7.8 hours played
Written 10 days ago
The game is pretty good, but also really easy to critique due to some of the strange design decisions made by the developer. I'll just list put some pros and cons and other notable stuff I experienced while playing the game with all settings set to normal.
Pros:
-There's a decently large amount of gun variety, and most guns have a secondary fire option to give even more options in combat
-There's no cheap hitscan like in other boomer shooters. I think this is a big enough deal to add in pros, I just hate hitscan enemies.
-Lots of difficulty options so you can fine tune the game to suit your needs. I like games with a wide range of accessibility options (mainly because I lowkey suck at boomer shooters)
-The progression felt really good! In the beginning of the game you start out really weak and have to play super tactically, but by the end I was casually blasting through end game enemies without an issue
-The soundtrack is surprisingly good
Cons:
-Death as a mechanic is annoying to me. In The Citadel you can find check points around the levels that will allow you to respawn if you interact with them, problem is, you can't respawn at a checkpoint if you don't have any lives. You get lives through decently rare pickups placed around the game, and there's no way to purchase lives from the in game merchant or anything, so they're a big deal. By the end of the game I had basically no lives so I had to complete entire levels in one try, which is common for most boomer shooters, I know, but I still find it annoying. It also didnt help that every time I died it takes about 25 seconds to respawn at the beginning since the game had to reset everything or something. Loading times are all pretty slow for some reason, I dont know why considering the game isn't exactly graphically intense.
-Some of the level designs just straight up suck. Some levels I hate at first but then grow to like, some levels I didn't like because of my own skill issues, but some levels are just stupidly designed. There's a surprising amount of levels that are just filled to the brim with enemies, causing your game to lag because it's not well optimized. Most levels are pretty good tho.
-Some guns just become completely obsolete due to better alternatives being introduced. I barely ever used the magnum outside of act 1 and a bit of act 2 because I never had to, and I barely ever used the SMGs because the auto rifle and chain gun exist. I constantly just switched between the same 3/4 guns because I never didn't have ammo for at least one of them so I barely ever bothered using anything else.
Miscellaneous things:
-This game as a shit ton of guro in it. Dont know that is? Basically, it's just gore hentai. There's no T&A shown or anything and it's easy to ignore, I bet some people didnt even notice it, but when you know what guro it's pretty obvious to see. If you're into that shit, I guess thats a pro for you.
-The story is just kinda... nonexistent? There's fragments of it here and there but I was left asking way more questions about the world and what was even happening then I should have at the end of the game. I was gonna put this in con but remembered most boomer shooters have shit stories anyways so most people don't care.
Overall, I enjoyed The Citadel. I'd rank it a good 7/10. It was definitely unique, in both good and bad ways. Id say if you're into guro, you might like it. If you're into boomer shooters, you might like it. If you're into both, you definitely will.