On the 14 May 2032 the Blaze happened and devastated the world to the point where even reality became distorted, in this new world new beings came forth and new ways of thinking. With false angels walking the earth an unnamed soul, with a sin for which he needs to seek redemption but cannot remember, is instructed by Archangel, the leader of the Malkuth Order, to travel to the base of the Neuro Tower as he is the only one who can purify the Meta-beings...

Baroque is an oddity for a Nintendo machine, as until the advent of the DS very few role playing games (RPG) appeared on their systems.

You play the mute, nameless protagonist who takes on the journey to the Neuro Tower to fight room by room until you are victorious. Should you die then you get a little cut scene which explains a little more of the background to the story. This raises a number of problems with the game. I happen to be a big fan of RPGs which, at their best, produce an immersive world with a compelling storyline. Having your main character mute with memory loss does little to forward the plot, leaving the player fighting room by room with little incentive to continue unless you are a big Dungeons and Dragons fan, in which case you may well like the game.

The tower, itself, must have seemed like a great idea. When you die and re-enter all the rooms have changed around. What starts off as a novel twist soon turns into a frustrating experience, as there is no way of mapping your progress, worse still, the designs of the rooms are fairly basic and repetitive.

Although your character is on a quest for the truth, as a mute he cannot interact with any of the other characters, so any pretence of character development is quickly thrown out of the window - nor do the other creatures that you need have much to say that is actually worth listening to, as their responses are usually a couple of lines which they are happy to repeat endlessly.

The control system isn’t very satisfactory and I guess that this is because the game was designed for the PS2. The system is sluggish making fighting an inaccurate frustrating experience. You can, of course, use the Wii game pad if you have one. It makes things a little better, but then removes the point of releasing the game on the Wii in the first place.

The developers have tried some innovation with a RPG. For a start you don’t just have a health meter but you also have one to control your vitality. Let this run down and soon you health will start to disappear. Nice idea, until you discover that this reduces even if you are walking around not even fighting. As per usual there is a whole mess of things to pick up to make your character stronger, but oddly enough no health spells, which I guess means that the developers mean for you to get killed periodically so that a little more of the story can be told.

Overall it’s not a bad game, but then again it’s not a great game either.

5

Charles Packer