Focus on: Baroque

Baroque is a full on hardcore dungeon-crawling RPG coming out on the Wii April 8th. Originally it was scheduled for March 18th, but the publisher — Atlus USA — has pushed it back three weeks. The story seems rich and dark. Placed in a ruined world, a character full of guilt. Some cataclysm has destroyed the world and even twisted the souls and bodies of humanity.

The dungeon crawler genre is an old and respected one, but one that hasn’t had much success on Nintendo’s newer consoles. The NES and SNES were spawning grounds for RPGs, even giving birth to the long lasting Final Fantasy series. In recent years, as Nintendo has targeted a younger crowd, most RPGs, and especially the more hardcore variety like crawlers, have stayed away. It’ll be interesting to see whether Baroque has any success. I’m hoping that it is a hit. I’m hoping that it’ll open the gates a little more for non-traditional genres.

Baroque is being developed for the PS2 and the Wii. No news on whether they will be using the Wiimote for anything it is good at. Probably not. Despite that, I still have high hopes for the game.

Baroque will be using a randomly generated map, ever so popularized by Diablo, despite the fact that many crawlers before Diablo used random maps. Baroque also claims a very strategy oriented inventory system, which includes the ability to fuse items. One interesting tid-bit is that death and reincarnation are actually incorporated into the story, and look like they are suppose to happen. Often in crawlers, you somehow re-spawn after death with no real explanation. It would be interesting if Baroque not only explained reincarnation, but also made it integral to the story.

Speaking of the story, at the moment, it seems exceptionally rich in feel and darkness. One thing that a lot of dungeon crawlers lack is solid story, something that Diablo addressed and was rewarded for. I think the game will appeal to RPG fans. The question, though, is are there any RPG fans on the Wii that don’t already have a Playstation. The publisher doesn’t have much to lose if the Wii version doesn’t sell well, since they are releasing it on the PS2 as well, but Wii fans have a lot to lose if we scare producers off with poor sales.

All-in-all this looks like a real crawler in the footsteps of Rouge and ADOM, only graphical. With rotting food, creative ways to use items and death looming, it will do the Rouge-like genre proud. Not surprising in and of itself, but very surprising that it is coming to the Wii. Baroque looks quite gruesome and tough so for. This doesn’t fall into the Wii’s normal consumer base of kids and casuals. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this doesn’t backfire and convince developers to stay away instead of drawing them in. Increasing the Wii’s normally perceived scope would only benefit us gamers in the end. It will be a hard process, and I’m glad that Baroque is giving us a chance to start on that road.