I would have to say one of my favourite types of games is where the player has free roam of a good open-world sandbox. Over the last few years we have seen many different types of open-world sandbox games, where the players create their own characters, level them up and even build and mine resources that are in the world. My favourite one in this particular genre is Ark: Survival Evolved but we do have others like Rust, 7 Days to Die and so on. So why wouldn’t I want to play one where you get to be a wizard and use magic and even tame dragons! That’s what Citadel: Forged with Fire offers but sadly as quick as the flame started burning in this game it sadly went out. I had the chance to play it on the PlayStation 4 and this is my view on this Magical blunder.
So Citadel: Forged with Fire is an online sandbox RPG with the addition of magic, spellcasting and inter-kingdom conflict, sounds good right but sadly all it comes down to is to make a character, build a base and try and survive. All while levelling up your character, unlocking new things for you to craft and use. Sadly there isn’t a storyline present, well I couldn’t see one. You just wake up and get on with your business.
There are NPC scattered around the map that you can interact with, they give you little quests but nothing incredible, just kill so many of these creatures, collect these items. Just the boring MMO quests that you do until level five before the story really kicks in, apart from in Citadel, that’s all she wrote. So yeah, that gets boring very quickly. The only real thing that I enjoyed while playing Citadel was its smooth building, compared to Ark on the PlayStation Citadel has really made it easy for players to be able to make big structures with ease. I liked this because I’m a huge lover of building bases in these types of games.
Even though at first you might be taken in by the magical side of this game with its crafting of different spells from essences, and seeing mystical creatures it sadly doesn’t last for long. Creatures seem very scarce in the world and when you do find them the combat is just as terrible. Constantly mashing the attack buttons and just seeing health bars drop doesn’t really make for epic combat. The fact that I can’t just hold the button into mine or attack really irritates me. Don’t get me wrong the different spells look cool and some of them are nifty but going into the game I was expecting something more.
Taming on this game is also something that is a let-down in my opinion, in Ark, for example, you tame something and it’s yours, and you just have to stay on top of feeding it and not killing it. Though Citadel goes about taming in a different manner and has you craft a spell that puts the creature into a trance, and over time if you don’t keep on top of the trance it will come out of the spell and won’t be yours anymore. It makes taming worthless and the things you do tame are more just cannon fodder when you go into combat with strong creatures or other players. While watching the trailer I saw you could tame dragons, this takes ages and ultimately isn’t worth the time it takes. Not unless you’re online and have people playing with you and do it that way. Taming creatures is very time consuming and if you don’t have high enough mana, can be a ball ache as the spell drains it really quickly.
Making brooms, wands, staffs and all that stuff is fun and having the different hermetics at your disposal to make potions and all that is cool. Though finding some of the materials in the world to get some of the stuff is difficult and can take ages unless of course, you turn to wikis and online videos to track stuff down.
The audio in the game is what you’d come to expect from these types of games. It has a very peaceful soundtrack that plays in the background while you go around doing your business as well as the added effects when you shoot magic from your weapons and are zipping around on your broomstick, but it’s nothing memorable however, it does the job at building a fantasy world. Graphically it looks like something that is still in early access, compared to other games on the market it really lacks a visual appeal. With evident character clipping and animation bugs, the game could use a bit more bug fixing and maybe even a good facelift. It does look nice when you are flying around the world but at the same time, you can see problems with it that should really be polished before the game realise.
If you can bear with Citadel then you will probably find a replay value, whether that be making characters on different servers or playing on your own lobbies and just making awesome structures and just messing around, it’s definitely more enjoyable playing with people so if you can convince your friends to get it at least you can play together but if not then jumping online is always a way to sort that issue out, that is if you find a friendly enough server.
Vanilla Servers Vs Custom Servers
With these types of games when playing on a vanilla server there is a hell of a grind element to them, everything takes longer and is really aimed at everyone playing together to achieve an overall goal. These days I don’t have that sort of time with a full-time job and other things going on, that’s why I love the option to go on custom servers and have the option to gain EXP quicker and collect resources quicker, offers me the same sort of experience just in a shorter time frame. That’s what I like about Citadel is it has both options available for me.
Closing Statement
A game that could have been huge but lacks the final punch. With an asking price of £34.99, Citadel really seems to be asking for a lot in terms of what you get out of the game. I mean when you compare it to similar games like Ark: Survival Evolved and Conan Exiles, Citadel falls flat and really doesn’t stand up against the others in its genre. The concept is good and with a lot, more work could potential be a game that could draw in loads of players and be really enjoyable but with the heavy grind elements, the annoying taming system and the lack of things to do, I found myself getting very tired very quickly and with this sort of game isn’t pretty. For these reasons, I’m sadly going to have to give Citadel: Forged with Fire a mediocre score of 5/10.
Citadel: Forged With Fire was reviewed on PlayStation 4.
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
Publishers: Blue Isle Studios, Blue Isle Publishing
Enjoy the review? want to read more of our reviews? then click right here to be whisked away to the realm of our opinions.
You must be logged in to post a comment.