by I beat this one a while back, so forgive me if I don’t remember everything, but Barony is hella solid.
Barony, as you may remember, is a roguelike with Minecraftian graphics. While it lacks a lot of the extremely granular features that many of the “hardcore” ASCII roguelikes offer, this game rocks socks in many unexplored real-time aspects of roguelikes. Aspects like…
- Real-time spacing and corridor navigation of your character in relation to the monsters around you
- Twitch reflexes and clever use of item throwing to avoid/disarm traps
- Exploration of a lightning-fast, nearly-no armor play style versus a slow-moving, heavy-armor play style
- The need to keep an open eye to recognize items, switches and secrets quickly
- On-the-go switching and manipulation of spells, staves, equipment and gear
- Real-time identification management
Of course though, you’ll die a lot in Barony–it is a roguelike after all. Death in Barony though almost always feels like your fault. With the exception of a few boulder traps that through RNG are nearly unavoidable, every time you die in Barony, you can piece together why you did–and the progression verse difficulty curve is fantastic. Early on, you’ll be dying in seconds. Then slowly, minutes. Then a couple hours. Then several hours. Each time you play, you really do learn something that you can use to give yourself that much more of a tiny edge during the next playthrough, and what’s great is that a lot of it comes down to player knowledge and skill–not broken equipment or secret stats. You soon learn the level of decayed food you’re comfortable with eating–but also when to chance trying a bite of the moldy cheese. You’ll learn when curses can be beneficial, how and when to use shields, staves and a variety of other items, as well as when you really just need to throw away that 1000 GP diamond because you need the inventory space. You’ll start learning the secret passages, where and when to avoid or visit the gnome maze, the haunted castle or the royal library. You’ll discover secrets behind walls covered in skulls as you become more curious with a pickaxe. You’ll go to Hell and realize it’s not that bad.
All-in-all, Barony is easily one of my favorite roguelikes. True–it lacks the wacky complexity of IVAN or Nethack. You can’t force yourself to vomit, lose specific body parts, write messages on the ground or dilute potions by dipping them into rusty cans in Barony. What you can do though, is enter into an easily-learned but difficult to master real-time world that is still actively trying to kill you, and asks of simple but quick-thinking and careful inventory and food management to survive. It has a lot of the conveniences and polish of a rogue-lite while still being in essence a rogue-like, and once you finally take down the Baron, your only regret will be that you have no more challenges left to face. …except that you do, because there are secret worlds beyond him. Good luck.
