One of the coolest dungeon crawling rougelikes I've ever played. Truly just throws you into the dark and lets you flounder till you find your footing but in a good way. It feels great to learn how the systems work in a natural way without ever having to feel guided every step of the way. The aesthetics with regard to the sound and look of the game are obviously great. The story itself is very unique and while most of it went over my head again it still feels good to try to figure out what's going on yourself.

A freaky roguelite dungeon crawler with a borderline incomprehensible plot and unexplained game mechanics that require wasting runs to understand. It's novel, at least.

The gameplay is serviceable despite not explaining anything about the systems, the atmosphere is outstanding, and the core loop can get fun if you don't exclusively get bad items or spawn between two enemies. It succeeds at being fun while also being scary, despite some enemies being horribly designed.

The main issue is the story and the lack of any explanations in the game itself.
Usually, I wouldn't mind it, and wouldn't count it as a negative, if it wasn't for the fact that it was a deliberate choice to sell it as separate material and separate novels instead of including the texts as an obtainable "lore" section/item in the game. The integrity of the storytelling is blown to shreds.

I love obscure storytelling that makes me think, I do not enjoy being deprived of already-written content because they wanted me to go read the author's blog about it, and also buy his books and drop by comiket.
If you are the type of person that gets obsessed and digs through archived posts from two decades ago to understand one comment that should've been in the game to begin with, you have plenty to look at here.
But I'm not.
And I'm not going to judge it based off external material written post-release either. And if I had to, the rating would be even lower.

Not that the story or world itself was good either, it's trying too hard and the execution is too flawed to be truly enjoyable. It's just very interesting to look at.

The cutscenes and their execution range from expertly crafted bizarre artpieces to a black screen with text on it for two minutes, most likely due to lack of budget.

Overall, it's fine.
If you don't care about any of the above and play games only for the vibe and gameplay, this is a fun time.

okay... genuinely, how the fuck did i not review this game before? i love it. it's so good. it's very tedious and i will knock it down for being a bit unfair or unfun sometimes (paralysis ailment hitting me every 15 seconds no joke? dunno what happened there still.) but it's so good. the story drives me insane. i read the manga because i didn't understand it, but now i do and now i feel like my mind is exploding. go play it, it really is worth it. beautiful themes about struggling with religion, survivor's guilt, trauma, and queerness. baroque is a very queer game, that's barely subtle. if you didn't see it then whatever but yeah. it was definitely there. there's a large element of transgenderism in this story.

A really atmospheric Kings Field like game. The story is compelling, and I love exploring the dungeons full of these little fucked up Hellraiser dudes with great music.

The primary complaints I have with this game are mechanical. I never quite seemed to get the hang of dodging. Supposedly the game is ideally played with the Saturn 3D Pad, but it's hard to imagine that making much of a difference. I felt like I had very few options for managing risk and damage in enemy encounters and simply had to tank most of the enemies I ran into.

The game is a roguelike and I also felt that the game doesn't do a great job with balancing its runs. In a great roguelike, there's always a chance at success - the game always has some item that you get or at the very least a mechanic that you take advantage of to turn things around in your favor. I felt like with this game if you started at a deficit or disadvantage there wasn't anything you could really do about it. I felt like one powerful weapon or parasite was never enough to be a game changer.

Despite my issues with the mechanics, I still had so much fun playing this game. That's the power of the V I B E.

I felt the need to revisit this because in my review I suggested that the core gameplay loop could get tired very quickly, which seemed antithetical to a game that clearly wants you to take your time with it. I still stand by that evaluation; however, after submitting my review, I then began doing full tower runs every day for like a week. It was painfully easy - aside from a couple of deaths early on while I was still getting used to the game, I have completed every single run of the dungeon I started. Once you're acquainted with the mechanics, you can pretty much stumble through Baroque half-awake, and that's exactly what I did. The gameplay is simple but requires just enough thought that I can use 15% of my brain and use the other 85% for wizard stuff. And yet, for some godsforsaken reason, I couldn't stop. I felt a strange kind of comfort in walking through the Nerve Tower's halls, having become so well-acquainted with them, and each time I saw the credits roll I took the opportunity to chill out to the music and reflect. I should probably see a psychiatrist, but overall I just think Baroque hits all of the right notes for me as a person. I feel comfortable in saying that it's one of my new favorite games, but it's not the kind I'd readily recommend to all of my friends. I am unabashedly in love with the narrative and the world, though, and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to play it.

I'm sorry Baroque fans, style over substance is a real issue with this game.

Now that I caught your attention, I'll go on over why I think this game is poorly made. So I guess I'll have to start with the good part of the game to see if we are on the same page with that, the art style/aesthetic seems to be what most people like about this game and I totally agree! This game rules visually it has what people call "Soul", so don't worry Baroque Soul Squad I'm on your side, but that's pretty much all this game has to offer.
Now let's get down to business, First of all, I hate the gameplay loop. It's honestly not terrible at first but then you realize that it's the very same gameplay loop for the entire game, walking through the exact same room, and same corridors for over 20+ floors in a row and relying on RNG to get enough item to survive, it's not fun! And what irritates me the most in this game is that the goal is not just to get to a set amount of floors to get the ending, no, no, no... You have to do some "invisible" trigger quest to activate the ending or else it wouldn't be fun right? Well without a guide it's literally impossible to guess what you have to do, It's all too cryptic and to me, a game that ends up being pretty much impossible to beat without a guide cannot be considered good and if it's a secret ending why not but the main ending of the game hidden in small stupid precise events is just... frustrating.
And while I'm here I guess I'll trash the story as well, it's just nonsensical babbling, I do agree that the idea is cool but the game doesn't explain anything to you, they just expect you to understand this mash of information that just means nothing! I keep seeing people writing on and on about it but it's just theories and speculations, most of them are just people reading vague Japanese bits of info translated into English and made-up theories, I'm glad they are having fun but as a game story it just means nothing.

So yeah I do understand why people love the uniqueness and charm of the game but I don't understand why people rate it 5/5 as if it was the greatest thing they've ever played, I wonder if most of them even finished it, no offense.

Its bonafides as a singular artistic work are overstated, but there's certainly a lot more going on here than most other emulation fetish objects. Systemically the game doesn't do anything new, and despite its oppressive atmosphere, it's actually quite easy, presumably to sustain the narrative momentum. To that end, the added floors in the PS1 port are misjudged, contributing nothing to the difficulty and padding the length of each run. Its true successes emerge with each strange new bit of exposition, and although the slowly unfolding compendium of lore is not a unique storytelling strategy for roguelikes, here they are so often tucked away behind obscure flags and cryptic elision that there's a legitimate sense of mystery and discovery. Knowledge of this world feels deliberate and well-earned, rather than merely random or incidental.

If you enjoyed this, I recommend watching Evil Dead Trap, Malice@Doll, or Riget (the latter of which Yonemitsu cites as an influence).