(foreboding music) (industrial rock music) Retro games often tend
to be treated like curios that are consigned to an entirely
separate era of history, interesting and not without their charms, but
having little active relevance in the present day. And hey, this attitude makes a
certain logical sense because the past-tense nature of these
games is right there in the name: RETRO, from the latin preposition
meaning "backward, back, behind", as in “retro”-active
or “retro”-spective. But retro *games* have always been
with us, whether we’re talking about the individual legacies they leave
behind, or about how their design impact has resonated across the gulf of time
into the latest and greatest modern titles. Retro gaming enjoyed a brief but intense surge in
mainstream popularity in the 2000s and early 2010s. In large part, this was due to the
rise of internet file-sharing and how it gave birth to a thriving scene around
rom-hacking, fan-translation, and emulation. And retro gaming has become even
more popular still thanks to the cornucopia of officially-emulated classics you
could purchase and download via the Xbox Live Arcade, Sony’s PS
Store, and the Nintendo Wii’s eShop. (Which is not to be confused with the
offer by Nintendo Online for the Switch, which has much lower-quality and
subscription-only emulation offerings.) If you wanted to play Ikaruga on your
Xbox 360, Parasite Eve on your PS3, or Metroid Zero Mission on your Wii U, all of
this and more was only a few button-presses away. But from the mid-2010s onward- -basically since the start of
the Switch / PS4 / Xbox One era– -many of these same megacorps have heavily pared
back or ruthlessly eliminated their retro offerings. And so classic games returned to
being treated like obscure antiques by the mainstream gaming
press and Discourse. Certainly, not the type of thing
that big publishers invest much funding or development hours into,
as evidenced by the incredibly janky official emulation offerings
on the PS5 and Switch. But contra this lack of OFFICIAL
buy-in, the indie retro emulation and fan-translation scenes are going strong
as ever, with a vibrant community that is tweaking, retooling, and
refurbishing the classics and the kusoge alike so that they can
be enjoyed by players today. Despite the ludicrous and
exclusionary scalping taking place with older games hardware,
cartriges, and copies these days, in many ways the retro games
scene is as strong as it’s ever been, although this is of course incredibly hard
to quantify or assign an objective value to. But you only need to look at the
incredible cult-classic Japan-only games, that in recent years have
finally been fan-translated, to see that the reports of retro
gaming’s death and irrelevance... have been greatly exaggerated. And if you just so happen to a fan of,
say, Shin Megami Tensei, survival horror, the artwork of HR Giger, or even just
cool old-school dungeon-crawlers generally, then there’s one Forgotten Gem that’s
recently been brought back into the light which just might become your next
favorite retro obsession, like it did for me. At the time of this video’s release,
we’ve finally been blessed with a first of its kind
English-language fan-translation of the cult-classic roguelike
horror RPG Baroque, developed by Sting Entertainment
and published in North America by Atlus, and first released for the Sega Saturn in 1998
and the Sony Playstation a year later in 1999. A LEGEND OF EMULATION has risen
from its restless slumber in its shallow grave, showing the world how a 25-year-old dungeon-crawler
brought an incredibly ahead-of-its-time sophistication to its mechanics, and
an absolutely avant-garde approach to video game narrative and
aesthetics that is worth experiencing, even if you’re the sort of
player who’d usually never consider booting up an ACTUAL
old-school Haunted PS1 Game. Baroque is the true-born
heir and successor to the template first laid down
in 1989 by Sweet Home. It is, in every regard, an
evolutionary outgrowth of the fusion of adventure, RPG, and teeth
grinding survival mechanics that first gave rise to the
Golden Age of Survival Horror. You also could easily argue that
it’s a much better GAME to PLAY than titles like Silent Hill or Clock
Tower, though Baroque does not come anywhere close to the notoriety of its
much more well-known contemporaries. Now, while the original Baroque for the
Saturn and PS1 never saw the light of day outside the Land of the Rising
Sun, it’s important to point out that North America and Europe DID
receive the PS2 and Wii remakes that came westward
a decade later in 2008. This re-release is somewhat similar
to the original in gameplay mechanics but quite different in many
ways when it comes to narrative, and features reworked 3D graphics
and art, a new control scheme, and even basic motion
controls on the Wii. We’ll get into this a bit later in the
video, but for the purposes of this essay, we’ll mainly focus on covering the original
32-bit Saturn and Playstation versions of Baroque from 1998
and '99, respectively, not least of all because the PS1 version
is the one that just got a fan-translation! Because the original Baroque is
something quite peerless indeed: A lost-in-time survival horror magnum
opus that is so self-consciously strange, SO surrealistic, but also so god-damned
engaging and addictive that I can practically guarantee it’s unlike just
about anything you’ve ever played. There was simply nothing like it
when it first came out, and to this day, few RPGs have executed
such a bold and sublime fusion of aesthetics, narrative, and weird-ass
brainfuck gameplay as BAROQUE. (Monsters of the Week Intro Theme) If you’ve been following me
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the rest of the video! (cardiogram beeping) Ticking through the different
genre descriptors of Baroque reads like a checklist of so many
different elements that, on paper, just SHOULDN’T work as well together
as it does when they’re all brought together. Like, you’re ready for this?
(clears throat) This is a survival-horror-rogueLITE-first-person-
dungeon-crawler with procedurally-generated levels and gear featuring an INTENSELY surrealistic
Shin-Megami-Tensei-meets-HR-Giger aesthetic. (Plus a dash of Neon Genesis
Evangelion, seasoned to taste.) That’s a whole mouthful of ludic word-salad,
and admittedly, quite a lot to take in all at once! But after you get your bearings
among the ruins of future-Earth and start delving deeper
into the game’s main dungeon, you’ll see how the various design
elements and mechanical quirks, the art style, and the carefully
drip-fed story were implemented with an ENORMOUS degree
of care and intentionality. All of which near-seamlessly
interlocks with and coalesces into an extremely satisfying core gameplay
loop across its roughly 12-hour runtime, with barely a dull moment or
disappointing break in the action. This is a classic case of the whole being greater
than the sum of its many, many, MANY parts. The entire package is so
self-evidently fascinating and compelling, ESPECIALLY for players who
have become devotees of the mega-popular MegaTen series
over the last decade and a half. Shin Megami Tensei fans will feel right at home
with more than a few elements from the setting and narrative of Baroque,
being thematically strongly reminiscent of it signature style and direction. So much so that it almost feels
like this game's scenario was first written for a spinoff MegaTen title. But although SMT's publisher
Atlus is associated with the game it’s important to point that the
company’s role was reduced to exclusively the rollout of the North American
release of the 2008 remake. So no involvement in the original whatsoever. So the many thematic
overlaps are likely just inspirational
spills across the gap. By the late 2020s, humanity had finally answered
the oldest and gravest question in existence: A Japanese scientist created an
augmented-reality program that was able to detect *proof* of the existence of God, the
Almighty Creator of the known universe. But the God of Baroque is no Bearded Old
Dude reigning from atop His Empyrean Throne. This Demiurge is more like those Biblically
Accurate Angels, a mysterious, formless, and crepuscular eldritch biomass
hidden deep within the Earth’s crust. And after piercing the shrouded
realm of the God Deep Below, madness and devastation
was wreaked upon humanity. The entire planet’s population was
gripped by a sudden onset of mass psychosis, with so-called “Baroque Murders” perpetrated
in cities and villages across the world. And then the strange and ever-shifting Nerve
Tower appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Its presence triggered the
cataclysmic "Great Heat Wave," burning and scouring
the planet’s surface. Nearly the entire human
population was wiped out in a flash, with the remaining survivors transformed
into twisted daemoniac Grotesques. Even this short summary already
feels like some kinda bonkers alternate-reality version of Gnostic
Apocrypha like the Gospel of Judas, But the narrative and lore of this one
goes Even Deeper than the precis I’ve given, and very little of this is delivered
through direct exposition to the player. 🎵 Nine Inch Nails - Even Deeper (Instrumental) 🎵 Rather, Baroque employs the classic
“ludic archaeologist” mode of narrative where the story’s layers are gradually
peeled back and revealed through the virtuous interplay between
cinematics, narrated exposition, conversations with other characters,
and especially careful observation and environmental storytelling,
item descriptions and flavor-text. Or, if you’d rather ignore it all,
this approach also allows players to engage with the story a la carte and focus
entirely on the excellent dungeon-crawling. (slashing, smacking) And this is where the story begins
for our unnamed amnesiac protagonist. Somehow still possessed of
your human form and faculties, you arrive at the base of the
techno-industrial-nightmare NERVE TOWER that looms
over Earth’s blasted landscape. Haunted by fragmented and disjointed
memories from the pre-armageddon Earth, you must delve deeper and deeper beneath
the Tower to uncover the mystery of your identity... - [Arnold (Will Sasso)] GET BACK
YOUR STOLEN IDENTITY, HRJARRL!! - And why "God" triggered the apocalypse
that destroyed all of His creations. Again: This is a complicated
setup for the narrative, underpinned by an even-more-complicated
setup for the gameplay systems. Which is why this is the kind of game
where watching someone else play or reading a lore-summary
wiki barely does it justice. You really have to pick up a
controller yourself to grasp just how well each design element
works in concert with the others. Because what binds all of it
together is Baroque’s highly inventive twist on roguelike procedurally
generated gameplay. Well, if we wanna be accurate then Baroque
absolutely qualifies more as what is now regarded as a "roguelite," long before the big
resurgence of rogue-type gameplay, where each "run" is randomized, but certain
aspects achieved or unlocked during a run can become a permanent fixture
for future runs, but more on that later. While each floor of the Nerve Tower dungeon
is randomly and procedurally generated, there are still bespoke rooms, story-encounters,
and entire sections of certain floors that retain a distinctly
recognizable, hand-crafted touch. This does a great job of guiding the
player’s experience and ensuring that the main story setpieces and the important
plot-centric NPCs all get their time to shine, even though the moment-to-moment gameplay
is largely defined by the randomized elements. Baroque also features a demanding
resource-management gameplay loop that compels instant forward momentum, which is where
the “survival horror RPG” elements kick in. In addition to an on-screen meter and
numerical value for your Health Points, there’s also a Vitality bar
representing the player’s “stamina” that is perpetually ticking down
even when you’re standing still, and the main way to replenish
it is by defeating enemies and gathering the pearl drops of
spirit-essence they leave behind. As long as you still have Vitality
Points left in the meter to deplete, you’ll slowly keep
recovering health. But once you run out of Vitality, your HP
will continue to tick down until you’re dead. It’s hard to overstate how utterly
BRILLIANT this system is in execution, and just how well it systematizes
that classic survival horror feeling that the player is in an overwhelmingly
hostile and oppressive world, through the mechanical
foundations of the game, where their limited pool of vital resources
is perpetually tick-tick-ticking away. This is basically a
very early version of the Bloodborne “Rally” mechanic
or Doom 2016’s “Glory Kills”, where the player is incentivized into
pursuing up-close-and-personal fights, because it’s the primary way to earn the
resources you need to stay afloat and progress. And it’s exactly what I mean
when I say that Baroque’s systems were clearly designed with a
degree of care and forethought. The developers recognized
right away that a player’s traditional dungeon-crawling mindset could run
counter to the game’s intended pacing and flow, because when most RPG players
are running low on health or stamina, they naturally slow down and become more
cautious and conservative in their approach. Habituated player
inaction, like that, would run totally counter to how
Baroque is designed; “Restoration Points” that cure your
HP and Vitality are few and far inbetween in the dungeon, and there’s no
use in retreating to the “starting town” when your resources are low,
because there’s no friendly innkeeper who can heal you or merchants
selling gear and curatives. Which means,
The Only Way Out... Is Through !! 🎵 Nine Inch Nails - The Only Way Out
Is Through 🎵 Thus, spurred along by the
carrot-and-stick of Baroque’s Vitality system, the player is incentivized to
act directly against their instincts that have been ingrained via years of
conditioning from playing other games. Until your RPG-brain is totally rewired, and
you achieve that classic hardcore Rorschach - [Rorschach] I'm not locked in here with you... (smack) YOU'RE LOCKED IN HERE WITH ME! - flow-state. 🎵Mick Gordon - BFG Division🎵 In terms of design lineage, Baroque’s
structure takes clear inspiration from Japan’s "Fushigi no Dungeon" or
"Mystery Dungeon" series, and similar roguelikes. Your mission for each “run”
through the mysterious Nerve Tower is to increase your level
by defeating monsters, accumulate an arsenal of randomly
generated equipment and items, and make your way to the
bottom floor of the dungeon. Or, putting it in a way that’s more
familiar to the slightly more modern player: It’s the classic Diablo
dungeon-and-loot-loop where each run feels a bit like a pull
on a slot-machine, executed with supreme confidence and
its own distinct sense of style and direction. And if you die before completing
a run, you’ll lose all of your experience, items, equipment,
and progress, and get restarted back to your last save point,
and the first floor of the dungeon. The twist here is that the
conditions to successfully complete a foray through the Nerve Tower
change each time you finish a run. And making it to the bottom of
the dungeon– -IE, "winning" the run– -is likewise one of the rare chances the
player gets to hard-save their progress. There is a "suspend" save function, but
it’s only good for a one-time save and load, basically a way to pause and resume the game without
losing your progress from shutting down the console. Otherwise, in true
Rogue fashion, death means losing everything
and reverting back to the beginning. This is a damn
challenging old-school RPG, and the dungeoneering is every
bit as unforgiving as you’d expect! (epic swoosh) (distorted tone intensifying) (digital glitch) Your first venture into the
depths of the Nerve Tower is basically a straightforward
guided tutorial, which is about the most handholding
you’re gonna get from Baroque. The player begins in the Outer
World in a broken-down city, populated by strange looking
but non-hostile Grotesques, who utter eerie and seemingly nonsensical
phrases when you try to speak with them. As you proceed to the outskirts of the
Nerve Tower that looms on the horizon, a heavenly Archangel straight outta
Renaissance frescoes materializes. They note your pathetic
amnesiac state, hand you an Angelic Plasma Rifle with a
5-shot clip, and demand that you "Head for the bottom of the
Nerve Tower. That is your mission." When you first pick up the controller,
the moment-to-moment gameplay and movement feels just like what you’d
expect from a first-person dungeon-crawler. You can proceed forward and backpedal,
strafe left and right, turn in place, and attack. Combat is fully real-time,
and consists mostly of slashing away at your foes
with your equipped weapon. You will also make use of the occasional
randomly-generated item that can damage and debuff enemies (or you),
restore your health and stamina (or deplete it), and even trigger the kind of LMAO-so-random
wild-card events that make roguelikes so memorable. and even trigger the kind of LMAO-so-random curveball
events that make the best roguelikes so memorable. Like sparking a room-clearing
explosion, teleporting you or the enemy into a completely different part of the
level, theiving demons that snatch items, sometimes even mission critical items, away
from you and rush away through the dungeon, or casting an illusion that makes every object
and monster in the game look like a lusty succubus. Basically every time you think you understand
the systems and rules of its mechanics, The game goes:
- [PhD Kermit] WHAT RULES YOU SONS OF BITCHES?! - Randomization is a large part
of what makes the roguelike experience so fun and addictive,
and Baroque is no different. You’ll earn equipment, weapons,
and items from downed enemies, or even just find gear lying
about on the dungeon floor. But as befits Baroque’s Rogue-ish lineage,
most of the items you find are unidentified, meaning you don’t know what they’ll
do when you equip or activate them. An unidentified sword might
turn out to be a powerful and game-changing upgrade
once you wield it... Or it’s actually a cursed piece of junk
that greatly lowers your chance to hit, AND you can’t un-equip it without using
a special "cleansing" curse-removal item. A random shank of flesh could bring you
back to full health, or it could poison you. (Also for some reason, flesh is
classified in the intelligence grade of the person who's flesh it was, so does
that imply some sort of cannibalism here? Just putting that out there.) And a humble vertebra-bone could
blow your enemies to smithereens, or it might teleport you to the other
side of the level, putting you smack-dab in the middle of a swarm of hostile
Grotesques and all but guaranteeing your death. And with the aforementioned Health and
Vitality system spurring the player ever forward, this all comes together into an absolute
master-class in classic game design, one that easily holds its own
against the innumerable high-profile roguelikes and proc-gen
dungeon-crawlers that we’ve been all but waterboarded with
over the last decade-plus. So as you get acquainted with these
systems in the First Run, you’ll descend 5 floors, then ATTACK AND DETHRONE
GOD, and it’s job done. You save your game, the world resets
itself, your inventory is emptied out. Suddenly you’re back on
the surface in the Outer World, reverted to a Level 1 fledgling, and
gazing at the Nerve Tower, again, as the nearby Neck Thing once more keens his
ululations into the flame-wreathed skies above. And when you find yourself here
again, the first-time player will suddenly be struck by that sinking feeling of, “What the
HELL just happened to all my PROGRESS!?!?!?!” But as you begin your Second Run,
you’ll find that the game has... changed. The NPCs you meet above- and
below-ground now have refreshed dialogue, providing a new glimpse at the narrative,
the backstory, and your current objective. And most noticeably of all, the
Nerve Tower itself has shifted in layout. (loud noise) The dungeon now extends
down to 16 floors instead of 5, tougher enemies patrol the levels
dropping new equipment and items, and even the pre-set room
designs have been altered. This time around, completing
your Second Run is no longer just a simple matter of making it down
to the bottom of the Nerve Tower and blasting away
at God with your ANGELIC PLASMA RIFLE Now, progressing through the Nerve
Tower requires the player to solve a near completely un-guided and
un-signposted environmental puzzle, the solution for which involves
talking to different NPCs in the dungeon and paying extremely careful
attention to the hints they dispense. And sometimes, the player doesn't even have to fight
their way to the bottom of the Tower to progress: Dying or, yeah, committing
suicide can actually be a much faster method of completing certain
runs, which allows you to skip large chunks of the
dungeon-crawling for that cycle. But this is never directly stated
or otherwise made obvious, and the player must be on their
toes to read into the subtle hints and nudges the game is
providing in order to figure it out. Again, talk about game design
that cuts against player expectations! You just gotta take a moment
to appreciate Baroque’s brave and forward-thinking
design choices here. Players have gone through decades of
conditioning that dying in a game and/or being reset back to the beginning
level equals “GAME OVER,” AKA that supreme and most
incontrovertible of fail-states. And yet Baroque, back before the
turn of the millennium, re-imagines both the concept and game
mechanical implementation of death not as some kind of ultimate and
unforgivable failure, but rather as the player’s only avenue for
progression, regeneration, and growth; as literally the only way to progress, baked deeply
into the mechanical foundation of its narrative. This is pure, infernal,
world-turned-upside-down "HELL-LOGIC" that SO perfectly complements
the infernal story and setting. Indeed, this is the main
loop and cadence of Baroque: Every time you finish a run, the game’s
world, mechanics, and narrative all dig a little bit deeper and unveil
themselves a bit further, revealing new levels, new monsters, new items and equipment,
and new dialogue, characters, and story. A grand, sinister, biblically-inspired saga
begins to unfold with greater and greater clarity as you become a more
accomplished dungeon-archaeologist. And this one really goes places,
hitting on frankly EXACTLY the kinds of out-of-this-world topics you’d expect from
a super-experimental ‘90s-era 32-bit JRPG. It’s got fallen angels forsaken by their
Creator and trapped in a corporeal purgatory; literal body-and-soul-consuming
virtual reality run amok; a hyperbolically catastrophic
climate-change-driven apocalypse; and it culminates in the
uncovering of the eldritch false god demiurge who truly rules over
the mundane planes of existence. And this is all revealed
via a kind of drip-fed, almost episodic approach to storytelling,
with each foray through the Nerve Tower feeling like the next airing
of a limited-run mini-series. Each new lore detail reveals
more of the world’s mysteries and presents two new ones in turn,
constantly forcing you to retroactively reconsider the narrative rules that you
THOUGHT were already set in stone. And the game goes like
[Pordan Jeterson] WHAT RULES YOU SONS OF BITCHES It is all the more impressive for how
this expert story pacing complements the game’s main mechanics
and progression systems. The player is compelled forward
by the dangling carrots of better gear and replenished stamina as they
hack-and-slash their way through the dungeon. Which reveals more of the story,
which in turn challenges you to unlock even more of the game for
you to experience, and so on! A near-perfect ludo-narrative
synergy if you will. But man, all of this non-stop
gushing, how has it taken me THIS long to address the 800-pound
gorilla in the room: This game...got VIBES man. From the moment the opening
cinematic sequence begins and the NIN-adjacent
industrial-noise soundtrack kicks in, this game feels like a consummate
and totalizing expression of the majestic, “1990s goth urban
industrial decay” aesthetic. And it’s not JUST the killer soundtrack,
although the music certainly kicks ass and makes for great listening even
outside of the context of playing the game. The sound design is incredibly
effective too, with its cacophonous sound-scapes of industrial noise,
demonic utterances carried on distant winds, and strange discordant diegetic melodies
with their own mournful and sinister lilt. The use of the “heartbeat” sound effect
deserves a special nod here for how it greatly amplifies the tension
and terror of any given moment, with the disembodied sounds of your
own heart pounding in tempo with the ebb-and-flow of combat against
the dungeon’s Grotesques. As I said at the start of this
video, Baroque is every bit as much a horror-thriller
as it is an action RPG! The monster designs too are absolutely
striking, featuring some highly detailed and positively absurd sculpted
and hand-drawn spritework. The art style here is so unsettling
and alien, Baroque’s bestiary really looks like nothing else in gaming, even
when compared to its MegaTen contemporaries, which is a series that’s world-famous
for its incredible monster designs. Baroque’s use of high-contrast
color, bold lighting and shading, and thoughtfully placed
baked-in shadows all add an insane amount of mood and
mystery to the Nerve Tower. And the sum total of these design
choices is the creation of a totally peerless neo-noir aesthetic within
the various dungeon environs, where contrast and color is
cleverly used to subtly and naturally draw the player’s attention
to important point of interests. It’s a game that feels like a
piece of surrealistic fine art that you can be and active part
of, with a mind-bogglingly esoteric game narrative that incorporates strong
themes of existentialism and absurdism into a far-flung spiritualist
view on the cyclical nature of time and existence, and
aesthetically heavily inspired by the Rider Waite Tarot Deck and
tarot iconography in general. Like.... the player’s
ultimate weapon– -that ANGELIC PLASMA RIFLE you get handed so
that you might ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD– -well, its ammunition is made of,
what else, half-formed foetal “angels” who were tortured into existence
via the eternal suffering of the same imprisoned Demiurge-God
you’ve been tasked to cleanse. Oh yeah, Baroque is the rare and
wonderful example of a game that saw the galaxy-brained madness of
Shin Megami Tensei, and then said “You think that’s wild? Hold
my unsanctimonious beer!” If you’re a certain type of horror-rpg-maniac,
especially one who enjoys retro games, and ESPECIALLY if you’re a fan of
MegaTen or Persona, then Baroque is practically crying out for you to gorge
yourself on everything it has to offer. And this recommendation
goes for both those who are fans of modern roguelikes
and for those who aren’t. The big gimmick of many of the
most popular roguelikes these days is that they can be
played nearly endlessly. Their primary appeal derived from
how the player gradually unlocks permanent upgrades that
will aid in future playthroughs, further enticing them into the “just one
more round!” mode of compulsive play. Like, I’m someone who has a high respect
and appreciation for the roguelike/roguelite genre as a game design principle, and I
find myself admiring quite a few outliers of the resurgence of this trend
over the past decade-or-so, but 9 times out of 10, I feel myself thrown
off by the moment to moment death-and-reset and the fact that I have to keep
doing everything again and again, even if I got a new weapon or item
or a couple new levels or something. It’s just more likely to throw me off the
bull than to excite me to keep grinding on. I definitely feel like I’m somewhat of
an outlier with that though, I don't know. But Baroque doesn’t get
me to tilt like that at all. In a way, it’s also “retro” in the sense of
how it hearkens back to a time when games, ESPECIALLY roguelikes, didn’t
have to be “forever games” that would get a bad rating if it didn’t provide
at least 200 hours of content but could just have a self-contained
narrative and appropriately paced play-loop that both work hand-in-glove to
build up to a satisfying conclusion, all within a reasonable timespan
that is positively mouth-watering for the busy adult whose backlog is
longer than god’s proverbial beard. (As strange and wild as this
concept might sound in 2023.) So, if all of this gushing has caught your
attention and you’d like to give Baroque a try, this is the part of the video where I
strongly, STRONGLY recommend you skip the 2008 PS2 / Wii
remake for now and instead play the fan-translation of the
original PS1 version via emulation. In my testing, the patched PS1
version plays perfectly on both the Mednafen and Duckstation
emulators, straight up using their default settings,
as well as via Retroarch. You’ll find links in the video description to the
emulators and the Baroque translation patch, so you can create your own
translated version of the Japanese ROM. Or, if you can read Japanese, you
could play the Saturn version even, which has long been considered by the Baroque
fandom to be the ideal way to play the game, since the PS1 port had to make some
controversial changes to the graphics. And hey, in 2020 Nintendo put out a
highly-regarded “Original Version” port of Saturn Baroque for the Switch,
though the text is still japanese-only. But let’s be real here: If you can read Japanese and you’re
watching this video, chances are you’ve already played Saturn Baroque and
you’re currently in the middle of emailing me several paragraphs of research about the
“NERVE” Tower versus “NEURO” Tower debate. (Love you Baroque
fandom, never change! *kiss*) The remake version on PS2 and
Wii known as “Baroque International” is ultimately FINE, like, there’s
nothing really wrong with it, and if it’s the only way you can play
this game, then by all means, have at it! But it’s still a quite
different experience, particularly because of how
the much wider field of view, the switch from first-person
to third-person perspective, AND the inclusion of a lock-on
mechanic have kind of neutered much of the original game’s atmosphere,
tension, and most importantly challenge. It is a classic case of a remake that
takes the original’s basic outline and setting, and yet homogenizes it in a
way on pretty much every front. The new graphics and art style, while
still enticing, feel a bit more generic, and the change seems to be an attempt
by Sting Entertainment to graft a more unified “anime”-style aesthetic onto the
game to bring it in line with contemporaries like Persona series, which
was just starting its steep trajectory towards
mass-popularity in the late 2000s. But STILL, talk about yet another game
that has truly been misunderstood in its time, and only now is starting to
receive its due consideration. I mean, the Metacritic
score for this game is FIFTY– -FIVE-ZERO. Nintendo Power gave the Wii version
a motherfucking THREE out of ten. I think the re-release is an inferior
experience to the original overall, but Jesus with a Plasma Rifle,
this game is SO much better than contemporary reviewers
were giving it credit for! It’s also crucial to note that about half
a year before the romhacker Plissken completed their english-language
version of the Baroque translation, the hacker Mr.Nobody released a
Spanish translation of Baroque in late 2021, which provided the bulk
of the technical groundwork upon which Plissken’s
translation was built. So, Spanish-speaking fans
actually got to play this one before just about anyone
else outside of Japan! ¡Bien hecho!,
Señor Nadie It also wouldn’t be a proper Baroque
video essay without a special shout-out and salute to the author and administrator
to the “Nerve Tower” fan-website, who goes by the
nom-de-plume “lostsinmoniz”. This website is a true labor of love, a
wonderful throwback to web 1.0 web design, with an astounding collection
of official art, interviews, analysis, lore, translation
guides, and every other kind of Baroque errata a hyper-fixated
fan could possibly wish for. And not only that, but the Nerve Tower
website was the main source for the research for Plissken’s patch, which helped
give its “unofficial” translation the kind of insight and depth that puts even many
official works of english localization to shame. This website is absolutely required reading
for anyone who plans on playing this game, or even if you just want to demystify
the setting and story a little bit. In the game’s mythology, “Baroque”
refers to a type of mystical pearl. As in, a lustrous crystallization that
begins its existence as nothing more than a mote of dirt, a speck of
waste, a tiny imperfection. When I think about it like that, it
almost feels too good a coincidence, as the game Baroque is a gem
that’s none too dissimilar from the pearl-drops of Vitality the game’s
fallen enemies leave behind. Because just as the constant cycle of
death and renewal is inherent to existence, it likewise takes center stage in Baroque,
mechanically, narratively, and thematically. See, I completely understand why this
game could never end up becoming a 10/10 million-selling era-defining cornerstone of
video game history when it was released; it’s way too unique,
weird, experimental and daring not to repel all but the
most hardcore grognards by design. Baroque will almost certainly
never achieve the levels of mega-fame that similar Atlus-published
dungeon-crawlers have earned. And that’s completely fine; it’s why I personally respect and adore it so
damn much and why it managed to have such a barnacle effect on anyone
for whom it does, in fact, click. It’s one of those pieces of art you
just won’t be able to stop thinking about, like a brain parasite that
keeps festering and growing to unexpected proportions in
your mind once it’s nested in. But as the shape-shifting and ephemeral
nature of Baroque’s setting reminds the player: The mundane and corporeal
world of this existence will never provide us with a
singular, fixed, “holy” higher truth. Reality is fluid and
constantly changing, with a massive degree of subjectivity
inherent to any attempt at interpretation. The “flaws” of an
unforgiving difficulty level, or the “impurities” of the strange
and impenetrable horror-art design, or the “imperfections” of a confusing
narrative that self-consciously frustrates the desire to achieve a singular
definitive interpretation, all of these things must first exist, or the pearl, the
Baroque, will never take shape around them. And much like the imperfections
that define human existence, it’s the supposed “flaws” of Baroque
that have made it stand the test of time as one of my all-time-favorite
dungeon-crawlers, and one of the finest cult-classic
RPGs to grace the 32-bit era. (somber music playing) Now, as someone who wishes
that Baroque had had much more than just its rippled, avant-garde
impact on video game history through a tiny subset of diehard cult fans I’m always happy to see video games that
wear the inspiration worn on their sleeve, especially when indie developers pick up
the torch and openly take inspiration from it. Best opportunity for me to showcase
another indie game during my credit sequence, which today is They Speak From The Abyss, a grotesque and surreal, hand-drawn dungeon crawler that cites Baroque, Shin Megami Tensei
and Nemuru Mayu as its main inspiration. The game is currently in development and you can play
an extended demo on the developer’s itch.io page, and as always, if this looks intriguing to you, you
should hop over to the Steam page and wishlist it; it helps indie devs a great deal. The links are in the description! If this is your first video
of mine, hey, I’m Ragnar and on this channel I largely
cover old games, horror games, indie games and combinations thereof. So if you want to help me out
with my work on the channel and everyone who participates
in making these videos – the main source of income the channel is,
and has been for a long time, crowdfunding, and if you want to, you can
pitch in over on my Patreon: Even a small monthly
donation goes a long way, so thanks a lot for considering! Big thanks to my active patrons, and as with each video, a special
thank you this time goes out to: patreon.com/RagnarRoxShow Until next time... ta ta!
