Baroque (Wii)

Death is not only inevitable, it's required.
4/18/2008 3:08 PM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2

Purifying meta-beings rewards you with a small amount of Vitality, and consuming items like Hearts and Bones (told you this game was gruesome) will raise it even more. As long as you have Vitality points, your Hit Points will slowly recover, frequently leaving you wondering if it's in your best interests to use that portal to the next level down, which brings you closer to your goal but is populated by even tougher meta-beings, or to use up some precious Vitality to search your current level for power-ups and items.

Whatever you decide, you will die many, many times on your journey to the bottom of the Neuro Tower, but you can cheat a bit when it comes to keeping some of your hard-earned swag. Giant orbs called Collection Spheres dot the grim landscape of the Tower, and each one will hold a single item for you, which you can then retrieve the next time you're dumped topside.

That may not be enough to persuade players used to hoarding sets of armor and keeping three different kinds of shields just in case, though. Making death part of the storytelling process is certainly an intriguing and different approach to spinning a tale, but it doesn't make retracing your steps any less frustrating or repetitive. The Neuro Tower's burnt-out factory aesthetic and the otherworldly shapes of the meta-beings create an atmosphere quite unlike the typical sword-and-sorcery fare that most RPGs favor, but players may find themselves craving more substance and less style in the characters they encounter.

Playing Baroque feels alien and different, but that very weirdness is what makes it intriguing. We've played RPGs before, we know how things are supposed to work, so to encounter something that is clearly an RPG and yet so clearly not is frustrating and fascinating at the same time. If you enjoy role-playing games, you should at least give Baroque a try. You may ultimately decide that it's not for you, but I guarantee you won't find it ordinary.

If you have the choice, though, pick up Baroque for the PlayStation 2 instead of the Wii. The controls feel like they were awkwardly shoehorned into the Wii remote and Nunchuk. Using the classic controller works somewhat better, but performing simple actions like sorting your items or controlling the camera is still far more difficult than it should be. The controls aren't bad enough to keep you from playing the game, but enough of an annoyance that if you can play the PS2 version instead, you probably should.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.