Topic: Baroque (Wii) - The most underrated game of 2008

[crone]

Let me first provide some background info...I've been playing games heavily since the NES days and I've gotten to the point where unless a game is nearly GOTY or innovative..I don't even bother playing it or think of buying it. I have become very jaded with videogames over the last almost 20 years I have been playing them. This is especially true when it comes to RPGs.. This is probably why No More Heroes and Sin and Punishment were my favorite Wii games last year...

Back to Baroque...

So I found out a this month about a game called Baroque that slipped under most Wii-owner radars. It got a 3/10 in Nintendo Power and consistently low reviews everywhere..yet if you go to the gamefaqs forum for Baroque you see some people calling it a great game. The games concept is extremely innovative (I'll explain later). At $20 a copy at Gamestop I decided to give it a try.

The reason it got bad reviews is because Baroque does something different from standard RPGs...
1) When you die..you DIE..you restart from the beginning..you go back to level 0..you lose all your items.
2) Essentially..your health slowly depletes throughout the entire game. So you can never diddle-daddle or walk around slowly...you have to move fast fast fast or you will die.

I understand this sounds terrible and can see why reviewers gave it a bad score. What they didn't understand is that Baroque was designed this way on purpose. It is not a traditional RPG...

The premise of the game is that you are a person with amnesia (think the movie Momento) and you have to continually replay over and over again..dieing and being reborn. Every time you replay you get new cutscenes that explain the story in more detail and the dungeons are randomly re-generated (this further supports the amnesia angle) until you eventually beat the game. Without giving out any spoilers..lets just say that you cannot get to the end of the game on the first try no matter how good you are..you will end up restarting.

Once I was able to accept the dieing/restarting thing it became one of the best RPGs I have played. I am slowly pieced together the story through subsequent playthrough. The story is amazing..although I must warn that it is very dark (a lot of references to sins, blasphemies, god [not in a good sense], lust). The story reminds me a lot of Silent Hill 2...its a dark mystery story but very deep and original. Also...a playthrough is only roughly 6 hours long..so playing it over again a few times is no big deal. It is a shame that this game gets terrible reviews for trying to do something very new and original.

[ShyGuy]

This is the strongest pitch for the game I have heard. I'm actually kind of intrigued.

[crone]

I do have to warn through..the actual combat mechanics are very simple. You get a special attack, a 3 hit combo, and you can throw things. Thats it... No magic. Almost all weapons perform the same attacks. The combat is usually of the form..attack an enemy..dodge the enemies attack..attack again..dodge...etc.. (some enemies shoot things at you..others jump at you). Not that it isn't fun..I have been playing for a while and I haven't gotten bored of combat yet..I cant say the same thing for other RPGs (espcially turn-based stuff).

Also..the level graphics are pretty bland..but the character models are really interested but a bit on the demented side.

[Chozo Ghost]

Dying for good and being forced to start over from the beginning seems like a recipe for serious frustration. This is VERY realistic, because in the real world when you die it is for good, but when we play video games we want to escape from the real world. We don't want to die 20 hours or more into a game and then be forced to start over new and go through the same 20 hours of stuff again.

But with that Amnesia angle, it might not be such a bad thing after all. I think the bad reviews must have come from people who were too impatient to accept that.

[KDR_11k]

Permadeath isn't rare for rogue likes but does it have lolinstadeaths like "you choke on food" or "the ceiling caves in" or "that food was spoiled, you die from illness"?

We don't want to die 20 hours or more into a game and then be forced to start over new and go through the same 20 hours of stuff again.

Isn't that more a problem with balooning game length and low challenge so that replaying is no fun? I don't recall people complaining that you have to start over when you run out of lives in e.g. Contra.

[ReverendNoahWhateley]

Reaching the end of the tower and being forced to start over never takes more than an hour or two, if I remember correctly.  And it's not like you die for nothing; in addition to advancing the plot, you're able to store a couple of the choicest items from each excursion for later.  That said, it's a really oddball game that will only appeal to people with a unique blend of patience and the desire to play through a digital fever dream.

[Nick DiMola]

I do believe this is a mystery dungeon game, therefore ... well I think we all know the staff's stance on them, so I won't expound on this.

[crone]

It is just unfortunate that magazines like Nintendo Power give it a 3/10 when House of the Dead 2 & 3 get a 7/10 and Sega Bass Fishing get a 5/10... It literally kills sales. I think Baroques' worldwide total sales on vgchartz is roughly 5000 copies on Wii. If this nonsense keeps up we'll all be stuck with nothing to play but Wii Music sequels.

[NWR_pap64]

It is just unfortunate that magazines like Nintendo Power give it a 3/10 when House of the Dead 2 & 3 get a 7/10 and Sega Bass Fishing get a 5/10... It literally kills sales. I think Baroques' worldwide total sales on vgchartz is roughly 5000 copies on Wii. If this nonsense keeps up we'll all be stuck with nothing to play but Wii Music sequels.

So let me get this straight...

You are complaining that Baroque is an underrated that doesn't get the praise it deserves, yet you do so by bashing other games that are perhaps worthy of the score and sales? Have you played any of the mentioned games or are you just bashing them in order to try and make a convincing argument?

I'm suspicious...

[GoldenPhoenix]

gamefaqs forum

I hate to sound nasty, but I'm not sure I'd use them as a reference.

[KDR_11k]

I do believe this is a mystery dungeon game, therefore ... well I think we all know the staff's stance on them, so I won't expound on this.

It's not a Mystery Dungeron game AFAIK, that's a specific franchise. It is a roguelike though. As I said, permadeath is normal in those (they usually delete your save). Apparently the goal is to play them over and over until you master them, like an arcade game.

[Jonnyboy117]

As I said, permadeath is normal in those (they usually delete your save).

I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

[Kairon]

It is a roguelike though. As I said, permadeath is normal in those (they usually delete your save).

I cower in fear in a corner.

[Pale]

I stress out to the point of losing all enjoyment if a death in a game will cost me more than a half hour of play time....

I can't imagine trying to play this.

[GoldenPhoenix]

I stress out to the point of losing all enjoyment if a death in a game will cost me more than a half hour of play time....

I can't imagine trying to play this.

I think we need Crimm's professional opinion on this.

[Flames_of_chaos]

I stress out to the point of losing all enjoyment if a death in a game will cost me more than a half hour of play time....

I can't imagine trying to play this.

I challenge you to play Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer.

[Pale]

I'm totally not exaggerating either... If i'm playing a game that takes you back to your previous save when you die... as soon as about a half hour passes with no save points I start to freak... get hyper cautious... and usually screw something up. =P

[UltimatePartyBear]

I haven't played Baroque yet, but I'm pretty sure death isn't that kind of penalty in it.  Death is a required part of the progression according to the ad copy.

[KDR_11k]

As I said, permadeath is normal in those (they usually delete your save).

I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

Keep in mind that we're not talking about 80 hour plot driven epics here though. Well, for roguelikes in general, I suppose Baroque is more story driven though it's a "meta story" that runs over several of your attempts to beat it and doesn't get reset by the death.

I'm not sure how long a run through e.g. Nethack would take if you're masterful (i.e. don't die and don't spend time coming to grips with the game) at the game but I doubt it's THAT long, the game keeps people occupied because they die and need to learn. I'm pretty sure a full both rounds run of Cho Ren Sha 68k (shmup) takes over an hour.

Also, hell, you're supposed to be cautious in roguelikes, after all you're in mortal danger down there. It's kinda silly with how much confidence a gamer can approach a situation that should be so damn scary that real people would drop on the ground and cower in fear.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Baroque is a weird case, when you die you go back to level 1 with all your items gone (you can save some items if you throw them in a conscious orb) however the story only progresses when you die because when you start the game you basically have amnesia and every time you come back to life after death the game reveals what happened to the character piece by piece.

[KDR_11k]

Does it progress with every death or do you have to trigger some flags for the next scene to appear after the death?

[Flames_of_chaos]

It progresses after every death and it triggers certain things when you're revived and archangel berates you a little.

[Chozo Ghost]

In th

I'm totally not exaggerating either... If i'm playing a game that takes you back to your previous save when you die... as soon as about a half hour passes with no save points I start to freak... get hyper cautious... and usually screw something up. =P

I hear ya... but it seems like in this game you have to fail in order to succeed (or something to that effect). You can't complete the game without dying and restarting.

[ReverendNoahWhateley]

Most of the game is spent replaying the same dungeon, over and over again (there are bonus dungeons, but they're not really essential to the main quest).  The layout changes, and depending on how far you got last time, the game might add extra floors.  Keep in mind that you never "have" to die to progress the story.  Reaching the end of the central dungeon is considered a death, so you don't have to leap into a spike pit just to get ahead.

The greatest incentive to keep playing, for me, was seeing how the peculiar characters that inhabit the overworld and dungeon change every time I play.  For example, an NPC you find on the 5th floor might come across as a gibbering madman the first trip through, but his dialogue expands with every visit, revealing extra snippets of his sob story.  In the absence of a really strict narrative, I found that to be a pretty clever way to add character depth.

[crone]

It is just unfortunate that magazines like Nintendo Power give it a 3/10 when House of the Dead 2 & 3 get a 7/10 and Sega Bass Fishing get a 5/10... It literally kills sales. I think Baroques' worldwide total sales on vgchartz is roughly 5000 copies on Wii. If this nonsense keeps up we'll all be stuck with nothing to play but Wii Music sequels.

So let me get this straight...

You are complaining that Baroque is an underrated that doesn't get the praise it deserves, yet you do so by bashing other games that are perhaps worthy of the score and sales? Have you played any of the mentioned games or are you just bashing them in order to try and make a convincing argument?

I'm suspicious...

I've never played them on Wii but I've played all the House of the Deads in arcades and my friend had Sega Bass Fishing for PS2. Here is my review:

House of the Dead 2 & 3: Good for its time...extremely outdated now..I wouldn't pay more than $5 for it. Not that its a bad genre..I am eagerly awaiting House of the Dead Overkill...but Sega should have really stepped up and ported House of the Dead 4 to Wii instead of 2&3.

Sega Bass Fishing (PS2): This game is so boring it makes me want to have AIDS. Although if you are a huge fishing fan I can see the appeal...but it is not a work of art by any means.