OMG Nintendo.com

If there's one problem I have with the Wii right now, it's that the system line-up is pretty wimpy when it comes to RPGs... and especially the sort of brutally unforgiving, weird RPGs I tend to like. So, really, it was a Christmas miracle today when I was sorting through the day's news and saw that Atlus had announced the cult-classic Baroque for US release on the Wii and PS2.

I've never played Baroque, though it's long been on my personal list of games to import when I have more time. It's a roguelike dungeon crawler with real-time combat and a plotline full of the devils, apocalyptic overtones, and pretentious religious symbolism I've always adored in Atlus's own Shin Megami Tensei games. I seriously wasn't expecting it to get snagged for localization anytime soon, let alone to get to pick it up for my Wii this February.

The original Baroque hit the Saturn way back in 1998, and since then it's been ported to the PlayStation and, most recently, the PS2. The PS2 port updated the game in a lot of ways, with different music and a shift to third person-camera along with better graphics, but fans seem kind of divided on whether this is good or bad. You can check out Hardcore Gaming 101's excellent article on Baroque here to judge for yourself.

You'll notice the Hardcore Gaming 101 history doesn't mention anything about a Wii port, and that's because there isn't one out in Japan now. Presumably Atlus's Wii version is going to be based on the PS2 build, but who knows? If it is, then Atlus has cross-ported a game for purposes of localized release, and that's previously been the stuff of wistful gamer dreams. If it isn't, then Sting is presumably rebuilding the game again for the Wii, and that could also turn out great.

Either way, Baroque is pretty much everything a hardcore Wii gamer could want to play. The graphics are probably going to be pretty basic, regardless, but for a game like this how it looks is beside the point. It's a tower full of randomly generated blood-spewing demons that a weird angel wants you to kill so you can find out your own backstory between deaths. If you show up, you're there for the high concept, and it would need to fail on a catastrophic Zombie vs. Ambulance level to not be fun.

Here are some vids I found floating around YouTube that show the PS2 port of Baroque in action. You can also check out Baroque's English homepage and check out an official trailer.

Flashy opening anime sequence. Shades of Persona 3!

Title loop video-- only gameplay footage I could find.

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