Baroque is a roguelike dungeon crawling role-playing video game developed by Sting Entertainment. It was originally released for the Sega Saturn in 1998, then ported to the PlayStation the following year. A remake for PlayStation 2 and Wii was released in Japan by Sting Entertainment in 2007.
Fan translations exist for both the Saturn and PSX versions.
It looks like a real Insert Credit game, and I can’t wait to hear what you all think! Have you played it before? Which platform are you going to be playing on? Know anything interesting about the game?
Here’s a summary of the differences between the Saturn and PS1 versions, gathered from Japanese sources and the English-language port review posted by @connrrr – the PS1 version:
Botches the audiovisuals a bit – especially the lighting, and the sprites have the wrong aspect ratio. Some audio is missing as well.
Makes additions and changes to the script – there’s a good bit of extra content, but it also notably flips the main villain’s motivation 180° (though I don’t know whether this is the case in the fan translation).
Contains some fairly minor quality-of-life improvements – for instance, you can tell which way you’re facing on the map.
Has more floors. Since you venture into the tower over and over, this pads out the experience a bit.
Adds a post-game dungeon aptly named “The Tower of Hell”.
Adds three “Pokédexes”; one for items, one for dialogue, and one for cutscenes – the triggers for some dialogue are obscure; probably a detrimental addition if you’re a compulsive completionist.
I wouldn’t hesitate choosing the PS1 version if it lowers the friction to start playing it, but if it’s all the same (or you have a Saturn at home), I’d probably spring for the Saturn version. (Personally, I’ll be playing the PS1 version, partly since I want the extra content, but mostly because it’s playable on Vita.)
The original version of this post, for posterity…
WOHHHHH I’ll be joining this month for sure!!! I’ve wanted to play this one for years! I have so much to say about it before we even start… I’ll have to write a proper post when it’s not 3 AM.
Till then, allow me to say that I recommend the PS1 version over the Saturn version – it has some slight but not insubstantial quality of life improvements. I don’t have time to translate the list right now, but run this part of the Wikipedia page through machine translation and you should get a good enough overview. However, I also want to say that these aren’t huge changes – if you have a particular affinity for the Sega Saturn, don’t hesitate to play that version.
Played for a bit. Feel a bit confused about how it works. It flashes a lot of text on screen while I’m doing something else which is awful for my information processing. Did the tutorial and then some floors of the Nerve Tower, got killed by those rolling creeps who poison you. They seem to die after hitting them some, but there’s no feedback for the hits, so it doesn’t feel like I’m doing much.
I will be playing the Saturn version. I would play that version anyway because it’s the original and it’s been translated and I have access to it, but also because the girl at the Nerve Tower fansite makes a strong case that the PSX version looks worse and drags on for too long.
This is a fantastic excuse to revisit this game once I’m back home! I’ll be playing fake fan translated copy of Baroque on Saturn using Pseudo Saturn Ki on a CRT.
I was already a few floors in. The combat is basic but that game has a very unique atmosphere.
I’ll try and post plenty of pics when I start playing again.
Not sure I will be joining this one, but I know a lot of people swear by this game. And it certainly looks interesting. I will say though, I find the metacritic scores of the remake to be pretty funny. Many critics seem to have hated this one with a passion, lol. I think the difference between user and critic reviews kind of speaks for itself.
the Wii port was probably the first game I was interested in that was outside of the general public interest. I had played Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube, and when I got a Wii and there were very few RPGs to play, I was scrounging websites for interesting games and came across the Baroque port. I got kind of obsessed with it, and followed its development but by the time it came out I had moved on a bit, and the reviews scared me away from using my middle school dollars. I say I was obsessed with it, but I didn’t even realize it was a remake, and didn’t even have a clue what a Saturn was! I’ve corrected that, and now have the fan translation ready to go when I get a Mister. This game looks made for a CRT.
First one of these I think I’ll jump in on. I’ve started and restarted this game like maybe 3 times in the past couple years. Not sure why I end up dropping it because I love the dungeon crawling and item management in this game. Hoping to finally get through it this time.
I’ll be playing the Saturn version with the english patch on my mister.
So, I ended up jumping into the Wii version on a whim and played for a few hours. It’s probably more approachable than the original in many ways, especially since you can choose several difficulty options. I choose easy just to get a feel for it, and I think it might help me get a hang of playing the original too in some ways. It’s probably a bit too easy to be honest, haha.
The combat is very simple, but I’ve been having some fun getting used to the item management and figuring out what certain things do. The strange characters and cryptic happenings are quite intriguing too. I got to jump into the consciousness orb. What fun.
It’s pretty interesting to consider the reviews at the time. They really panned this one into oblivion. It made me think that maybe this game would have a better chance today in a post Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls world where rougelikes have become so common.
This has been on my radar ever since @MovingCastles ordered a copy. That and it’s time for a spooky game I can’t think of a better time to give it a go!
I highly recommend jumping in and bumbling around with trial and error to see what all these mysterious and evocative-sounding items do. Guides are out there but the act of groping in the dark as you gain knowledge pairs perfectly the the game’s themes and vibes.
For anyone who perhaps can’t find a way to play this, but who still wants a pretty detailed but also not spoiler-y overview of the game, this young man named Majuular on Youtube makes some pretty awesome video essays about lots of really awesome games, and the capstone to this video on Saturn RPGs is about Baroque.
Majuular strikes a good balance of being thorough and detailed about the games he talks about but unless otherwise stated he’ll still carefully tip-toe around aspects of the game that are best experienced for oneself.
In any case he certainly makes Baroque seem fascinating and watching this video made me want to play it for sure, so, if you’re the sort of person who isn’t hardnosed about experiencing things blind and like to see how things are played before you do it yourself, I recommend this one! But also yeah, it seems like quite a game to just jump into blind, too.
Spooky Edition 
Fan translations exist for both the Saturn and PSX versions.
