Baroque – First Impressions

I never played Baroque on the Sega Saturn when it originally came out in Japan in 1998. In fact, until it was released for the US on Wii and PS2, I only knew it existed because I have the soundtrack. When I saw screenshots from the game, I was immediately enthralled by the dark imagery and bizarre creatures. I picked it up the day it came out and rushed home to play it.

I started the game on Normal difficulty and died really quickly. So I started it again on Easy and died again within minutes. After going into the tower two more times, irritation and frustration took over and I stopped playing. Out of desperation, I looked inside the instruction manual. (Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I had to look inside a game manual…) I found out that there was a training dungeon. I promised myself that I would check it out the next time I played the game. Never had an action RPG ever made me feel like such a lame gamer. I wanted to like this game, but it seemed that I was too stupid to play it.

Three days went by and then I decided to try again. I loaded up the game and searched around town (I use this word loosely) to find the guy who would let me into the training dungeon. His bizarre voice followed me around, telling me what to do, how to use the map, and other useful things. After completing the training dungeon, I went back into the tower and things went a LOT better. I suppose if I had actually read the instruction manual, I would have learned how to actually play the game and I would not have had this problem. But seriously, who reads instruction manuals?

So now that I understand how to play the thing, I’m totally enjoying it. Since the game doesn’t utilize motion controls, I’m using the classic controller. It makes sense, since it’s a classic game. It took me a little while to get used to the camera control, but once you get the hang of it, it isn’t nearly as bad as some people are making it out to be. At least you CAN control the camera. Nothing is worse than a fixed camera when you’re playing a 3D dungeon crawler.

When you die in the tower, you revert back to level 1 and lose all your items, so the death penalty is a bit harsh. You can get around this by being able to save your game every time you go down a floor. Hardcore purists are calling this a cop-out since this is something that was added since the Saturn version, but it’s not like it auto-saves every level, you can just continue without saving if you want. It’s totally up to you. Also, there’s a guy that will hold items for you. At first it’s only a few, but you can increase his inventory space.

My favorite aspect of this game is definitely the ambiance. Gameplay and graphics are nice, but when you add the bizarre creatures and creepy music, it just makes the whole experience that much better. I’m looking forward to progressing further into the story and I’m really glad that i didn’t just give up after my first attempt at playing it. It’s definitely worth picking up if you like dungeon crawling action RPG’s.