Barony

Barony is a first-person roguelike built around the old-school dungeon-crawler fantasy: descend floor by floor, manage a fragile character build, and die repeatedly to hazards both obvious and completely unfair. It wears that difficulty like a badge. The premise is simple enough - a lich has cursed the land, you are going in to stop it - but the game is not really about the story. It is about the dungeon. Every run is procedurally generated, and the levels do a solid job of feeling dangerous rather than merely random. Traps, cursed items, enemy ambushes, and resource scarcity all stack up in ways that demand genuine attention. This is not a game you sleepwalk through. The class roster is where Barony earns real respect. You get the usual suspects - Warrior, Wizard, Healer - but also genuinely strange picks like the Conjurer, the Shaman, the Brute, and others that play nothing alike. Each class changes how you approach itemization, combat, and even which floors feel manageable. A Monk run is a completely different psychological experience than a Ranger run, and both feel mechanically distinct rather than just stat-flavored reskins. Build variety holds up well into the mid-game, though the late floors have a tendency to punish certain class archetypes harshly enough that some runs start to feel predetermined once you hit a bad item streak. Co-op is the headline feature and it genuinely works. Up to four players can descend together, and the game does not soften the difficulty to compensate. If anything, having friends nearby just means more witnesses to your terrible decisions. Coordinating class compositions adds a light party-building layer that solo play cannot replicate. Solo is still completely viable - and arguably purer as a roguelike experience - but co-op is chaotic fun in a way that fits the game's tone perfectly. On the downside, the UI and visual presentation are firmly retro, and not always in a charming way. The first-person pixel aesthetic is intentional and consistent, but new players may find it difficult to read the environment clearly in tense moments. Item identification - a classic roguelike mechanic where unidentified items carry unknown effects - is implemented correctly but can feel punishing to players unfamiliar with the subgenre's conventions. There is also a noticeable difficulty spike in the deeper dungeon floors that feels less like earned escalation and more like the game running out of patience with you. Filler floors do exist, and some stretches feel like padding between the genuinely interesting encounters. For a certain kind of player, Barony is exactly what they came for: dense mechanical systems, real stakes per run, and co-op that adds tension rather than removing it. If you grew up on NetHack or ADOM and want that in first-person with friends, this is the version of that fantasy that actually shipped and actually works. If you need narrative payoff, memorable NPCs, or choices that ripple forward through a story, you will not find that here. The lich is the destination, not a character. The dungeon is the point. Go in knowing that, and Barony will likely earn its 91 percent.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

Be the first to comment on Barony.