Barony

If i am to get items i need at least ONE item in the very first level to appraise. The levels on the items only GROW from there. This has occurred TWICE in only 11 hours of gameplay. A game can take several hours.

This game is essentially a traditional roguelike translated into a real time 3D experience, though there's practically no vertical component and it's closer to old Wolfenstein or Doom. If you absolutely hate traditional roguelikes, you're probably not going to have a good time with this game. Featuring hunger systems, weight inventory management, permadeath, instant kill traps(in the early game) and no metaprogression. Rather than RNG, the thing that will get you through the game the most consistently is your own skills and knowledge. The early game is probably the most dangerous part of the game, where the player starts with low stats, barely any gear, and traps that can easily instant kill you with your pitiful health pool. Running up to fight a mob of enemies at the start of the game is almost certain death, you need to carefully pick your fights and sneak around. The player's melee range is slightly bigger than the enemies, around "1.5 tiles" compared to an enemy having around "1 tile" melee range. Combat is realtively very simplistic. Though you can attack and kite things at melee range if you're good enough, a sword and board combat style is very reminscent of a turn based roguelike, where you and the enemy just take turns hitting each other. The recent revamp introduced a lot of new spells, the variety in magic is interesting, though some spells do feel a bit useless. As it goes with these types of games, the dungeons are mostly randomly generated. But there's various secrets hidden throughout the game, and certain hidden stages and aspects will spawn consistently for every run. For example, Hidden levels like the Haunted Castle will always have basically the same layout, and will always feature specific loot such as the Artifact Boots, a Tin Opener, Potions of Levitation, there will be 1 Fountain and 2 Sinks, and there will always be at least 5 chests. Character stat growth on level is mostly dependent on the class, but also slightly influenced on the actions you take. E.g. casting magic and improving your Magic proficiency comes with an increased chance to increase your INT on level up. Skill/Proficiency growth is dependent on your actions, use Swords to improve your Sword proficiency, recruit Followers to improve Leadership, brew potions for Alchemy, etc. On the topic of AI Followers, they are unfortunately not very useful most of the time unless heavily micromanaged, easily turned into paste by a random boulder trap, or suicidally aggressive engaging with multiple enemies at once. They're often meatshields at best, though certain strong recruits can certainly help carry the early game for your run. On the topic of a party, if you choose to play multiplayer, the game is more balanced around choosing to create a balanced party. In singleplayer, you get to absorb all the EXP and can easily build an allrounder munchkin, but splitting the EXP up among multiple players typically means wanting to get members focused on specific roles. I have heard that online multiplayer can sometimes have issues, but local multiplayer works perfectly fine. As mentioned on building an allrounder munchkin, the game is fairly open ended on your character's personal development. Just because you rolled out with a Wizard class at the start of the game doesn't mean you're completely locked out of slicing enemies up with a sword, though you'll certainly find it more difficult to start up. Being a Barbarian doesn't mean you can't end the game as a master in all the magical trees... That said, if you're playing with the DLC classes and races, things do become a bit more varied. A Goblin for example will never become a magical master like the others, because they're too dumb to read and learn from spellbooks. While the base classes start wiith equipment and spells that can be found throughout the game, some of the DLC classes and races get unique starting gear or spells that can't be normally acquired through regular gameplay for a human with a base class. The game is perfectly playable with just the base classes, but the DLCs do add some more interesting replayability to the mix. The tutorial is rather lengthy and split up into parts for good reason, the game has a decent number of aspects to play around with. Though playable on mouse and keyboard, I've found the game to be enjoyable enough on controller. There are a few minor issues, such as being unable to throw Pies off the hotbar on controller, but the game is otherwise very controller friendly.