HOTEL BARCELONA Review

Hotel Barcelona tells the story of Justine, a rookie U.S. Marshal. on what seemed to be another routine case of driving criminals. However, she car car crashes killing both passengers while she finds herself trapped in a twisted new world: HOTEL BARCELONA. Justine will need to put to use her skills in order to kill all seven serial killers scattered around the haunted hotel.

Hotel Barcelona is a 2D roguelite action platformer where each level is sort of a mini-maze where you have to find the proper doors that will lead you to the boss. In the top right corner you have all the rooms linked to one another giving you a slight idea of the path to take. Once you reach a door, there are chances you’ll be rewarded with extra speed, a slight bit of health or a key for example (which the game doesn’t explain the purpose). On Easy Mode, each door will replenish a bit of health.

Our little protagonist can also defend herself with a melee weapon (weak and strong attacks) and firearms. You’ll start off with a knife and pistol, but as you progress through the game you’ll be able to unlock additional weapons such as axes, twin blades, shotguns; via the merchant in the hotel. She can also double jump, dodge, block and parry (*sigh*). One of the interesting features is your phantom. It spawns after you die and restart the level and will help you for a period of time during the level. You can also have multiple ones.

The hotel acts as your homebase. You can upgrade Justine’s skills and abilities, visit the merchant, the barman to barter with resources that you collect. There’s also a clown booth where you can purchase tickets allowing you to be able to retry bosses instantly without having to restart the level. And yes, there’s no level checkpoint, due to their shortness. You die, you go back to the hotel and have to restart the level.

Killing enemies reward players with teeth and coins in order to barter with the barman and buying new weapons at the merchant. When you successfully beat a boss, you’re rewarded with their heart which grants special abilities to Justine and also upgrades the weapons you’ve used. Ammo is finite so you have to make the shots count. It does refills, but to be honest, it’s not even clear if it’s by picking up items or it’s a like a cooldown situation where it auto reloads after a while.

The game does look great. Each area/level has its unique theme; there’s a campground that feels like an homage to Friday the 13th and a slaughtehouse that feels inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre; there’s even a mid-sized Leatherface like enemies that will chase you with a chainsaw if you come across it. Enemy design is also a strong suit as they all fit with their level’s theme. The soundtrack is one of the best gaming scores I’ve heard this year; it features a mix of jazzy tunes and hard rock.

Unfortunately, the game does have a few issues. First up is how the game poorly explains the mechanics especially the barter with the barman; it’s incredibly convoluted. Also why am I losing all my resources when I restart a level after dying? Even on Easy mode, this game is brutal and the protagonist takes a lot of damage. Combat is sluggish and clunky. While it’s understandable that “bigger” weapons take a bit of time to wind up, but with the axe for example, there’s enough time for you to be killed while you attempt to do a basic attack.

The discrapency between of “heavier” weapons versus the quick and nimble ones feels like overkill; meaning the latter one are basically useless against bosses due to the small damage output. Also the lack of health items makes this unnecessarily hard; more often than not you’ll reach the boss with a sliver of health and if you die without a ticket, then your ass is back at the start of the level. Once you made some progress through the game as a whole, when losing resources when restarting a level, a small percentage of them go into storage… which you seemingly cannot use.

Due to the collaboration of two of my favorite developers, SWERY and SUDA51, Hotel Barcelona was one of my highest anticipated games of the year. Unfortunately, it’s a disappointment. The best way to describe Hotel Barcelona? A 2D Soulslike(-like) mixed with roguelite mechanics; two genres that don’t mesh all that well. Having to repeat the same things and levels constantly with ever changing conditions doesn’t allow gamers to practice and remember patterns. Due to the difficulty, there’s a focus on grinding to level up and upgrading your skills, but it gets frustrating after a while. The levels are enjoyable, but you’ll get annoyed having to replay them for the 10th time. There’s potential here buried under forced grinding. I can’t recommend this to anyone else but the masochists.