Barony

Awesome game. Learning how to navigate all the danger and optimize your runs feels really good, albeit frustrating at times due to the brutality of the game. Just finally beat the complete game for the first time, but still have some more optional content to beat.

I went down a floor, opened the first door, and was immediately flattened by a big rock. 10/10, would recommend if you like seeing death screens frequently.

This has become my new addiction and I highly recommend this game.

Gameplay:
-Explore randomly generated environments filled with traps, enemies and most importantly - loot
-Level and customize gear for your dungeon explorer to make them better at combat and exploration
-Die to boulder traps (or turn off the setting if you are less masochistic than I)

Pros:
-Local split screen (up to 4) co-op play!!!!! Ability to create 8 man lobbies with mods
-Large variety of classes to suit different play styles
-Classes start with fixed stats, preventing the frustration of picking a certain start only to find your stats have anti-synergy. However because of how the level ups work, an exceedingly smart and fragile tank (or one who is more capable at dishing out damage rather than tanking it) is definitely still possible.
-Solid spread of options to customize difficulty to what the player desires (ability to toggle traps on/off, removing hunger etc)
-Built in mod support


Cons:
-game mechanic explanations/tutorials are front loaded and quite frankly seem pretty overwhelming if a new player goes through all of them at once
-the art style may not appeal to everyone


What I would LOVE to see:
-I wish there were some minor upgrades/character enhancements to work towards from run to run. Something like improving a "hub" town so that maybe your future runs start with "slightly" better items or stats

Brutally difficult game. It scratches an itch in a way that few others can. Learning through failure is fun for me but I understand this is not the case for the avg gamer. It's niche but I think it's pretty good.

I would say some game mechanics are needlessly complex like the differences between book/staff/learned spells. But it just means the initial learning floor is a bit higher.

i don't see this game talked about too often nowadays. it's a shame cause its a really great game. very addicting loop. recommended especially with friends

Super fun game solo or with friends. The learning curve is very steep especially if you are like me and ignore the intro. You will die, a lot. I highly recommend it, I play it on my desktop and steam deck.

Easy game for the whole family to enjoy...No frustration, No traps, Trust me.

-You are going to die so you better get used to it

-The Races and the classes are pretty diverse and the synergies you can pull off with them are nice(races are dlc exclusive)

-Overall the game is nice if you like difficult dungeon crawlers with unforgiving mechanics

9/10

FULL OF BUGS

messed up steam overlay, the host dying is weird, if the host dies when ur in the settings it messes up, game's pacing is off, you start off squishy, there's little balance, etc.

Unforgiving dungeon crawler, but it's actually really fun, and it has online coop.

Play. Get gud. Go hard in the paint. Die to something stupid that makes you question your life.
10/10 Would lose my mind again.

Dungeons and Dragons FPS except gnomes are jerks. And with the DLC you can be monsters and attack the humans and the gnomes. Kill the gnomes. All the gnomes. No one likes the gnomes.

I keep getting ass blasted on floor 20 cause 30AC just doesn't matter against magic

you can die by a rat, or live long enough to see yourself die by a boulder trap on level 6

I've ragequit 3 times already. The above playtime was my sorry ass dragging itself through the tutorial.

However!

There's *so* many secrets to be found and even I got to feel like a genius for solving some of them! In the tutorial!
This ought to be a game for me, I'm curious to see where the playtime will go.
Definitely recommend!

good game. gets too easy after the Baron though.

I waited until i beat the game until i posted a review. It took a whole 90 hours. This game is very fun and also makes you rage but it has sooooo much replayability and its challenge makes it fun. There is only one bug and I would recommend this game to anyone that wants a challenge and/or likes roguelikes.

This game is FAR more fun than I originally thought it would be. I struggled to get anywhere at first, but I am now getting the hang of it and love this game. I highly recommend trying the CLERIC as a starting class for newbies. You begin with healing potions and a scroll that can summon monster allies who stay with you, alleviating a some early game stress.

A remarkable experience. If Daggerfall was remade, modern, into a roguelike framework. This is such a comform game for me.

Keeping this simple:
The graphics are as you can see above.
The game play loop is quite fun and engaging, if not infuriating at times.

The enemies seem quite good at tracking you early game as though you killed their entire family.
The companions are all brain dead. Summons, recruits, or domination doesn't matter.
It feels like leading a horse to water but the horse is missing 90% of its brain and doesn't understand it has legs, a mouth, or a need to survive.

Cute, hell down right adorable.
Love the pixel art
It’s simple dungeon crawler
It’s fun & pretty difficult

Nethack in 3d, need I say more? well im gonna anyway. did a top notch job for the game, but microtranscations are a downer. Games great, jump scares to the lewt grind. skills progress as you use them and if your fairly smart and lucky you can have DOZENS of minions willing or not to go and die for your pleasure while you stay behind the front collecting items. classes are limited, but if you survive long enough you all blend into a kind of "i can do about everything" class. the workshop has some good things, but one half doesnt work and the other is based off of microtransaction items so its nearly completely worthless.
Are you willing to risk life and limb for gold and power? if so prepare to check into Barony, but you might never leave again.

Phenomenal rougelike, and one of the few that have really good coop.

This game is much better than it looks, good dungeon crawl mechanics, decent interface, solid single and multiplayer options. Loot goblin and speedrunner adequate, plenty of classes, races, enemies, and variety content. Minecraftish levels with an rpg settings, an average full run can take 1-5 hours, very replayable.

One of very few games I've played lately that I'm willing to call a roguelike. But you are descending a dungeon, there's an item identification meta, a BUC system, foocubi, etc. At first the gameplay made me think more of a 3D take on Gauntlet, but the constant references like the scroll names being from Hack/NetHack, and the aforementioned features really do give me a roguelike vibe after all. It also helps that you spend a lot of time dying.

Overall, I find this game quite fun, and the difficulty becomes a lot more tolerable with the large amount of tweakable settings, and the up-to-four player multiplayer.

Excellent game with fantastic replayability. I would put this in the same level and category as Binding of Isaac, a very fun experience with many ways to exploit the system or challenge yourself for new runs. More amusing with friends but also enjoyable solo.

Amazing. One of the best action roguelikes that I ever played. Really liked vampire conjurer gameplay.

This game is very chaotic and unpredictable all the time! its so much fun in solo play and in multiplayer! its a must play game!

Its very fun even tho I tend to get crushed by a boulder and leave my partner alone until the next level. 20/10 tho.

picking a class.
sees anarchist
long range. fun
magick. more fun
tinkering. sounds fun
plays the class a lot
after hours realizes its arcanist and not anarchist
proceeds to ignore that and keep calling it anarchist

Barony is the closest thing I can imagine to a dungeon crawling sim. If the average person grabbed some gear and set off for adventure the outcome would measure up to early play. You are wildly underpowered, aimless and starving. Everything wants to kill you. Boulder...

That said. Even though I'm in a constant state of anxiety and frustration, it's the most fun I've had with a game in a long time. Solid mechanics, lore, randomly generated for freshness. Wild that it's so old.

Initial impressions after playing with some randoms in this game: This game is amazingly fun. It is brutal and difficult. I have laughed so much at my deaths for how silly they are and the soundtrack is good. I picked up the DLC because of the additional classes/races. I can't wait for my friends to pick this up! (nobody really wants to have people on their lobbies so be sure to have some friends to play this game with beforehand.)

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☑ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

---{ Author }---
☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template

Barony stays fresh with every play-through being different. You can start out as a Monk, but end up as a powerful wizard with a powerful punch. You could start out as a Wizard, but use turrets and recruited allies to do the work for you.
The boxy graphics may turn some people off, but its not as noticeable in game. There is definitely a learning curve. You will learn the most about this game by dying and not repeating those mistakes.

goated game, if you don't like it at first just get good. (as much of a joke as that is you will have a more fun time the more you keep playing and learning the complexities of the game so just give it a chance)

I genuinely don't know how this game isn't more popular and I can't find another game like it. The progression is fun, it takes time to get max skill, but the benefits are genuinely a blast to have. The rouge-like system makes the game very challenging, and it takes some time to get used to the mechanics and tricks to the game which to me is the most fun part about it.

If you like abusing magic systems, getting crushed by random boulders and good dungeon crawlers, barony will have you strapped for 3 hours straight.

must play. the way it is built makes it feel like a board game, but with much more immersion

Fun Game! So many different strats both to make the game harder and to make the game easier! I highly recommend this game!

this game is crack 2: the sequel to crack. an incredibly addictive game play loop, fun game play, great variety and replayability. the amount of class race combinations makes for very unique runs.

I love that this game never takes itself serious but at the same time will humble you quickly. The game has a very harsh learning curve but makes it feel rewarding when mastering your choice of combat style. There is so much more to this game that I didn't realize like hidden areas, puzzles, legendary weapons and even hidden bosses. The game is great with friends but don't think that you will just breeze through the game cause you will die a lot. Also fuck boulders.

It's a game about playing meat and exploring a meatgrinder, and it is horribly fun. Can't really think of another game quite like it; your 5 hour long run can end in an instant over a brief lapse in judgment or just bad RNG, and it's hard not to come back for more.

Better with friends as all things are but still a blast solo. Game is also still being updated after all these years and it oozes the dev team's love for it. Can't recommed this enough to anyone looking to play a brutal dungeon crawler that'll keep them on edge for hours on end.

Barony's best enjoyed for the journey, and accept that winning a run isn't the norm, at least starting out. There's a ton of mechanics and systems that, while optional for a baseline consistent playstyle, give you a lot to sink your teeth into.

Barony's early game is pretty brutal, as this game's progression philosophy is pretty much that you become more consistently able to make mistakes as you go. Levelling makes your health higher, you find armor, you probably get some healing resources, etc. Starting out you don't have those, and you're very encouraged to pick fights early on so you can level to get all that leeway later. I very often die within the Mines, the first general area of the game (Due in part to the Gnomish Mine secret area that is very fun to tackle but is crawling with lightning-staff gnomes. Magic attacks are very lethal in this game, so it's a tightrope walk in there)

That being said, this game's got a lot going on under the hood for how skills work and what makes them progress and how you can make the most of things. You don't have to grind up skills super hard to succeed, but if you go at it with the right mindset knowing how to optimize raising stuff like Blocking skill, Stealth, Magic, etc. can be very satisfying in the short term. Honestly knowing how to make use of hidden areas for good loot to get advantages down the line probably make a bigger difference than grinding skills but I'm personally the kind of guy that likes to watch the number go up, so it meshes well for me.

Class and gameplay variety is very good. You've got solid baselines like the Warrior or Cleric who start with good armor, shield, and health to lay off a lot of pressure on making mistakes, or the Healer who while lacking armor and such has the most reliable heal spell out the gate. But you're out there for the sauce, stuff like the Rogue encourages getting in big meaty strikes and making the most of the game's movement mechanics with stealth, or the Sexton, with some of the cheesiest spells like Open, Sleep, and Chakram throwables you can ricochet off corners. Sexton lets you get away with some nonsense, but as usual, not suited for armor. Can't get hit a lot, so make those tools count. The Merchant, especially when you learn just how many shops exist and how much gold you can muster if you go down the right channels, can just absolutely load you with stuff. But you need to know how to turn your coins, and the most useful stuff are complicated mechanics in their own right, like the Alchemy and Tinkering systems.

So again, fun's in the journey. Goof around and have fun with the game's systems. Shooting for the end is a reasonable goal of course but it's a long term one. There's a lot to enjoy just playing the game for itself, whether or not you make it very far. I really like learning a game and taking full advantage of everything there is. There's a lot of content in that regard.

I have THOUSANDS of hours of time on Steam. This is the first game I've stopped to write a serious review for. I have two clear takeaways:

1.) This game is meant for a particular kind of player. If you're that guy, you'll love it. If not, it will be excruciating. The game is meant to be played with constant vigilance. Incoming damage is serious, with healing being relatively slow and rare. Particularly if you are not on a caster class. Certain enemies and traps can one-shot you. Enemy resistances and weaknesses are substantial. What this all adds up to is a resource management "metagame."

You could run up on a skeleton with a sword and shield and you will win the fight. But because it takes half as much damage from swords than maces, you'll take much more "chip" damage in the process, disadvantaging you in future fights unless you have a healing spell or item.

Knowledge and planning are far, far more important than skill. And you need to abuse all of the mechanics available to your class/gear set. I'm not fighting a troll on my unarmored ninja. But I can knock the torches off the wall and sneak by in the dark. Or I could send a companion on a heroic, absolutely totally necessary, sacrifice.

It will take hours to learn the mechanics well enough to reliably get to the later "floors" or biomes. And even then, bad luck with the procedural generation can put you in especially tough situations. You will face the first few floors dozens of times while learning, but I promise it's worth it. Why?


2.) This is clearly a labor of love. I come back to this game from time to time to find out there's been an update adding QoL features or even free content. What really tipped me to write this review was the introduction of a bestiary. One thing that drove me away from the game time and time again was needing to have the wiki up in the browser. Were rats vulnerable to swords or maces? If I mix water and acid, does that heal or explode? I was constantly pausing, tabbing out, reading, then coming back to play. They must have agreed this was annoying at Turning Wheel because they added a bestiary and potion recipe book to the game for quick reference.

Ten years into the life of a $20 game. They did not have to do it. They certainly didn't have to do it in a free update adding destructible environments and more loot. But they care about perfecting the game. And I gotta' support that.

MOST UNDERRATED GAME EVER. so much depth for a game i originally thought was just a simple rouge-like dungeon crawler. this has so many mechanics and simple design choices that make me come crawling back to it no matter how many times i die or lose disinterest. there is a certain charm that comes with a game with the calibre of detail this has. that will not let me say a bad word about this game. is it hard? YES. is it so complicated you wont understand without multiple hours to get the basic details? YES. but is it the most satisfying and unprecedentedly deep game i've had the joy of finding? YES ABSOLUTELY. just try it. if you don't get hooked in two hours, oh well. you gave it a go. but don't blame me when you also get a craving for it and come crawling back

*Finds scroll to remove curse*
*The scroll itself its cursed*
*dies from eating rotten rat meat*
10/10

This game is a bunch of fun. The skill system, traps, and enemies are the perfect blend of D&D inspired world-building and the creators' own inspired flair. The classes are varied and interesting, each offering a unique gameplay experience. While I did not pay much attention to the story itself, the dialogue is pretty interesting and the final bossfight was thoroughly challenging. I appreciate how the developers thought about how all of their components interact, especially involving the monster charming system and succubi in general. I have a personal vendetta with the person who suggested boulder traps, they have ended many a promising run, but they are disablable and it is most definitely skill issue. Overall, 10/10 game, tons of content and great with friends.

Fucking love it, it's difficult as fuck.

Helluva good time, D&D fans will love this

This game will really treat you like a level 1, but you level up fairly quickly (if you're good lol)

Pretty difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier! Best played with friends but a fun little game. A fun callback to early dungeon crawler rpgs. Recommended.

Got very far into a run with the best loot yet,
got locked up by a boulder trap with no way out,
10/10 game, would recommend.

It's fine. I had a lot of fun at first when everything was new and unknown, but soon after I started to feel like a lot of the mechanics are too shallow.

Melee combat is boring because all the enemy types seem to attack with the same cadence, so fights are mostly block > attack, repeat. Or if you're the stealthy type, it's more like sneak attack > turn and run > crouch 10 meters away until they lose aggro, repeat. Magic is more fun and varied, but mana regen is very slow and potions are few and far between. There's also not really a vertical axis for combat, so every ranged attack shoots in a straight line in front of you. This means no enemy weakspots and very simplified aiming. You can't even attack bats that are perched on the ceiling.

The idea of enemy resistances sounds engaging, but in reality if you're a sword user, you're not bringing along maces for the occasional skeleton, because your sword skill is at level 50+ and your mace skill is at 0.

The level designs lack variety and are too predictable in their "secrets". Level 2's secret area only ever takes you to the Gnomish Mines, level 3's secret area only ever takes you to Minetown, etc. And the prefabs around each floor don't seem to have any varieties. If you come upon monsters locked behind gates with spike traps underneath their feet, you can bet that the left lever will trigger the spikes and the right lever will open the gates, every time.

The class list looks like there's a lot of options, but some of them have too much overlap in my opinion. There's not enough to distinguish some of the more basic classes. The DLC classes on the other hand feel very unique and interesting.

There's also some annoying design decisions. Hotbar management is such a pain. The game never repopulates your hotbar the same way you had it set up before, which is especially apparent when playing someone like mechanist who's constantly having to throw out their turrets, then pick them all up when it's time to move. So there's no way to use muscle memory to quickly select items unless you're okay with reordering your hotbars every time you drop or lose some of your items.

Items sold by shops aren't always appraised, meaning you can't see their stats until you buy the item. Why would I want to waste my limited gold on an item that might be useless?

Alchemy sounded like a fun mechanic, but potions and empty bottles (the reagents you need to brew new potions) are so few and far between. And then you need to consume and blend your existing potions to find out what combinations produce what results, so you're just whittling down your already low supply. Which wouldn't be a big deal if you find a shopkeeper to buy potions from, but sometimes a run will just refuse to give you the right type of shopkeeper.

The swimming skill is pretty pointless. You're rarely in water and rarely need to swim for long. Some people argue that it's great to AFK in water to level it up because it levels up all your attributes for free. But AFKing isn't playing the game. The skill should just be removed or reworked.

Basically I think the game is worth a full playthrough, but beyond that it doesn't have enough replayability for me. I would also only recommend this game if you have friends to play with. Solo is alright but it feels like the game was designed around the co-op experience.

My Rating: 2/5