> # Welcome to GameGrinOS v1.01 > # How can I help you? > # Press ` again to close
>
Hello… | Log in or sign up
Citadels Review

Citadels Review

Imagine you're leading your new army against an enemy settlement. Your men are winning, and before long the town hall comes into sight. This is your objective, but to take it down you're going to need siege weapons. You call up the catapults, give the orders, and carnage ensues - your own infantry begin to fall under the remarkably misplaced missiles. Some misinterpret the order and move towards the base, only to be quickly cut down by enemies. You notice that even your own catapults are being damaged, and... wait. Did that catapult just hit itself with its OWN MISSILE?

Yes it did, because you're playing Citadels, and - like with much of this game - I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the mesmeric ability of the siege weapons to fire upon themselves. Rest assured, this is but one of a vast offering of mechanical bugs, glitches and AI inconsistencies that await, should you pick up a copy of this game. Couple that with a UI that is as much your foe as the actual enemy, and you have a game that is near unplayable.

You've played dozens of strategy games just like this - town halls recruit peasants, peasants gather resources, resources let you build armies, armies help you win. Simple, right? But not only doesCitadels fail to bring anything of its own design to the strategy table, it cannot even emulate the simplest of tasks in a fashion that is anything but impractical, frustrating and awkward. Set a dozen peasants to building something, and watch as 11 of them stand around and shoot the breeze, waiting for one guy to go back to the town hall to pick up the stuff needed. This happens every time. With every structure - no matter how far from the town hall it is - you have to wait for that one, charitable soul to go all the way back. God forbid you share my experience of waiting for ten minutes before realising the peasant tasked with the journey is stuck in a wall.

Losing villagers and soldiers to the hazards of your own town is a more constant and unavoidable threat than the enemy. My walls were littered with health bars - tragic mementos to those lost forever in the void of a video game glitch; selectable, viewable, but immovable. My AI frequently found itself stuck against rocks and trees, or trapped in groups of friendly soldiers - one resourceful little chap even managed to climb up a rock face to get himself stuck and refused to come down. Set a group of your men to constructing or attacking something and you're almost guaranteed to find one or two of them running against an inanimate object.

Much of the game focuses on building fortifications to protect your village. Walls, moats and spikes are all available defences, and you can eventually man your walls with men and ballista. You're free to build these wherever you like, but the terrain is restrictive - it's a real hassle finding a straight line that isn't blocked by trees or other obstacles, meaning you have to build several towers to move the wall around these.

It's not like you really need any fortifications, anyway. The enemy made a real habit of sending waves of peasants to attack me - not exactly heavy duty infantry. When they finally sent siege weapons, I learned that they rarely attacked anything but my peasants, and chose to do so at point blank range. And missed their mark regardless. Furthermore, all the archers I recruited had woefully poor aim - those atop the walls could hit nothing but a stationary target, allowing enemy soldiers to walk right around my defences and into the town. I kept on building walls, only to see more and more evidence of their pointlessness.

In terms of the story, the information given is minimal. There is no CG, no videos, no voice-over - just text appearing on a single background, like a loading screen. Each mission begins with little direction and there's no sense of purpose; starting the game, I wasn't even sure who I was controlling - I selected the 'Knights of the Round Table' campaign, but there was no sign of any knights and the narrative kept referring to 'we' and 'us' against the 'invaders'.

Despite the lack of context or background, the story still manages to trip over itself. In the opening, we're told of the battle between Mordred and King Arthur and how they both perished. Piecing together what I could, I assumed 'we' were Arthur's followers, protecting ourselves after his death. And then King Arthur shows up in the second mission. As a peasant. Looking for Excalibur. Why's he a peasant? We must be prequelling the battle then. But why's he got an army helping him find Excalibur? The story never gets itself straight, working in loose snatches of information that are best ignored.

Graphically speaking, better looking games came out in 2003. There's nothing to see here. The textures are bland, boring browns, greens and greys. All peasants and soldiers of the same type look identical. Most paths and town clearings are grey, as are your peasants, camouflaging them effectively. Peasants stack, so when you drag a box over three or four, you'll actually select 20 or 30. Structures are not gradually built, but either rise out of the ground or appear suddenly when completed. The wheels of a catapult don't move.

Indeed, the catapults are a point of interest. As the wheels don't move, I can only imagine they glide ethereally just above the ground. Neither are they manned, moving completely of their own accord - and yet, when commanded, a disembodied voice answers. They move and attack with complete disregard for my orders, and - despite being unmanned - can outrun a group of infantry. Being set in the age of King Arthur, Citadels could be forgiven for some historical inaccuracy - but these catapults would look more at home on a Need for Speed racetrack.

If there's one thing Citadels excels at, it's inconveniencing the player. Gameplay stutters as you have to make sense of unnecessarily confusing objectives, building names and icons. A lack of help or information requires you to assume a great deal and figure a lot out yourself.

Vague commands such as 'gather resources' are frequently given without specifying how many, leaving you to slog away with no real directive. It tells you to find a 'town hall' which is in fact a 'village hall'; you're made to build 'houses', which on the UI are called 'sheds'. There are no icons on your minimap to indicate resources, giving you literally no clue as to which direction to search - it's not even clear when you do find them, as the stone and ore are an almost identical colour to the areas in which you find them.

The UI is clunky and ugly. There are no hotkeys for selecting structures to build, forcing you to click through the same process every time. A counter in the top-right shows your gold reserves steadily climbing, but I could never figure out where the gold was coming from - the town hall has a percentage that can be increased or decreased, and may or may not indicate tax levels. It doesn't say. There's no way of setting a group of soldiers to a hotkey. There are a multitude of resources to be collected, displayed by a row of boxes at the top of the screen. Each are represented by tiny, grey illustrations that are barely distinguishable from one another and aren't indicative of their corresponding resource whatsoever.

The only way you can tell which resource is which is by hovering your mouse over the image and waiting for a box to pop up and tell you - a laborious process you are forced through time and time again. There's no quick and easy way of seeing the resources required to build something or recruit troops. There are a considerable number of buttons, icons and numbers that I just never understood because they weren't explained properly.

Citadels is a broken, unfinished wreck of a game. Due to the buggy mechanics and shoddy UI, it becomes frustrating before the enemy even arrive - and when they do, the AI is flaunted in all its tragic crippledness. From Slovakian developer Games Distillery, I can only hope that they were forced to release Citadels early due to a lack of time or money. It is a game that deserves to be bought by no one, and the thought that a game might be voluntarily released in this state appalls me. Oh, and it crashes a lot, too. Avoid like the plague.

1.00/10 1

Citadels (Reviewed on Windows)

The score reflects this is broken or unplayable at time of review.

Citadels is a broken, unfinished wreck of a game. Due to the buggy mechanics and shoddy UI, it becomes frustrating before the enemy even arrive - and when they do, the AI is flaunted in all its tragic crippledness. From Slovakian developer Games Distillery, I can only hope that they were forced to release Citadels early due to a lack of time or money. It is a game that deserves to be bought by no one, and the thought that a game might be voluntarily released in this state appalls me. Oh, and it crashes a lot, too. Avoid like the plague.

This game was supplied by the publisher or relevant PR company for the purposes of review
Thom Whyte

Thom Whyte

Staff Writer

Insomniac. Professional daydreamer. Enjoys games that tell him a story he'll remember.

Share this:

COMMENTS