Barony

excellent game. gameplay is varied, its quite difficult and rewards intelligent play, and on the whole generally gives you the tools you need to succeed. there's a lot to it and i can't as of writing really be the one to explain any of it for the sake of this review. however i can put some critiques. the main one is simply that the game is too punishing at times. yes that's the point gold star for you, but there's a difference between "you made a mistake/series of mistakes and failed to rectify it" and "you have been stunlocked by a scorpion because you made the mistake of playing a melee class" or "death by random bolder hole hidden behind like 4 walls". while not insanely common, most deaths WILL be your fault, there's a certain level of irritation when a run is going well and the game just decides i get to lose because rng gave me the middle finger. the game pads its difficulty a bit with an over-reliance on situations of that nature and while FAR from game ruining for me it can be a pain in the ass to deal with on occasion. another thing albiet much lighter as how some mechanics included in the base game require a dlc in order to actually flesh them out. notably tinkering and alchemy which both require a dlc to access the classes based around them. of course the dlc and game as a whole are cheap and the devs are a business after all so this is a very minor complaint but it is still one i feel is worth levying. lastly the minotaur mechanic is annoying, it barely increases the difficulty as you shouldn't be on one level for more than 2 to 3 minutes anyway after the first two or three and just gets annoying after a certain point. solid 9/10. i'm sure multiplayer fixes some of these issues but i don't feel that's a defense for a game like this.