Hotel Barcelona Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: N/A

I don’t play roguelike games that often, because I’m not a huge fan of them. Every now and then, I’ll run across one that I like or at least admire enough to give it a good rating. To me, overall good control and gameplay are some of the key factors to a good side-scrolling roguelike. I don’t find much of that in Hotel Barcelona however. When I heard that Hotel Barcelona was worked on by Swery and Suda51, I was immediately interested since I enjoy both of their games very often. No matter how wild Hotel Barcelona’s style is, I just can’t get into its overall gameplay though.

Hotel Barcelona is about a hotel that serves as a trap for America’s most dangerous serial killers. You play as Justine, a US marshal that crashes near the hotel. Fortunately for Justine, her mind is shared by a murderer known as Dr. Carnival. Dr. Carnival can take over her body and bring out her killer instinct, which allows her to do battle with the killers inside of the hotel. Along your journey, you will meet some incredibly unique characters in the hotel that will help Justine out in her hunt.

If this game could be rated based on style alone, it would receive quite a high rating since it is just as wild and “out there” as any of the creators’ other games. The imaginative detail, character design, (most of the) character voices and the majority of the look of the game is right out of any other game that the creators have worked on. You get to explore the hotel to upgrade your character and interact with other visitors. This game is dialogue heavy when it comes to speaking with side characters. You get the choice of English or Japanese dialogue for the spoken language. If the game could just not switch to its 2-D side scrolling gameplay, it would probably be better. Eventually, you have to play a stage, though.

This game’s gameplay is a mediocre mess – literally the definition of “meh”. The overall movement of your character is imprecise. It’s almost like there is a slight bit of lag when moving and attacking. It messes up the combat somewhat, but it really shows its horrid face whenever you go to do any type of platforming. Jumping on platforms that are out in the water can be nightmarish because of this game’s overall feel. Not even a double jump could save me from some pitfalls.

For combat, you have your standard heavy and light attack buttons, a dodge button, jump button and block button. With correct timing, you can parry attacks while guarding. Parrying becomes crucial as you get deeper in the game since enemies will start to rush you with attacks that you can’t knock them out of. Justine can equip dual swords, axes, saws and projectile weapons. You’ll get access to many different weapons that can be bought with currency. All weapons feel very unique. The twin swords are fast; the axe is slow but very powerful and the buzz saws allow for multiple attacks per swing. The projectile weapons are weak but allow for long range attacks.

Each stage has a variety of paths that you can take. As you hack and slash your way through each stage, you’ll run across many doors. Entering a door will take you to one of the paths that leads through the stage (and to more doors). Each door offers unique bonus attributes that can help out as you progress. There are also bonus doors that will lead you to a casino or bonus level. Each stage ends with a boss room where you face off against the big baddie of that stage. Boss fights are pretty interesting since you have to learn boss attacks in order to correctly parry and damage each boss.

This game is hard. From the very beginning, you get killed as part of the storyline. Each time you die, you go back to your hotel room. Whenever you restart a stage (upon death) you forfeit everything that you have left from your last run of the stage. So basically, you can keep everything upon returning to your hotel room and get to use that for upgrades before sacrificing the remaining loot to try again. Each stage has four main difficulties to choose from. There is an easy difficulty for just seeing the story, but even that can be quite hard.

No matter how much I got better at the game it still just never felt fun. I started out not parrying much, but eventually learned how to parry many normal enemy and boss enemy attacks, which should make the game start to feel somewhat rewarding, but this game never did truly catch me with any of its gameplay. The overall gameplay is so imprecise and overall bland that it just never actually felt fun. I tried to enjoy this game as much as possible, but it just never did once truly grab me.

Let’s be honest, the majority of us play Swery and Suda games for their unique style more than anything else. Their games often have a certain level of jank to them that I can often look past. Usually, the gameplay to their games has some sort of fun factor to them – SOMETHING that puts a smile on my face and makes the overall experience feel rewarding. Hotel Barcelona has a great style (as usual) but the overall gameplay is just boring. The gameplay is not completely awful, but it is dreadful because it is so mediocre.

I would only recommend Hotel Barcelona to the hardest of core fans of Swery and Suda. You got to be pretty forgiving to enjoy this one! The overall style and presence of the creators in the characters and overall world is all there, but it really ends there. Once the gameplay starts, this game turns into a bland hack and slash that gets repetitive fast.

The Good:
+ The wild style of Swery and Suda is ever so present in the game
+ Each stage has a bunch of paths to take through various doors with many different attribute upgrades
+ A wide range of unique characters

The Bad:
- The overall gameplay is not fun or rewarding
- The combat is very mashy and gets plain boring
- The movement feels imprecise