MageCraft

Up until I hit “download” on my Xbox, I had never heard of Citadel: Forged with Fire. I really didn’t know what to expect when I started the game up. Well, now I know, and what is here seems fine with some issues peppered in along the way. I also found out this style of game is not really my cup of tea, but I’m always willing to give any game a shot.

Citadel is a simplistic version of a survival game, much like Conan Exiles or Rust. Players start off with nothing and must craft pretty much everything from things they find in the open world. This includes weapons, armor, potions, food items, and structures to build buildings. There are no hunger, thirst, or sleep meters. Instead, players must keep an eye on their health and mana. That’s pretty much it. Citadel is all about exploration, gathering, crafting, and combat.

Platforms: XB1, PC, PS4
MSRP: $39.99
Price I’d pay: $25

Players can choose to play in a world alone or with other players. This then can turn into a PvP game with players taking on each other while trying to destroy other players’ structures. For the ones that would prefer to go at it alone, they can modify their worlds to give more XP per whatever they do so that the progression is sped up a bit since they won’t have anyone around to help them out. It’s a nice touch and when wanting to actually explore the areas, I played in single player.

Along with crafting items, equipment, and buildings, players are also tasked with crafting new spells. Everyone in the game is a mage who can harness the energy of the elements. Players can throw in ingredients into a spell they’re crafting to give it modifiers or even change the element of the spell. Then, they can craft the spell to have a different effect, like one that targets the player character or one that has an area of effect. It’s very intuitive and works very well.

Learning all these new recipes and plans for things costs skill points from leveling up, and it will take a long time to learn everything. In fact, in the beginning, players will be taking on quest from NPCs that usually revolve around killing a certain number of enemies or gathering a certain thing. It’s a bit of a slog and one that players will find a little tedious after about four quests.

This game mainly revolves around making your own fun. Much like Minecraft, players will find more in the crafting and building over anything. Sure, there are quests to do and enemies to fight, but I can easily see this game hitting bigger with the sandbox crafting game crowd over the RPG players.

Visually, the game looks pretty great. The colorful areas and fantasy world are very nice to look at, especially on the Xbox One X. There’s only one big problem – the framerate. There are times the game runs fine, but other times where I honestly though the game had locked up on me, only to find out it was stuttering so badly that I was able to count the frames.

There are a few things thatjust feel clunky as well. The movement is a little stiff, but the biggest issue is trying to actually place crafted things in the world, just placing some wood planks down while trying to build a structure took me 15 minutes of searching the options and finally watching a YouTube video that showed me how to do it. This game was obviously built with a keyboard in mind.

Obviously, the multiplayer is a big draw and as of this writing, I was able to find at least three servers that always had people playing in them, but it does beg the question on how many people actually picked this game up and how long will they be playing it. With a few buddies, this game could create some good open world fun for a good amount of hours, but without a full player base, there may not be much to grab hold of after most people leave. Let’s just hope the support for the game continues.

I didn’t mind Citadel. It was the first of its style that I have ever actually played. I now realize the open world sandbox “do whatever you want” kind of games are not really for me, but I can easily see fans of this genre can have some fun here even with the shallow quest system, some clunky controls and the technical issues.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.