The Babble Bruh Reviews

This is the story of how I shot God in the face and regretted it.

“Baroque” is an extremely cool first-person roguelike RPG that came out in Japan in 1998. Having never been released outside its home country, it has slowly but surely built up an underground reputation globally as a must-play for old-school game enthusiasts, with several fan-made English ports. Sporting a cryptic but interesting story, this game captivated me the moment I saw the opening two minutes in a YouTube gameplay montage a couple of months back. One rabbit hole adventure of downloading a PS1 emulator later, and the epic starts.

The game begins with you waking up in a grungy-looking alleyway overlooking a barren wasteland. There’s no music, except for sounds of sadness and general eeriness, and on the horizon lies a massive red and bulbous tower covered in cords and other ominous-looking technology. As you approach the tower, an angel appears before you. He says something along the lines of “Go and fix your mistake,” throws you a gun, and then vanishes. That’s it, that’s how the game starts, and I loved it immediately. I don’t know what it is about climbing big evil towers, but that adventure setting has always been my shit, and this case was no exception.

When you enter the tower, you’re almost immediately set upon by some monsters and thrown straight into combat. The gun the angel tossed you only has a couple of bullets in it, and the game description says, “Will kill anything.” So, like any gamer naturally would, we switch to our hands to save the ammo for something more deserving (or completely forget about it entirely) and begin to lay down the law with our God-given fists. After beating the shit out of some monsters, you get to take your first look at the innards of the tower. It’s dark, industrial, full of gross-looking enemies, and something I found super interesting is that it’s procedurally generated. I didn’t think that was really a thing back in the ’90s like it is today, and that caught me off guard.

The adventure continues as you travel from floor to floor, going deeper and deeper into this structure known as the “Nerve Tower.” The atmosphere gets darker, the monsters get bigger, and your character gets stronger with each killing blow. Finally, when reaching the bottom floor, you get a true glimpse of the plot and what’s going on. Your buddy Angel from the beginning is in front of you, impaled on a spear overhanging a grand pit, the original was a hologram of sorts and he’s been stuck here this whole time. He tells you to go below and shoot what you find, as it’s the only way to save the world. When you press him for more info on what you’re shooting, he tells you that it’s God. God is kept below and is responsible for the destruction of the planet, and now it’s up to you to stop them and save the world. Sounds simple enough, right?

Entering the pit brings you to a completely silent and dark room. On the other end is a being crucified to a wall, covered in machinery. As you approach, a message appears on the screen saying, “Do not approach, I can’t protect you,” and as you get closer, your own character’s thoughts appear on the screen saying, “Don’t go mad,” over and over again. Being a Japanese RPG protagonist, you know what you must do: it’s time to kill God. So you whip out your “Angelic Rifle” that was given to you at the start of your journey and pull the trigger to save the world. The entity at the end of the room collapses in on itself, the light fades from the room, and the world is totally saved.

Or is it?

As the screen fades to black, you get a very ’90s cutscene where the impaled angel tells you to quickly grab the soul of God and give it to him so that he may fix the world in his image. Your character grabs it, clutches it to himself, and says, “Nah, I think we just need to try this again,” and then the screen flashes white and you’re back at the very beginning. “What the fuck just happened?” is the natural thought process here, and as is tradition with most cryptic plot games, this is only the beginning.

The game begins again, but this time things have changed. The tower is bigger, new characters (both friendly and hostile) show up, and most importantly, you have the kernel of knowledge that shooting God in the face just because an angel tells you to do it probably isn’t the solution you’re looking for when saving the world. This is literally the beginning of a massive lore-based game. Questions like “Who am I?” , “Why am I killing or not killing God?”, and “What mistake am I correcting??” become the focal points of your continued adventures in the tower. If these questions are ones you want to answer for yourself, I would highly recommend the adventure. The game is full of charm, the gameplay is oddly alluring, and downloading an emulator is easy and free. I would give “Baroque” an 8/10 purely for the environment and sense of mystery.

If you want to read the story for yourself without playing, I would highly recommend reading the awesome wiki here or checking out a cool YouTube video on it. I intentionally left out a lot of info to leave some excitement for yourself, so hopefully this story teaser has caught your attention.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the story.