You ever play something so ahead of its time that you could trick someone into believing that it just came out yesterday?
Seriously, what the fuck? 1998? I know Dungeon Hack existed for half a decade before this, and Wizardry a decade before that, but this feels advanced. Like, this might just be me speaking from ignorance, having not played the fifteen years of first-person dungeon crawlers building up to this, but there's something about the entire design philosophy of this that seems modern. Roguelikes weren't new at the time — you know, what with Rogue existing — nor were real-time blobbers, but combining them into one entity that encourages multiple playthroughs to peel back an obfuscated story is something that I last saw in The Binding of Isaac and in precisely zero games before that.
This game is impossibly cool. Let this be the most Hot Topic thing I ever say, but there's something about these hellish industrial land-and-soundscapes that make me feel a sense of belonging. Having a world that's in such an obvious, complete state of disrepair that you can't do much besides band together is a welcome reprieve from our world where everything is awful but the collective populace pretends as though it's fine. Comfort in discomfort; the end-times as impetus to make what's left over better. Of course, that isn't going to stop opportunists like Coffin Man from picking your corpse for loot, but it's not like he's gonna kill you for it, either.
It's a difficult title to discuss, and that's mostly due to how reliant it is on being experienced. This is probably a bit of a nothing statement, given that everything is designed to be experienced by someone, but the actual act of attempting to engage with the game feels more like "the gameplay" than its actual mechanics. Attempting to define this by putting it in neat boxes of clearing rooms and slashing up monsters and leveling up does a disservice to the whole. You cannot break this down into its parts without losing the magic that binds them all together.
I mentioned in my Last Call BBS review that I have a hard time with puzzle-solving because I can't really figure out how to learn how to solve them. With that said, though, brushing through Baroque's cryptic design came naturally to me. It's a game not just of learning, but of risk-management. You learn that Bones are items that can be thrown or consumed to deal enemies and apply buffs, respectively, but what do you do when you find an unidentified Bone on the floor? Do you gnaw on it and risk hurting yourself, or do you toss it at the enemy and risk giving them total invulnerability? When you find a new weapon, do you equip it right away to identify it, or do you avoid doing so because it might have an "adhesive" that makes it impossible to take off? These are basic tenets of Rogue games, but are they really different to puzzles in any meaningful way? You're meant to use your reasoning to figure out what the best course of action should be, and then following that path. Is that distinct from puzzle-solving?
I suppose what makes Baroque work for me is that there's never a binary right or wrong answer. There are good answers, and bad answers, but never right or wrong. Gnawing on a damaging bone will hurt you, but only for 10/20 HP (you start with 99). Stepping on a status pad might afflict you with Lust or Darkness, but only for a minute or two. The game can be harsh, but never unfair. You can never make a single mistake that'll cost you the run; you have to make several mistakes in sequence before you're in danger. I like not being judged completely on a scale of "you did it/you didn't do it". You can succeed here in a lot of different ways, but it's just that some ways are more efficient than others.
Immaculate vibes. It's a wonder that this got a translation nearly 25 years after it released.
Seriously, what the fuck? 1998? I know Dungeon Hack existed for half a decade before this, and Wizardry a decade before that, but this feels advanced. Like, this might just be me speaking from ignorance, having not played the fifteen years of first-person dungeon crawlers building up to this, but there's something about the entire design philosophy of this that seems modern. Roguelikes weren't new at the time — you know, what with Rogue existing — nor were real-time blobbers, but combining them into one entity that encourages multiple playthroughs to peel back an obfuscated story is something that I last saw in The Binding of Isaac and in precisely zero games before that.
This game is impossibly cool. Let this be the most Hot Topic thing I ever say, but there's something about these hellish industrial land-and-soundscapes that make me feel a sense of belonging. Having a world that's in such an obvious, complete state of disrepair that you can't do much besides band together is a welcome reprieve from our world where everything is awful but the collective populace pretends as though it's fine. Comfort in discomfort; the end-times as impetus to make what's left over better. Of course, that isn't going to stop opportunists like Coffin Man from picking your corpse for loot, but it's not like he's gonna kill you for it, either.
It's a difficult title to discuss, and that's mostly due to how reliant it is on being experienced. This is probably a bit of a nothing statement, given that everything is designed to be experienced by someone, but the actual act of attempting to engage with the game feels more like "the gameplay" than its actual mechanics. Attempting to define this by putting it in neat boxes of clearing rooms and slashing up monsters and leveling up does a disservice to the whole. You cannot break this down into its parts without losing the magic that binds them all together.
I mentioned in my Last Call BBS review that I have a hard time with puzzle-solving because I can't really figure out how to learn how to solve them. With that said, though, brushing through Baroque's cryptic design came naturally to me. It's a game not just of learning, but of risk-management. You learn that Bones are items that can be thrown or consumed to deal enemies and apply buffs, respectively, but what do you do when you find an unidentified Bone on the floor? Do you gnaw on it and risk hurting yourself, or do you toss it at the enemy and risk giving them total invulnerability? When you find a new weapon, do you equip it right away to identify it, or do you avoid doing so because it might have an "adhesive" that makes it impossible to take off? These are basic tenets of Rogue games, but are they really different to puzzles in any meaningful way? You're meant to use your reasoning to figure out what the best course of action should be, and then following that path. Is that distinct from puzzle-solving?
I suppose what makes Baroque work for me is that there's never a binary right or wrong answer. There are good answers, and bad answers, but never right or wrong. Gnawing on a damaging bone will hurt you, but only for 10/20 HP (you start with 99). Stepping on a status pad might afflict you with Lust or Darkness, but only for a minute or two. The game can be harsh, but never unfair. You can never make a single mistake that'll cost you the run; you have to make several mistakes in sequence before you're in danger. I like not being judged completely on a scale of "you did it/you didn't do it". You can succeed here in a lot of different ways, but it's just that some ways are more efficient than others.
Immaculate vibes. It's a wonder that this got a translation nearly 25 years after it released.