Hotel Barcelona Review: A Disappointing Roguelite with a Compelling Story

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I was immediately excited about *Hotel Barcelona* when I learned it was a collaboration between the creators of *Deadly Premonition* (Swery) and *No More Heroes* (Suda51). The concept – a 2.5D roguelite where you’re a US Marshal possessed by a creepy serial killer named Dr. Carnival, working together to take down other killers staying at a haunted hotel – sounded fantastic. It seemed like a really strong idea on paper. Unfortunately, actually playing *Hotel Barcelona* isn’t as enjoyable as I’d hoped, which is disappointing.

As I said before, the story centers around Justine, who is determined to avenge her father’s death. This quest leads her to the Hotel Barcelona, a place overrun by dangerous serial killers. The hotel serves as Justine’s home base – she returns there each time she’s defeated. She forms an unlikely alliance with Dr. Carnival, a mysterious serial killer himself, to defeat the other villains.

Hotel Barcelona has just a few stages and bosses. Each stage is like a 2D side-scrolling dungeon with several rooms leading up to a boss fight. You’ll complete around three main stages before facing the final boss and finishing the game, which should take about 6-7 hours.

It might not seem like much, but the start of *Hotel Barcelona* is quite difficult. Even on the Normal setting, enemies and bosses deal a lot of damage. Because healing options are limited, keeping Justine healthy before each boss fight was a real struggle.

I really wanted to get into the gameplay loop of replaying the levels, but honestly, after dying a bunch of times, I realized most of them felt way too similar. Everything just kind of blended together. The enemies didn’t feel unique, and the environments were pretty bland. Visually, *Hotel Barcelona* was a letdown, except for the beautiful character portraits during dialogue. The blurry textures on everything else just didn’t grab me. The boss intros *are* cool and animated nicely, but since you die to those bosses so often, I ended up skipping them after a while just to get back into the action.

Back at the hotel, you can spend what you’ve found to buy better weapons, improve your abilities, play pinball, trade with the bartender, and even make the game harder for bigger rewards. As you’ll likely die often – it’s a roguelike, after all – a cool feature is that ‘Phantoms’ of your previous attempts will join you on future runs of the same stage.

You can summon up to three helpers at once, and they’ll essentially replay the level alongside you. They’ll battle enemies and even help take down bosses. This was especially useful when I got stuck – we could team up and quickly defeat tough bosses together.

I wasn’t a fan of the combat in *Hotel Barcelona*. It felt a bit awkward, and hitting enemies didn’t feel very impactful. The game offers a variety of weapons – katanas, hammers, shotguns, and more – but I found myself sticking with the initial weapon because it felt the most reliable. While the combat started out feeling really bad, unlocking new combos and defensive moves did improve it somewhat. However, it never really clicked for me and often felt frustrating.

Despite the clunky fighting, uninspired environments, and frustrating difficulty, *Hotel Barcelona* has a genuinely interesting story that kept me engaged. I hoped to uncover more of the game’s background with each playthrough, but that didn’t happen as much as I’d like. The game also doesn’t feature many cutscenes, which is a shame because the ones included – especially the opening – are quite enjoyable.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the connection between Justine and Dr. Carnival, but their relationship was the most memorable part of *Hotel Barcelona* for me – even more so than the fighting or how the game plays. I was hoping for a really cool and rewarding combat system, similar to *No More Heroes*, but ultimately the game feels like a fairly basic roguelite that could have explored its gameplay and story in more detail.

I discovered some fun hidden extras after finishing the game, and honestly, I enjoyed finding those more than playing through the main story. However, even with those extras, I don’t think this game is among the best in the roguelite genre. There are simply too many similar games that do things better.

Hotel Barcelona will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S starting September 26, 2025. We reviewed the game using a PC code provided by the developers at Game Rant.

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2025-09-26 11:04