The Citadel

I don’t know how I really found these games, but I recently finished The Citadel and Beyond the Citadel. I felt the trailers don’t really do the game justice, but the kinda bizarre setting and gun mechanics made me interested. Normally I’m not really into boomer shooters, but I think the gunplay made it feel pretty unique and I enjoyed it! The guns were satisfying to use, the mechanics of having to cock your guns, having them jam, replacing mags were pretty fun and added to the experience for me.

also heads up i talk about gore (not super in depth though) in case that makes you uncomfortable!

Now what IS really unique about the game is well, how insanely detailed the gore and wound system can be. The first game is pretty detailed already, detailed to the point where when I googled about the game I found an article talking about how the creator was harassed for the level of detail. I definitely do NOT think the creator deserved to be harassed, but it is definitely at a level for making people uncomfortable (and there’s a nice setting to toggle gore off which I think is nice). I think there’s a discussion to be had about how it is (according to the creator) an homage to older games with brutal levels of gore but it’s definitely different when it’s quite detailed depictions of anime women.

The second game actually ramps it up another level with some more detailed wound systems. I wouldn’t go too indepth on it but again, I was surprised at the level of detail.

I also believe that to an extent I do think that the gore adds to the bleakness of the setting. The game is absolutely not happy or joyful in any way, and I think the gore adds to that level of bleakness (though I would concede that it probably didn’t need to go that far at times lol).

The story in the first game is unfortunately marred a bit by the English translation, though the second game is a bit more clear. It’s told fairly sparsely through level messages and occasional NPC dialogue but I think the world building is pretty interesting. It fits the backdrop of the art at least.

I think my only real critique (outside some performance issues) is that I felt the second game was a bit too long. The first game was a really good length, and the second game felt like there were a few too many levels. It started to drag near the end a bit for me, but otherwise I liked both games enough to finish them in pretty short order.

Overall while I liked the experience, I have no idea if I could really recommend this to anyone haha. The gore and setting is quite bleak which I think isn’t bad, but definitely makes it hard to recommend. The gunplay is fun though!