What I've Played - Citadels [A Review]

[Halbarad]

Ok, this is actually a draft of my review that will be going up on Game-Modo[game-modo.com] next week. Since there's so much furor about the game I thought I'd post the draft here, offer my perspective.

TLDR = Not worth buying. Needs patching.

Here you go -

Arthurian Britain is a fascinating place and many stories have been told about it. Some include wizards and some include dragons. Almost every story includes a sword that was pulled from a stone. One even included Clive Owen and Keira Knightley as Arthur and Guenevere, they led some Brits in a defence against the Saxons during the Roman retreat from Britain. The question is, will this be a legend recalled throughout the ages or one to simply fade in time?

The world of Citadels brings it's own story to Arthurian legend, or at least one I've never heard before. Mordred, in his greed, brought an army from overseas led by King Guthrum. As that army sailed up the Tyne, Mordred sieged Camelot and fought Arthur at the gates to the keep, resulting in both their deaths. Now both Arthur and Mordred are dead, you, the knights of the round table and the peasants of Britain are all that stand in the way of Guthrum and his army.

It's inconsequential, rarely do you come into a strategy game worrying about the story. What makes a game like this are the stories you encounter along the way: Enduring a grand siege; Making brilliant tactical maneuvers; Triumph in the face of adversity or even just something surprising happening. This is what makes a strategy game. You may like to know that all of this is possible, but not in the way you'd usually find.

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The stories you'll encounter in Citadels will mostly be ones of frustration, dismay and complete and utter bewilderment. Every now and then something positive will pop up, only to be swallowed in the mire that is this game. Not too long ago I was fairly interested in this, having watched the making of videos. The game I saw on those videos doesn't exist here. Either the wrong version was shipped or they decided to trim some of the good looking things because, well, that's life? I honestly don't know.

It's hard to know where to start when so much has gone wrong. The general aim of Citadels is to build your town up, build your defences and army and beat the enemy. You know the formula, you've encountered it in Stronghold, Age of Empires and even Battle for Middle Earth 2. The closest link I can give Citadels is Stronghold due to the large number of resources at play, as well as the free-building of your town walls, towers and everything else. How, then, they managed to mess it up even having ones to source from is a wonder to me.

The building system is one of the few strong points of Citadels. It may not seem it at first, due to other frustrations to be covered later, but it really is well made. You start by placing a tower where you want your wall to start and then either build a stretch of wall, or a gateway. The total freedom in direction is what I've always liked about these methods. Your town walls can be made to fit wherever you like, so long as you don't try to build over rocky land.

This is possibly the only place where the building system went fundamentally wrong. In the original videos it showed you city walls build on top of rough, mountainous terrain, now you simply have to build the edge tower as close as you can, or circle the terrain which is something any sane person would be loath to do.

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Why do I avoid it like the plague? Because the peasants are downright stupid, or blind. Possibly both. Too many times when building a small stretch of wall have I then come back to find a peasant or two stuck in the wall. You can't disband them automatically like in most other games and send them packing, no, they are there forever. That's unless you decide to tear down the tower, hope he becomes unstuck, place down the plans for another tower and pray to any deity you believe in that it doesn't happen again.

It always has to be the tower as well, the peasants will only dismantle one section of a long wall before getting stuck in a loop while not actually tearing the rest down. You move them away and try to dismantle the rest, it doesn't actually exist. You can actually build over it but then it looks a complete and utter mess. I don't know about you but I tend to like my castles and towns to look good as well as be strong.

On the other hand the peasants are at least efficient at collecting resources when they're not getting caught up on things like trees, rocks, walls, buildings and thin air. At one point I wondered why a wall was taking ages to build. Of course my rebuilding was taking a toll on resources, but most of all two of the three peasants I had set on it were stuck behind a tower. I watched them for thirty seconds as they both spasmed like demonic victims, thinking that there was going to be a twist to the story where I got a priest to exorcise my peasants and they would act normal from then on. Alas, no such luck.

[Screenshot]

A demonic possession would have made much more sense when it came to skirmish. In the campaign you'll find yourself pitted against a variety of units: Axemen, archers, catapults, cavalry and more as you push the enemy back out of Britain. In Skirmish you'll find yourself pitted against, you guessed it, peasants. The AI, of which you can face one, will send peasants crashing against your walls time and time again in what seems to be a bid to see how many dead can actually litter the battlefield.

At least this is the case in duel mode. I swear, a more realistic game would have seen later waves climbing over my walls as the myriad of dead would have built a mound big enough to get over. That or they would have asked for some actual weapons and armour before heading out to their deaths. The inability to save a skirmish can only really be boiled down to a design decision that stated "It's only peasants, skirmish should only take about twenty minutes". That's the only chain of thought that makes sense to me.

It's not all bad though. In the campaign, alongside the variety of enemy units, you do get to at least face a little challenge with some of the missions as they place you in different situations. Behind enemy lines sort of movements where you're outnumbered and have no town, or simply giving you a town but having the enemy actually attack you. Even though a lot is scripted, it offers something of interest. What also is intriguing is the use of cards, that represent characters from Arthurian legend. These cards, selected at the start of the mission, give you a set bonus. Apparently, in later missions, some even give the hero themselves.

Albeit I can't say much beyond that simply because I've only played the first three missions. A tutorial, behind enemy lines and a holding the fort type quests. Why didn't I get further? Because the game wont let me. It crashed far into mission three and my save was corrupted, requiring me to spend another forty or so minutes doing the self same mission, it crashed again. "No", I retorted, "I wont let you torture me. I shall play a skirmish game". You know how that went.

[Screenshot]

Like a wounded fighter on the battlefield, Citadels is in dire need of bandaging. It's leaking bodily fluid everywhere and it's creating a bit of a mess. While not being the worst game I've had the joy of reviewing, that distinction belonging to Colonial Marines, this is poor. What Citadels has going for it is that a lot of the fundamental issues are fixable. Some will be easier than others but Games Distillery will need to, if only to help themselves build a better name for the future.


If yer interested, more of my stuff on that site can be found Here[game-modo.com]. Have done other sites as well but can't be bothered linking.