30 years of the Sega Saturn: Baroque

On May 11, 2025, the Sega Saturn will turn 30 years old in North America. Throughout the month of May, I’ll be covering the console and its history, its games, and what made it the most successful Sega console in Japan but a disappointment outside of it. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

It’s entirely possible that you’ve played Baroque, or at least heard of it, owing to a North American release on the Playstation 2 and Wii in 2008. While that game is a good one despite reviews labeling it as fairly mediocre, it is not Baroque. At least, not the truest form of the game that works best, for a number of reasons. The PS2/Wii edition is actually a third-person remake of the game that’s meant to feel a bit more like an action RPG because of the switch in viewpoints, and it comes off as a little clunkier, and a little less horror-themed in its vibes and appearances — something is missing from it, is the thing, and it’s probably why it’s seen as mediocre. It’s still misunderstood and better than those reviews suggest, but the changes made to it dropped it from “one of the best RPGs of its generation” to “a good but misunderstood game.”

Granted, the original Baroque was still plenty misunderstood and underappreciated, but that was then, 27 years ago, in a much different climate for games and the genre that it represented: a horror-themed roguelike, one that reveals more of itself through failure. In this post-Demon’s Souls present, in this era where roguelikes don’t have to be seen as incredibly niche any longer, things could be different for Baroque. If only more people had access to it in an official capacity, anyway. It’d be labeled as if it’s for a certain kind of sicko, sure, but critics might at least understand why those people would be into it, and those people would have a chance to be into it.

Alas, Baroque is not widely available. It received a re-release on the Switch in Japan that’s meant to combine the original game with some of the additions made to it in later ports, but it remains a Japanese exclusive. While you could absolutely play it in Japanese without being able to read it, you’d still lose something in the process, since the slow unveiling of the story and the conversations you have with those you discover in your journey, and the way in which all of this is revealed to you, only occurs through text, and through death. Multiple deaths. The game isn’t the game without all of that, either.

Let’s back up a bit. Baroque was developed by Sting, and released in 1998 for the Saturn. It was published by Entertainment Software Publishing, or, ESP, which was a company formed for the express purpose of ensuring that smaller Japanese developers had someone they could turn to for publishing as the cost of game production on home consoles rose. ESP would publish multiple Treasure titles like Saturn classics Radiant Silvergun and Silhouette Mirage, as well as Bangai-O on the Nintendo 64. They were responsible for getting multiple Games Arts titles out in Japan, like Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete on the Playstation, and both Grandia and Gungriffon II on the Saturn, and handled publishing duties for Quintet’s hybrid oddball, the racing game/dating sim, Code R. They’d eventually become a subsidiary of Game Arts before D3 Publisher got their hands on them in the aughts, then merged with D3, but for a time in the mid-90s and early aughts, ESP had a serious run of underrated gems from small, but beloved Japanese studios, especially on the Saturn.

As for Sting, they’re a supremely underrated developer that’s existed since 1989, responsible for gems like Treasure Hunter G on the Super Famicom, Riviera and Yggdra Union, and the rest of the Dept. Heaven series, the Dokapon titles, the tactical role-playing visual novel Utawarerumono games, and, obviously, Baroque. They’re also the developers for Idea Factory and Compile Heart’s upcoming dungeon-crawler, Madō Monogatari: Fia to Fushigi na Gakkou. Upcoming in North America, anyway, as it already released in Japan under that title, and will be localized as “Madou Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy” internationally in 2025.

If Madou Monogatari sounds familiar, well, it should. The Puyo Puyo puzzle game series sprung out of Madou Monogatari, which was a series of dungeon crawlers first released in 1989 for the Japanese home computer, the MSX2, through Compile’s Disc Station magazine. It would end up becoming one of Compile’s pillars — not quite as popular or successful as the puzzle series that came out of it or anything, but still something Compile would return to again and again and be known for, in the same way they were known as a fantastic shoot ‘em up studio. Sting was formed in 1989 out of ex-Compile employees, headed up by sound engineer Takeshi Santō, and, like with the Company they came from, focused on things like dungeon crawlers and action-adventure/action RPGs and STG. Sting’s first game was the PC Engine STG, Psycho Chaser, and it also wouldn’t be the last shooting game they worked on, even if they ended up in kind of the opposite space of Compile, in that they leaned more toward the RPG end of things.

Compile Heart is made up of some former Compile devs, formed in the wake of that company’s bankruptcy and closure; partnering with Sting is a reunion of sorts, and also makes Sting’s presence on Madou Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy that much more of a logical choice that allows the pair to continue on the legacy of a studio that no longer exists, at least not in name.

Before all of that, though, there was Baroque. Kazunari Yonemitsu, another ex-Compile developer who would join Sting after working as the manager of the team behind the original MSX edition of Puyo Puyo, was the central figure behind Baroque. He was responsible for the concept, the story, served as one of the two game designers, and acted as the game’s director — so he had a hand or two in the proceedings, yeah. Yonemitsu originally planned for this to be a PC-9800 game, according to a guide for Baroque (Baroque World Guidance) released in Japan, but as that system couldn’t handle 3D, development moved over to the Saturn. Per the official Baroque guide released in ‘99, Yonemitsu was heavily influenced by Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon, aka Taloon’s Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon — Chunsoft’s first Mystery Dungeon game, and the one that set the tone for that style of roguelike that was “easier” than Rogue itself, yes, but only to make it feel like a more welcoming entry point. The layers to the game and expectations it had for its players were still, by any other measure, exceptionally lofty.

In Baroque, you’re dead. Or at least you’re pretty sure you’re dead, because you wake up unable to speak, not remembering much, if anything, and an angel then hands you a gun and tells you that you know what it is you need to do with it. You actually don’t know, not yet, but you’re aware that whatever it is involves descending the tower seen in the background of this hellscape. That tower is known as the Neuro Tower (though you will sometimes see it as the Nerve Tower, depending on the source), and, in true roguelike fashion, it’s the only place you can go besides the starting “town” that you’re in, which is a collection of broken down buildings and people — or vaguely people-shaped creatures — that you can speak with before heading into the tower.

How many floors is the Neuro Tower? Now, there’s a question without an easy answer. It depends. The floors themselves are randomly generated, albeit with specific rules about NPC placement in place, usually made up of three to five rooms or so, but the number of floors is tied to where you are in the game. The game doesn’t end when you complete the tower, is the thing, but that’s when things really get moving: the tower will rebuild itself, as it were, in a new, longer form, and you will once again descend it in what turns out to be a quest to find and kill God. The Absolute God must die, by your hand, for reasons you will only discover through playing — by descending the tower, by speaking with NPCs, by experiencing the world, and by dying. By dying a lot. New dialogue, new NPCs, new reveals — these all happen after you fail, in the same way they can happen after you succeed. You can push through Baroque in a hurry and complete a basic run in a day, but you’ll miss out on so much of what the game has to offer you if you do this. Risking yourself in battle again and again instead of just rushing through to the exit of each floor will allow you to see and experience more of the world, more chances to interact with NPCs, and more chances for little nightmare cherubs to come flying at you screaming for help.

Like with Mystery Dungeon, the world is full of unidentified items that you’ll simply have to use to learn the purpose of, for good or ill. Unlike Mystery Dungeon, which has you fill up on rice balls to stave off starvation, in Baroque, you pick up hearts on the ground and eat them. Not little Valentine’s Day looking things, either, but beating hearts that pumped blood at some point, known in-game as “Seeds.” These will help refill your vitality, while picking up assorted Bones that you Gnaw on — capitalized here because the in-game command for eating one of these is genuinely “Gnaw” — can recover health or grant other bonuses. You will Inject yourself with syringes you find that provide certain benefits — some known in advance, some not — equip weapons, armor, and accessories to augment your strength and defense, and risk opening up a glass case with a powerful but temporary item inside, because those cases just might explode when you crack it open. All so you can get an item that, once you descend to the next floor, will break and vanish from your inventory, and do the same if you attempt to unequip it as well. They’re potentially life-saving items in the right moment, though, so… open up that glass case while you’ve got the hit points to risk an explosion, you know?

A 3D Mystery Dungeon-style roguelike with layered and intriguing storytelling about the need to kill God, where you deal with the fallout from a horrible climate catastrophe brought on by the same scientific research that revealed God to humanity in the first place. That fallout exists in the form of the physical environment, yes, and the ever-changing tower that you reenter and descend again and again, but also in the NPCs you encounter, who have been as transformed by this disaster as much as the world that they live in.

The vibes in the Saturn version of Baroque are immaculate. The game’s lighting is superior to that of its later Playstation port, which is no small thing for a horror-themed dungeon crawler where you’re supposed to feel unsettled throughout. It is dark, it is dirty, it is regularly disgusting, but you want to see it all in the best light, which is sometimes not much light at all. You move around with the D-pad on the Saturn controller, but to help you move around in this 3D space, you also use the shoulder buttons to strafe — you’ll learn to use them to lean around corners and get a view of what you can in order to sense how safe it is for you to be heading in the direction you need to. You also can access a 2D map with the B button, to help navigate through these randomly generated floors. (These and other tips still exist at Sting’s website for Baroque, in its full 1998-ness.)

You can’t see everywhere at once, given the first-person viewpoint, so to help you know when unseen enemies are nearby or approaching, you have to listen for your heartbeat — if you barely hear it, then there are foes around, but not close, but as it gets louder and beats faster, then you are in danger. It’s a constant reminder that you are, in fact, still alive, whatever that might mean in this twisted world, but you won’t be for long if you can’t turn around in time to destroy whatever parasite-infecting-a-womb-looking enemy is sneaking up behind you. Those foes are known as “Grotesques,” and they were designed by Eisaku Kitō, who had created models for films like Zeiram and its sequel (which would spawn an OVA as well as video game adaptations). Kitō was inspired by a number of films he’d seen to that point, including “anti-Hollywood” films from places like Russia, and the modeling work of Philip Dexsay, specifically, the opening ceremonies from the 1992 Winter Olympics in France. He made around a dozen models for Baroque, and “Grotesque” is certainly a fitting description for the ones you find in their animated form throughout its world.

Masahiro Iwata was responsible for the soundtrack — he started out with Bothtec, went freelance, and started up Basiscape with composer and colleague Hitoshi Sakamoto, with both responsible for working on Final Fantasy Tactics, among others. Baroque is a fantastic, moody piece of work by Iwata, who managed to make entire pieces leaning on synth choirs, on droning vocals, with fantastic ambient work mixed in, that help keep you feeling the entire time like something just isn’t right about anything that you’re doing or seeing, or where any of this is taking place. There’s a piece that just sounds like you’re trapped inside the beginning moments of Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine,” with your heartbeat audible as Grotesques move bound or glide or sprint toward you, attempting to smash or bite or rip you, and it is haunting. It’s beautiful, in the same horrid way that the rest of Baroque tends to be.

Iwata was directed to create “non-musical” music for Baroque. As Yonemitsu explained in an interview with Famitsu that was held to celebrate the re-release of the game’s celebrated soundtrack (via Google Translate):

While they had to actually make music given the technological limitations of the time kept them from what Yonemitsu wanted, it certainly retained the idea of “non-musical” music. It’s wonderful, perfect for the setting and environment, and atmospheric in a way that will stick with you as much as any other bit of Baroque. It is both music and the sounds of the tower, both audio that only you can hear while still seeming diagetic. And the world is weird enough that, really, you could just assume your character is hearing everything that you are, too — it certainly wouldn’t detract from how the game is meant to be interpreted or feels.

These elements ensure that the game is perpetually awash in tension — tension in its visuals, its sound, its gameplay. Tension in the decisions you must make with item use — when, how much, what to toss and what to keep, what to prioritize and what to ignore — and in whether to take down enemies you see or run away from them. Whether it’s fine to play in a risky way that will result in more deaths because of what death can bring you, or whether it’s time to buckle down and focus on clearing a version of the tower to move toward bringing on the next version of it.

While the original Saturn version is in Japanese, as is the modern Switch port, there is an unofficial translation of the Saturn edition out there, and it’s one you must play if you have any interest at all in roguelikes. Get it going on real Saturn hardware, emulate it, whatever you have to do: play Baroque. Ignore the contemporary, mainstream reviews from English-speaking publications, and pay more attention to modern takes on the game, or the fact that the above-linked Famitsu interview describes the game as “legendary.” It’s one of the greatest games on the Saturn, one of the better, more original RPGs of both its era and just in general, a game that stood on the shoulders of quite a few giants but found a way to make itself into something unique that holds up nearly three decades later. It’s a triumph, but one that, for a number of reasons, is rarely experienced in its greatest, original form on the Sega Saturn.

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