaming gems to the West and the much-needed heir apparent of Working Designs, Atlus is pretty much the only hope for gamers who crave oddball, strange, or downright niche titles from the Land of the Rising Sun.

(In fact, one of the greatest releases they've made so far hit shelves just yesterday: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, a sort of director's cut of one of the best Japanese-style RPGs to come to the PS2, well, ever. If you like the genre at all, you want this game.)

Really, Atlus is the closest thing we have to an underground label in gaming, something we so desperately need… which is why I’m not going to totally crucify them for Baroque.

Contrary to the descriptor on the back of the box, Baroque is not a “dungeon-crawling RPG” – not exactly, anyway. Rather, Baroque represents a subgenre referred to as “roguelikes”: titles that throw players into randomly-generated dungeons where they gain experience, items and treasure, only to lose it all when they leave the dungeon or are killed. Baroque isn’t a traditional roguelike as the combat is real time rather than turn-based, but otherwise it’s the same animal.

The game begins in a small, hazy post-apocalyptic colony populated by self-tormented beings who spend their days lamenting their wretchedness. A key figure in this strange place, Archangel, instructs the player to take his Angelic Rifle, find his way to the bottom of the nearby Neuro Tower and – like Old Yeller – put a deranged, crazed god at the bottom level out of her misery.

This task – something other games might spend 40 hours on – is one players can accomplish in less than an hour, at which point there’s a cutscene, the player is teleported back to the colony, and the cycle begins all over.

“What’s the point?” you ask.

Exactly. Sure, there are little bits here and there to add some dimension to the whole experience: the others in town often plead for some special item from the tower, a limited number of which you can smuggle back to town like contraband, unlocking some new conversations. There’s also a rudimentary story there to try and piece together. But at heart, the actual game is the repetitive storming of the Neuro Tower, getting to the bottom floor and shooting the deranged god, and repeating it all over and over to no apparent end.

Baroque doesn’t have the game play to pull this off. The randomized levels are bland-looking, and the enemies themselves, though easy to defeat, aren’t even worth that trouble – why bother, when any experience or treasure gained will only be erased once you leave the tower?

Yes, the character designs are intriguing and memorable, and the game has its own distinct mood that’s both unsettling and wearying. But the game play itself is – in essence – a hamster wheel, with some fever dream wallpaper lining the cage to distract from that simplistic design.

If there was a game to call Sisyphean, it would be Baroque; often feeling like a bizarre experiment to see how long a gamer will stick with a game that had all conventional reward systems excised. (Though if you’re looking for a game that works as some sort of Zen kōan on the lesson of impermanence, add 3 points to my score.)

I will give Baroque credit for one thing, though: the total absence of cowboys and/or homosexuals. Because if either had appeared in the game I would’ve felt compelled to title this review “Baroqueback Mountain”, immediately deride myself as a hack writer, and resign on principle.

Baroque
Publisher: Atlus
Platform: PlayStation 2, Wii
Price: $39.99
ESRB Rating: T (for Teen)
Score: 4 (out of 10)