The Case

Set in the times of Arthurian Legend, Citadels - the latest game from Games Distillery, a Slovakian Indie group who don’t have much else to their name so far - claims to bring a unique spin to the RTS genre. Will it stand the forces of the games market to become a breakout hit for the company, or will their walls fall to the stones thrown by our reviewers?

The Trial

As mentioned above, Citadels is set during the time of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Specifically the fall of Arthur’s reign and the loss of his kingdoms to an invading force backed up by the traitor Mordred. It’s a starting point which holds great potential, but is particularly disconcerting to the history buff in me, as Games Distillery has chosen to take the High Middle Ages representations of Arthur as their starting point. Where (as far as historical records can say) Arthur most likely reigned during the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the land of the Britons, in the late 5th and early 6th centuries - shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire. That may sound like I’m nitpicking, but given the way the rest of the game has turned out to be, there’s a lot worse than complaints about the setting’s historical accuracy to come.

For instance, the game opens with what should be a simple tutorial mission, wherein you construct a base, learn the particulars of any unique features, build a basic army, and grind the basic enemy force into dust. Instead, what occurred was more than two hours of trying to deal with the variety of glitches, crashes, bugs and dodgy development decisions. Unit selection is a pain, especially since there isn't any easy way to tell the difference between peasants and fighting troops, and everything seems to blend into the background.

Once you actually have your units selected, they react as though your orders are merely suggestions that they'll get to when they're good and ready. At least, they would get to them if they weren't so busy being stuck on random bits of the scenery. Or each other. Forever walking in place in their attempts to carry out their tasks - leading to some really odd moments, such as the time I ran out of stone because every peasant working the quarry got stuck on the boulder they were working at, or the wall that was never built because every builder sent to work on it got caught up in the foundations.

Also, sometimes it decides to not accept input from the mouse. Let me say that again, Citadels is an RTS....THAT REFUSES MOUSE INPUT!! Just think about that for a moment....there is a modern RTS, that isn't even designed well enough to allow for a player to constantly be giving instructions with the input device that every other RTS game has been built around...not to make way for another, better input device, but simply because there is a bug in the code that causes the game to lose connection with THE PRIMARY INPUT DEVICE FOR THE GAME!!

The UI comes complete with a total lack of information. The construction menus only reveal how much a building will cost, and the game doesn't explain what each building does. Some buildings come with options that affect something or another which, again, are never explained, and unlike buildings, weren't intuitive enough to work out by mucking around with them. Said buildings are hard to place, as it's not entirely clear where the boundaries of a building lie, and the game is incredibly fickle about which elements of the environments can and cannot be built upon. Upgrades to buildings need to be done individually, and have a negligible effect compared to the cost of doing so. In the case of anything except the military buildings and walls.

Speaking of the cost of things, most of the buildings are completely overpriced when compared to the rate of resource gathering - especially since, rather than dropping it off at the gathering camp, each bundle of resources needs to be dropped off either at the keep or (once you've climbed the tech tree a bit) at a storehouse - leading to some really unnecessary waiting times while trying to place important buildings. This really comes to a head when you unlock the advanced resource buildings (which turn wood to planks, stone to bricks, etc.), which take the highest priority when it comes to allocating resources, and operate much faster than their basic counterparts (which are still needed in conjunction with many advanced buildings and units anyway), leading to cascading resource failures.

For what it's worth though, it at least is easy on the eyes. I mean, if it was any other game I wouldn't be praising graphics at all, particularly those who don't push the boundaries and have slightly problematic design choices (did I mention that troops are nearly impossible to see against the map?), but given that its looks are all that Citadels has going for it, I think a mention of anything positive is needed.

Also, the soundtrack isn't too bad, being a good imitation of a period sounding style - with rockier sounding modern bits for more action heavy spaces. It is a bit sparse however, with many moments dedicated to large patches of silence. Something I wouldn't mind in tense moments, but I hardly think making a decision on wall placement counts as a place where a lack of sounds is appropriate.

The Verdict

The worst part about Citadels is the potential that can be seen behind the reality of bugs and bad design choices. The goal seemed to be to make a fairly realistic medieval strategy game built around building bigger and bigger fortresses, and either money ran out (which explains the price tag) or the devs realised they were in over their heads and needed to ship their project. Thus quality was sacrificed to make sure the fortress building aspects remained intact. It's just unfortunate that they couldn't live up to that potential. If you’re burning to play an RTS, my suggestion would be to pick up nearly anything else - they'll at least try to make a good impression.

Case Review