A
post-apocalyptic horror
Roguelike first made for the Sega Saturn, then ported to the Playstation. It was later remade for the Playstation 2 and the Wii. It was made (and remade, and remade) by
Sting, the developers of the
Dept Heaven series, and localized by
Atlus.
A world-altering cataclysm called the Blaze caused
The End of the World as We Know It. The world, now existing in a twisted state, is populated by Meta-Beings, creatures that were once human but have lost their minds after clinging to their Baroques. A young man who has been left
mute and
amnesiac after some
unspecified incident is given a
large shoulder-mounted cannon by a mysterious Archangel and is told that by purifying the Meta-Beings within the tower and reaching the bottom floor, he will find redemption for sins committed that he cannot remember.
It's rather bizarre, to say the least.
Similarly to
Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter, you are expected to die on your first few attempts to reach the bottom of the Neuro Tower. However,
by starting over (
at Lv.1 with none of your equipped items) you can unlock new scenes and reveal deeper mysteries; to get the entire story, you must die at key points of the game. Furthermore, by using Consciousness Orbs to store items, you can "save" items to be used in subsequent playthroughs.
Baroque contains examples of:
- A God Am I: The Archangel's goal.
- Abnormal Ammo: The Angelic Rifle fires grotesque angelic babies made out of pain!
- Adaptation Expansion: The manga.
- After the End
- All There in the Manual: Unless you're using a guide, your chances of unearthing the entire plot in-game are pretty slim. In fact, much like the Dept Heaven series, Baroque has a whole series sourcebook ("Baroque World Guidance") that discusses the plot and worldbuilding in detail. Since it first went into print in 1998, though, good luck finding a copy.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted with the Angelic Rifle. It has only 5 shots.
- Big Freaking Gun: The Angelic Rifle is huge! Nearly as big as a human and just as wide.
- BFS: Some of the weapons you pick up could count.
- Badass Longcoat: Both the Protagonist AND the Archangel.
- Bittersweet Ending: Even after you save the Absolute God from the Archangel's machinations, the world is still the same blasted wasteland it's been since The Blaze. However, by forming a consensus reality with the remaining Meta Beings, you essentially make lemonade out of lemons and give humanity a chance.
- Bonus Dungeon
- Church Militant: The Archangel's followers.
- Covers Always Lie: Many people assumed that the protagonist was shown on the cover, but its actually the Archangel.
- Crapsack World
- Critical Annoyance: The lower your health and vitality gets, the louder and faster the heartbeat sound in the background gets.
- Dead Little Brother: The protagonist feels guilty over his brother's death. It's what allows the Archangel to manipulate him into doing his dirty work.
- The Archangel has a dead older sibling. His sister slowly became distorted and was murdered by their father. The Archangel blames the Absolute God for her death. The Absolute God (and Eliza) takes the form of his dead sister, which causes him to hate the goddess even more.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, Continuing Is Painful: You're even encouraged to die. Doesn't stop the game from subjecting you to some rather hefty, Roguelike-esque penalties whenever you die. You lose everything except whatever items you had in storage and the Angelic Rifle.
- Death Is Cheap
- Death Is Not Permanent
- Everything Trying to Kill You
- Evil Tower of Ominousness
- Fan Nickname: The protagonist is usually referred to as Dextera XII. Also, Koriel XIII
- Feel No Pain: Everyone in the manga, except the protagonist. In the game, only a select few characters.
- Freeze Frame Bonus as well as Bilingual Bonus: The Opening video has lots of text that moves too fast to read, and some of it is in latin(maybe).
- Ghost Memory
- Grotesque Gallery: The Meta-Beings and most of the main characters.
- Guide Dang It
- Hello, Insert Name Here
- Heroic Mime: Literally. The protagonist's voice was taken from him and given to the Absolute God.
- Item Crafting
- It May Help You on Your Quest: "Use [The Angelic Rifle]. There is meaning in you using it."
- It's All Upstairs From Here: Subverted; While you ARE in a tower, you're going down.
- Madness Mantra: Ironically the Absolute God chants "Don't go crazy, Don't go crazy, Don't go crazy, Don't go crazy..." For added effect, the subtitle for each instance was placed at a random point on the screen. Turns out she was actually telling the protagonist not to go crazy.
- Mind Screw: In spades.
- Nintendo Hard: Its a roguelike and its made by Atlus, so this is pretty much a given.
- Nice Hat: The collector's massive hat used to store items. He later makes it even bigger to store more items.
- One-Hit Kill: The Angelic Rifle.
- 100% Completion: And HOW! It'll take you years to fill out the database if not decades.
- Only Sane Man: The Archangel views himself as this.
- Organ Drops : Your only way to survive is to eat the monster's meat and hearts, which is already squicky in itself...and then you learn that they are actually humans deformed by their delusions...
- Photographic Memory: The Bagged One. She desperately wished to forget a tragedy in her past, but could not because of her Photographic Memory. Thus, her Baroque twisted her so that she has no memories of her own; only the memories of other people.
- Physical God: The Absolute God.
- Someone Has to Die: The twins sacrifice themselves repeatedly, so that the other can live.
- Sophisticated as Hell: The Coffin Man.
- Stationary Wings: The various fake wings.
- Surreal Horror
- Tarot Motifs: The Meta-Beings
are based on each arcana with The Chariot change to The Tank and The Strength changed to The Power. - The Faceless: Several characters such as The Collector, the Baroque mongerer, and the Bagged one.
- The Power of Lust: There's a brand that increases your strength when inflicted with the "lust" status. Kinda creepy if you think about.
- The Masochism Tango: A particularly squicky example is if you punch Alice she'll say she doesn't mind if its you doing it!
- Too Awesome to Use: The Angelic Rifle kills anything in one shot. There are five bullets.
- And you later give up using it all after finding its bullets are littles.
- Verbal Tic: The Coffin Man goddammit!
- Winged Humanoid: Averted with the Archangel and played straight with The Littles.
- Yet Another Stupid Death: To be expected, it is a Roguelike.
- Your Head Asplode: There is a brand that causes you to randomly explode while taking damage
Go play it. There is meaning to you playing it.
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