Hotel Barcelona PS5 Review. The reputations for Suda51 and SWERY65 speak for themselves. The duo have historically developed oddball games that generate niche but die-hard fan bases, and a lot can be said for developers who find success by making games they want to instead of simply following current trends. Hotel Barcelona presents itself very similarly, offering a quirky premise and a tailored gameplay loop designed to be unique, for better or worse.
Hotel Barcelona Review (PS5) – Getting What You Pay For
Customizable Difficulty
Hotel Barcelona is a roguelike side scroller by all definitions. Your objective is to complete each of the levels in order to reach the witch and get free of her curse. With each run, you earn materials to unlock more skills and weapons.
To make things more challenging, you can increase difficulty through either traditional difficulty levels or by adding in Bondage restrictions. These let you toggle things like using range weapons, melee weapons, or even using abilities. Hell, there’s even one for instant death from touching water. The idea is that the more restrictions you put into place, the more rewards you get.
Providing these options allows you to progress early on more quickly without getting caught up in constant repetition of the same fights and sequences over and over again. It’s still a roguelike, so repetition is inevitable. These options help to keep you more attentive instead of falling into making the kinds of mistakes that come from getting too comfortable.
Specters Unite
Another interesting feature comes in the form of Throat-Slasher Specters. These are images of your previous runs (up to three previous runs), and they can potentially play alongside you. These are beneficial for far more than timing. In fact, they actually contribute to your current run. All attacks in your previous runs still register as attacks in your current one. So, if enemies end up in your Spector’s line of fire, the enemies take damage. This can prove very helpful, especially for bosses, since they end up in the same positions most of the time.
If you have trouble with a boss, just keep going and maximize your previous runs to progress. Enemies move around the field, of course, but the potential to manipulate your prior runs helps to keep you driven on each run. Fight to keep the big enemies in one spot, even if you die. Then, you can maximize damage output between your current run and your Specters. It’s a rather cool tactic if you have trouble progressing through areas or events.
It’s this layering of difficulties and systems that makes Hotel Barcelona intriguing. Even on easy, it’s still challenging, but you can layer your past experiences not just into new skills but additional damage. It doesn’t diminish the integrity of the game by making it too easy. Instead, it allows you the ability to set yourself up for success in different ways without watering down the game loop.
Delayed Responses
My biggest gripes in Hotel Barcelona come with fundamental aspects of combat itself. Combat speed is slow. This in and of itself would be fine, but your inputs end up feeling delayed than just having long animations. This particularly holds true with heavy attacks. Again, this makes sense, but you don’t even see the action start until half a second after you press the button.
I feel like this is by design simply because of how many different upgrades feature increased attack speed. Each level is connected with several doorways. These doorways offer different buffs for your run, like increased health, increased damage, or the aforementioned faster attack speed. With only a couple boosts of attack speed, controls start to feel more natural. The game builds into it ways to work around it, but delayed inputs still feel like an odd creative choice in a game with combat at its core.
Considering how many options there are to customize difficulty, it feels almost counterintuitive to take away flexibility when it comes to the upgrades you pursue. Yes, you can still choose whatever upgrades you want, but it’s almost mandatory to compensate for the attack speed issue. This leaves you constantly looking for those instead of focusing more on fine-tuning your relative experience.
Variable Checkout Times
Fans of Suda51 and SWERY65 know what to expect from games under that branding. Still, even with that caveat, games from Suda51 still can be a lot to take in. When compared to the likes of Deadly Premonition and No More Heroes, Hotel Barcelona stands as a rather accessible title, all things considered. The gameplay loop doesn’t diverge far from the standard sidescroller formula, which makes it easy to get into for the general player.
Still, it adds in just enough quirky things to stay on brand with the reputation that the legendary creators have forged for themselves. Just like most of their other works, Hotel Barcelona is far from perfect, showcasing its own intentional nuances that can either make or break a game for some people.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.
Hotel Barcelona is available now on PS5, Xbox Series, and Steam.