Baroque - Sting - PS2

[Yegolev]

I have to be brief.  Baroque is fun.

So, what is it like?  It's billed as a hardcore dungeon crawl, which is true.  There is also a wacky anime story, for those of you who like that.  The basic gameplay involves your character entering a tower and descending (yeah, I know, just follow me here) through floors via one-way portals.  The floors get bigger as you go down with tougher enemies, known as Meta-Beings, and you find more exotic items.  You have two stats, Health and Vitality.  Vitality decays over time while Health regenerates as long as you have Vitality, which you regain from items and killing enemies.  You have a basic combo attack and a special attack that interrupts enemy action.  Explore the floor, collect items, find the exit, descend.

I will have to spoil it a bit here, and since this is one of those games that is so unusual you might not want any spoilage, you can stop now if you think you might like it.

You are told by someone named Archangel that it is up to you and you alone to reach the bottom floor of the tower, 99,999 cubits below ground level, and use the Angelic Rifle to purify the Absolute God, who has gone mad and twisted the world.  Everyone alive after the Blaze, except for the protagonist and Archangel, have a disfigurement caused by their Baroque... hence the name.  You will get to about the sixth floor down before you will run across Archangel again, who seems to have had a nasty accident.  He will send you to the bottom floor where you can shoot the Absolute God or go up to her instead.  In either case, you will die.

When you die in Baroque, either by reaching the bottom of the dungeon or by being slaughtered by Meta-Beings, you reappear in the Outer World at level 1 with no items.  You can talk to the people in town or head back into the tower to try it again.  This is where the story will start to take over, and it's no longer just item collecting but fighting to open up new scenes to figure out the story.  You'll want to explore each floor fully in order to find any characters that might reveal some information, or more importantly to find Consciousness Orbs which can be used to send items to the Outer World.  Like that awesome sword you found?  Better toss that bitch into a Consciousness Orb before you go to the final floor, because you'll die when you do.  You can only toss one item into any one Orb, which you are not told but have to figure out.

I won't spoil any more.  This game is all about finding things.  Not just items, but the story, cut scenes, sound test samples, and even the world mechanics, like how you can only toss one item into any Orb.  I had died about five times when I realized a couple of environment items were actually Consciousness Orbs, and I was pretty happy about that.

-

Buy