I’m starting now-ish! Join up!!!
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I’m too deep in some other October “book club” esque projects to do so I’m afraid 
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My Saturn finally started behaving, and I managed to beat the game!
After lots of runs and talking to NPCs trying to figure out what to do, I made some progress on my own but there were a couple things I’m not sure I would have ever done (Specifically getting the crystal from the Neck Thing) without getting external help.
Had fun with this game, the initial experience of going in completely blind was a good one and worthwhile. Working out the controls, what all the different items do and how to deal with the various grotesques was all super satisfying. Eventually though I got very comfortable with the dungeon-crawling aspect and was just going round in circles.
When visiting older titles I like to consider how I might have approached it as a child. I think if I had this I may have just assumed that a “normal” run was all there was to the game, and had a lot of fun playing through it over and over. I can imagine writing off reports of deeper levels and more story content as just playground rumours.
I tend to avoid roguelike games, as I don’t really like the random element - where a run can become trivially easy or completely ruined based on chance. Of course a good roguelike probably will avoid these extremes, and I think that’s true here too. I had some runs where I felt stronger than others, but I rarely felt secure deep into runs, yet not helpless either. The layers of obfuscation did get a bit frustrating at times. Like if you get a bunch of unknown items and no way to ID them, or try out a pattern on the floor only to have it transform your best sword into a piece of rotten food. Still, this sort of stuff happened much more in my early runs as I was figuring out the mechanics and I got a lot more savvy as time went on.
In terms of general gameplay, it was good. The combat is a bit clunky but functional, the various different statuses and item types were lots of fun and intelligently stacking different abilities was very rewarding. The 3D pad was a revelation, and actually really loved the way it controlled once I got used to it.
Aesthetically, I loved Baroque. The different NPC and grotesque sprites are suitably creepy, but also often tragic in their own way. There are some really cool, eerie scenes presented at various points in the dungeons and the game generally just drips with atmosphere. Excellent use of sound, including the rhythmic heartbeat that speeds up as you enter combat, various creepy ambient sounds and a surprisingly killer score in places.
I particularly liked the music in the practice dungeon once it gets going around the halfway mark:
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I really enjoyed this game on the Saturn while playing with the mister Saturn core earlier this year. Definitely have not beaten it or gotten close to finishing it-
I know I’m at the end of the month here, but it’s a great excuse to test my freshly modded Wii and the Wii version of the game! Will give it a shot.
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Beautiful Sony!
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The voice acting in this Wii version is something else. My eyes are also twitching, maybe less caffeine?
I feel like a lot of the core mechanics are unchanged, the atmosphere and pacing is there in the simulation area, except now there is pounding nu metal trance music straight out of an Underworld movie lmao.
Can’t really match the Saturn dithering into darkness but this port is trying its hardest, and is very weird in a fun way so far.
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Oh yeah I booted this game up a few days ago since arriving back in Australia.
Complete the first 7 floors and the world reset. Went back in again after doing the coffin dungeon then got completely destroyed. I used a random teleport item and got completely surrounded by enemies. Unable to move.
I kind of find it annoying but also really cool lol. The aim is to eventually finish it - not too sure if I will have to done at the end of October but we shall see.
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It’s a strange choice, but at the same time it kind of makes sense, haha. I should continue playing it just to see what they changed with the cutscenes.
I believe in you! You can do it!
Where there any items and abilities you particularly got attached to? I really liked Comet and Trident. Having more attack speed with Comet often made my lack of attack power matter a lot less, and then having Trident adding three hits at one go randomly was often a life saver. What I ended up doing the last few runs was throwing my Comet Sword that I had already upgraded into the Sense Sphere by the end of a run so I could keep it the next time. Entering the tower with a buffed up super sword was clutch.
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The english voice lines in the Wii/PS2 versions are great, haha. My current day expectations are some Dark Souls-ish delivery. Softly trailing lines delivered to no character in particular. Instead it is pretty direct anime dub energy. Sometimes it works though, like Coffin Man and Urim snarfing down food.
Hoping to get another run in on this before the month is out, myself!
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Absolutely! I also liked Comet - in my last run I got a sword with high attack and a low attack speed, then very soon afterwards I got Comet which made the sword really effective.
Some of the passive buffs were excellent too - in one run I got a stomachache worm, which I put into my coat and it made me immune to stomachache and completely negated any issues with rotten food. That made the rotten bones really OP, they already take out all enemies in one hit but now they drop a useful item every time! There are some torturers that rot all your food too as a negative, so they become much more useful.
That and the ID brand were probably my faves. The ID brand makes you automatically identify everything you pick up, makes a huge difference especially with bones. They can be really powerful but it feels like so many of them are unknown and you have to waste a bunch to figure out what they do.
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Dang, yeah. I didn’t even think of that possibility, but you’re so right. That’s a game changer especially in combination with that rotten torturer. I’ll keep that in mind when I hopefully play the game over again. Lots of fun combinations to be had there.
The ID brand was really good, I used it a lot. It might be a risk not having a brand that give you some other benefit, but it’s probably my favorite to go with. It pretty much nullifies one of the more grueling aspects of the game in a way that almost feels like cheating, haha.
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I’ve been misled!!! Coffin Guy instructed me to attack enemies without trying to dodge their attacks or anything, but as it turns out, it’s mighty helpful to weave and dodge fools at times!
Headin’ off to Café Fåtöljen here in Stockholm to lounge around playing Baroque over a tiny ornate glass of Turkish tea till closing. Wish me luck.
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Annnd that’s closing time. Fåtöljen (lit. “The Armchair”) is, to my knowledge, the only café in the entirety of Stockholm that stays open till 11 PM. It doesn’t have the coziest interior of all, but it’s certainly cozy enough, and it’s a calm place to be when you want to be out of the house till the late night. It’s always fairly sparsely patronized in those last two hours, however, which makes me wonder: Does nobody else live a lifestyle like mine?
I made some progress – still feel like I’m in the early stages of learning how to navigate the Nerve Tower – but what struck me most this session was a line spoken by the alarming burlap-clad chap who only speaks in quotes. In a quick, creative translation by moi that could certainly be polished:
Sakutarō Hagiwara said, in a poem:
“Oaagh; good evening”
“Oaagh; good evening”
“Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!”
“Oaaagh; the man of this house has fallen ill”
The game quoted the early-1900s poet credited with popularizing free verse in the country of Japan. It made me think: Games are not a medium that directly quotes other art very often, are they? It was refreshing – and turned me onto a piece of classic Japanese literature I wasn’t yet familiar with.
The full poem, in case you’re curious, goes as following (likewise an off-the-cuff translation):
Two pitch-black cats
on a roof one fretful night
Past the tip of an outstretched tail
clouds mask the sliver of a crescent moon
“Oaagh; good evening”
“Oaagh; good evening”
“Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!”
“Oaaagh; the man of this house has fallen ill”
It appears that the latter halves of the final lines are translations of the cats’ cries – but the penultimate line is left untranslated. Though that line doesn’t need translation, does it?
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Started having some crackling audio in the tutorial dungeon this evening. Not sure if it’s a known glitch or there’s something up with my Saturn? Did anyone else encounter something similar?
(The AV connection was loose. u_u)
(nvm I think I need to recap my console wahhh)
Still finding lots of fun oddities, and I wanted to share a technical (although unintentional) one.
Playing on PS2 fat. I found you can close the inventory menu while opening the config menu (triangle then select) which resumes the game running while in-menu.
If you have this timed with the mini map fade in, it will stencil through the menu too. A new view of roguelike map immersion!
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Oh no! Do you have audio issues in other games?
Yeah, it happened in Yumimi Mix Remix too.
And analog trigger polling isn’t available on SiSTer and will require system-level implementation so it’s out of srg320’s hands. I’m SO bummed about this.
I’m very late but have been interested in this game for a while, I’m seeing a lot of mentions of MiSTERs and the like, but I don’t have access to one. Is my knowledge out of date or is Saturn emulation still a bit rocky? I’d love to hop in to play at least a little bit before the end of the month, but would prefer to play the one with a less padded out playtime.
Saturn emulation has gotten a lot better. I use Mednafen and it runs like a charm.
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I think Saturn emulation is really viable now? The only reason I’m not using an emulator is I wouldn’t be able to connect it to my CRT.
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