GOL Cast: Running From Boulders In Barony [Updated]

I'm a fan of roguelikes and I'm a fan of first-person shooters. So naturally I really like the idea of combining these two genres. And as it happens, another game called Barony has attempted that. Let's see how it fares!

Barony is a first-person roguelike that combines elements from traditional roguelikes such as Nethack and first-person RPGs like Daggerfall. You are on a mission to destroy an undead lich called Baron Herx who resides deep in his dungeons that are filled with his minions. Barony also features four-player co-op through LAN or Internet.


Update: Recent patch added an FOV slider to the game making the game playable for those who either suffer from eye strain or simulation sickness.

You might remember when I reviewed another first-person roguelike called Delver which I praised for attempting to meld the two genres together but its simple design left me a little bit cold. So naturally I went into Barony hoping that it would bring over some of the more complex mechanics of a roguelike and not just the general theme and perma-death. And I'd say my hopes on this front were fulfilled.

Barony could be called a first-person roguelike with full honesty. It has adopted so many aspects and mechanics from roguelikes that calling it roguelite or roguelike-like doesn't do it justice. If you took the game and made it top-down and made everything happen in turns you'd have what is essentially your everyday roguelike. You need to eat every once in a while, scrolls and potions have randomized effects and need to be identified, weapons and armor can be cursed and sometimes very random things happen that you wouldn't have expected. There's nothing quite like attempting to eat a cream pie to only get your face covered in it so that you end up temporarily blind and then put on an amulet that ends up suffocating you. Fun times.

Combat is naturally also a big factor and depending on your class and equipment you can fight enemies hand-to-hand, with spells or with bows or by throwing rocks at them. Spells and ranged combat was enjoyable and I preferred it to melee combat which seemed very messy and risky. Barony decided to add blocking as a feature to melee combat so you need to raise your shield, if you have one, to block some of the damage hurled at you by an angry skeleton. However, blocking never seemed to work too well and the enemies were hitting me so fast that I eventually dropped the tactic and instead swung my sword, mace or axe as fast as possible and hoped that I would get out alive. This naturally didn't work too well when there were multiple opponents so I had to run and hide quite a few times. So I ended up mainly sticking to spellcasters.
Graphically Barony is obviously quite simple and sadly also quite boring. The levels (or at least the three first levels, I never made it too far) looked very samey and the enemy models weren't all that great either. But the worst thing is the extremely low FOV and the disturbing lack of a FOV slider. This combined with the narrow corridors makes the game kind of look like Wolfenstein 3D, so expect eye strain and potential nausea if you suffer from simulation sickness. When I livestreamed Barony some people had to minimize the stream and only listen because the FOV was too low for their stomachs to handle.

In addition to the roguelike mechanics Barony advertises its multiplayer capability. You can play in co-op with up to three other players and smash some skulls together. The way the multiplayer is done is quite reminiscent of the olden times though, with one player acting as a host and others have to connect to his computer with the IP address and port number. Oh, and the game requires the host to have an open port to the rest of the world or VPN software to function. As you might have guessed, this is really annoying. At least some form of Steam integration would have been nice so that I could have at least connected to my friend's machine without exchanging IP addresses. The multiplayer also had some sync issues, which lead to the host character occasionally jumping around instead of moving smoothly.

The character classes also didn't synergise with each other and for example the Healer ended up being completely useless because the healing spell only affect the Healer and cannot be used on others. So the only thing co-op really contributed was the ability to fight enemies faster and easier. And if one party member dies you can get them back by reaching the next level and they will be revived but will lose all of their equipment, unless you hauled their equipment all the way there after picking it up from their corpse.

So while mechanically Barony is quite amazing, it does have some things that hold it back. Each run felt more or less the same and enemy variety wasn't all that good. This quickly turned my early enthusiasm into boredom. And saying the graphics are pretty would be an outright lie and the low FOV most certainly doesn't make it better. I can overlook the graphics if the gameplay is interesting but I think some tweaks have to be made to the level design, enemy variety and loot drops before the game can be considered fun enough. I'd say Barony is a nice attempt at doing the melding of first-person and roguelike but it isn't quite there yet. It has different flaws to Delver but those are flaws nonetheless and my quest for the awesome first-person roguelike isn't over yet.

My recommendation is to wait for Barony devs to fix the FOV situation before considering to pick the game up. Eye strain isn't fun and simulation sickness even less. Once that's fixed it might be worth taking a look, considering that the game is actually quite cheap. Especially during sales it might end up being sold at extremely low prices where it's most likely worth it.

Barony on IndieGameStand: https://indiegamestand.com/store/1597/barony/
Humble Widget on Barony's home page: http://www.baronygame.com/
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.