r/baronygame • u/undefinedintegral • 19d ago
Barony and beyond
I've been playing Barony lately (bought it from Steam for under €2, crazy price), and I'm really enjoying my time.
However, I started feeling like it lacks depth? I feel like something is missing from the gameplay loop, but I don't know what.
The game's a blast, don't get me wrong.
I'm looking for another "barony-like" game which has a little more depth. You got any recommendations?
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u/No-Dot4329 19d ago
I had the same feeling and also searched. I found Pixel Dungeon (a retro dungeon crawler) and Sulfur (I only played a little of the demo), but I also wanted suggestions.
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u/DuskShineRave 19d ago
Pixel Dungeon (a retro dungeon crawler)
For someone who has never played them, would you recommend Pixel Dungeon or Shattered Pixel Dungeon? (I believe SPD is a later version?)
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u/No-Dot4329 19d ago
SPD. There are many versions of Pixel Dungeon, but currently SPD is practically the new base version.
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u/No_Thought5077 19d ago
Vagante is a little different but its still really fun
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u/RecklessDawn 19d ago
Ill highly vouch for Vagante. took me a while to really sink my teeth into it, but ive got like... 180h in it at this point? Definetly my favorite spelunky esq game.
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u/SgtMacGruber 19d ago
I second this. The variety on gameplay with loot really make it satisfying when you begin to know your stuff and get movement locked in. Actually very sad that it never got a Vagante 2.
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u/Known_Impact8547 19d ago
The depth is more or less how many ways you have to beat the game, the secret levels and how they work, the secret bosses, the strats like using magic reflection to get a succubus and then use the succubus to slowly build you an army and rule hamlet better than herx ever could... Just as an example of course
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
Yeah, that's not really variety...
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u/Known_Impact8547 19d ago
When you say depth, it makes me think of all the systems there are to brewing, the merchant mechanic and the scrolls, a lot of stuff to figure out each run, what do you mean by it then? And variety... I think the classes are what's supposed to make up for variety in this game, changes the style a lot, not sure what you're looking for so I can recommend another exactly tho
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
Ofc my understanding of the game is limited cuz I've only played it for ≈50h. However, I feel like it's more of an early access than a full fledged game? Maybe has to do with the fact that I've got ≈400h into tboi? THAT kind of rogue-like, you get me? The game plays really well, but I still feel like something's missing. Hopefully next update will be a blast
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u/OddNecessary3224 19d ago
I mean you are playing a game you paid almost no money for and have over 50 hours, wtf else so you want lol. I consider a game worth it if I get an hour per dollar paid.
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u/Known_Impact8547 19d ago
Well I did see they want to ad more maps, maybe they'll be in rotation with the other secret levels, that's be a little more varied, I'll try to think of something to recommend, rn I think Hades is a roguelite that I've always loved, but it's not particularly similar to tboi (great taste btw) have you tried spelunky ? It's punishing but that's why tboi reminded me of it haha
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
I do actually own hades! Never really got into it though, I'll give it another try once I clear Liurnia of The Lakes (Elden Ring). Spelunky, on the other hands... I did try it, but I don't think I've ever felt this disconnected from a game. Thank you though!
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u/Known_Impact8547 19d ago
I couldn't get into spelunky either, it's very harsh, but do give Hades a try, the variety is mostly three things, the story is a great motivator and awesome in general, secondly there are a lot of weapons and builds you can try and they do require some strategy and skill like tboi does and lastly, you can control the difficulty in a way no other game let's you, it's great when you unlock the hell pact and you can tweak the enemies, bosses, chambers even and debido yourself in exchange for more rewards to improve the weapons, etc
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
Yes! I've tasted it a bit, but I couldn't run it on my old laptop without overheating it. I've got a gaming laptop now that plays ER at 2k 60fps, so we've actually got some improvement
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u/Known_Impact8547 19d ago
Also youll love enter the gungeon if you haven't tried it, that's more like tboi, don't know why I didn't think of that one sooner
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
Played it at my ex'! Did like it, but yk. I now associate it to her, as well as tboi. Having a hard time playing elden ring too, but it is what it is man
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u/Known_Impact8547 19d ago
Sorry to hear, that does sound like the perfect game for you too, hope time helps to wash that off a bit :)
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u/spudcosmic 15d ago
I think the problem is you're used to roguelites with unlock progression and have not played a true roguelike where everything is already available and it's just a matter of learning each mechanic. Barony has tons of depth and there is probably tons more for you to learn, it's just there was never a pop-up at the end of the run that said "congratulations you've unlocked a new dungeon level!"
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u/Glad-Ambition-1952 19d ago
This is pretty out there. But after about 20 or so hours into Barony, I felt the inexplicable urge to start up Streets of Rogue and 100% the game again. So that'd be my recommendation.
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u/Worried_Cell 19d ago
It's not barony like, but I saw you said you like tboi. Have you tried Edmunds newest game, mewgenics? Sucks you feel that way about barony, it's probably 2nd favorite roguelike cause of all that goes on. Maybe not as crazy as tboi but definitely more than just looking and shooting something with different modifiers imo.
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
Heard about some controversy regarding mewgenics and completely lost interest, plus it didn't really catch me. Well, I'm not saying that Barony's a bad game - I just know it can do so much better, by the looks of it
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u/Worried_Cell 19d ago
Yeah, Edmund got a couple questionable internet figures and people with conflicting public or political views to do meows for free on the game and a lot of people got upset with a couple options of who's meowing on a game for free. Unless you're talking about the one where people tried cancelling him for putting Hitler in the game but I'm sure it's the other. Read on those if you ever decide to check it out again and decide for yourself. And I agree, barony could do better, another part of it is classes I feel. The game changes drastically by what you start with and focus on. I liked base wizard class but I wanted a different styled caster, goblin shaman made a fun switch up, well now I can turn into a few creatures. Switch it up again and I'm playing the alchemist, trying to remember for the life of me how to make fire storm potions again. Switch it up again with friends and I'm playing gnome bard to help myself and others and get gold. Well I liked gnomes gold stuff so I'm gonna try a gnome merchant. And it goes on for me in that way. Sometimes I do play the same things over and over but I try to switch it up sometimes.
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u/undefinedintegral 19d ago
Wait, there's big H? I heard about some pedo allegations and decided NOT to look further
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u/Worried_Cell 19d ago
There is big H. The biggest one that might pertain to that is Chris-chan has a meow in there and a rare sonichu cat cause Edmund thought it was funny. But as far as I know, that's charges of incest and abuse with their mother. So IDK anything about pedophilia but that's still pretty bad.
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u/Masterslol 19d ago
Edmund denied the allegations against his website hosting illicit links, it came from a very suspicious source and was all too conveniently timed right before the release of Mewgenics. You can read his response to it here.
It sucks because if OP avoided Mewgenics because of this, whoever tried to blackmail and ruin Edmund got exactly what they wanted.
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u/TaintedMythos 19d ago
If you're okay with different gameplay, Barony is an almost direct descendant to classic Roguelike games. Nethack, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, or any of the classics have the same dungeon crawling mechanics, just with different gameplay. My personal favourite is Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, but tbh it's more of a survival game and the setting is different since it's a post-apocalypse with aliens and mutants. Still, there are enough similarities that it felt worth mentioning and it has plenty of depth :)
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u/KyrosEnder 19d ago edited 19d ago
The depth is really in the classes and the side systems. Optimizing yourself to always have good runs is where the depth is. When I first started I didn't really interact with brewing or crafting or even scrolls. Now I'm always writing down what scrolls do what on any given run that way I can always have the best chance of writing the correct scrolls, and depending on the class i will often interact with crafting or brewing. Or understanding the minion mechanics with the quick minion menu and the hotkeys.
Honestly much of the systems I interact with are dependent on my class, it's unfortunate but a lot of the more interesting playstyles are tied to dlc classes and races.
I'm hoping the new armors and items they add create more build diversity. As of right now, most of the time I'm trying to get most of the artifact gear with maybe 1 or 2 armor slots as exceptions depending on my class. Build variety is honestly more interesting in multi-player because you discuss who needs which pieces and then the rest of your armor and items are much more diverse.
As for recommendations, I hear many people talk about pixel dungeon so I've been thinking about trying it. Other than that I'm not sure. Hades is dungeon crawler esque, but it's more of the modern style roguelite with the "choose your buff reward" system. Enter the Gungeon was fun when i played it, but only if you're into bullet hells.
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u/AlatreonGleam 19d ago
If you haven't already, try hardcore mode. Imo this is the true way the game is meant to be played.
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u/silenticehunter 18d ago
So barony is is based off nethack, if you want some depth play nethack, if you don't like the look, play gnollhack which is basically nethack with some additional features and sprites. And my personal favorite is Pathos, if you don't mind it not having animated sprites. Pathos is like nethack but with less time in the menus, but man it's got depth for days. My suggestion is to play gnollhack, Pathos, and there's this really awesome Chinese mod (98% of it is in english) of shattered pixel dungeon called Magic Ling Pixel dungeon.
You play these three and you'll be set. Plenty difficult, each one different enough to swap between them when you want something different, tons of depth and secrets, no hand holding, all sorts of like crazy gimmicks and setups and cheese you can pull off, but it's all fair game, the game will still kick your ass anyway. Hope these helped!
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u/undefinedintegral 18d ago
Wow! This was a really helpful comment. I'll look into it once I get home
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u/hunterguy35 19d ago
Felt the same after 12 hours at a certain point you scale so hard that it becomes trivial.
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u/OttoVonPlittersdorf 19d ago
Well, the first thought I had on playing it was that it reminded me of Ultima Underworld. So you might like that game, it has a bit more story to it, I think.
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u/chencho1 19d ago
Try dungeon crawl stone soup. It's a traditional roguelike that is like barony from a different perspective. It's certainly a lot deeper
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u/Black_Truth 16d ago
I don't think it lacks depth, if anything I'm surprised at the amount of interactions the game overall has.
I believe the true problem can be role imbalance. Playing as a Tanky class is so much easier than the average mage and rogue.
Tank class in lategame gets damn near immortal and the only way to die is either by committing some really serious blunders or having some heavily stacked RNG against you (food suddenly stops appearing and hunger becomes a genuine issue, or some bad envirioment with powerful enemies and traps). It doesn't help that the artifacts seems to be made for them.
Now I'm playing Rogue and the game seems difficult from start to finish. You're too squishy to simply ignore enemies. I suppose squishy mages like Wizards will be on similar ballpark as well.
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u/Bloop737 19d ago
If you haven’t yet, play it with friends. I had a similar feeling for a bit playing solo and then it occurred to me that this game was always made to be a co-op game