Bite-sized Review:
Citadelum

By Chris Picone, 06 November 2024

Citadelum is a lovely new citybuilder set in Ancient Rome.  It features all the normal modern citybuilder hallmarks but also includes some limited exploration and even combat.  

Aesthetics

Citadelum's a beautiful game.  Lovely and detailed, the city comes to life as your plebs till the fields, roam the city carting wheelbarrows full of goods to and fro, and visit celebrations and events.  Better: You can zoom all the way in so you can look inside the buildings as your citizens move about inside their homes, visit the baths, it looks great and it's all very engaging.  Even the UI's clear, good looking, and efficient.  Exploration mode sees you looking at tokens on a top-down map and combat's like a tiny stripped down version of a combat scene from Total War. 

Gameplay

The citybuilder aspect's pretty straight-forward. Build houses for your citizens; plebs work, patricians pay taxes. Obviously you'll have to feed them, supply water, all the usual stuff.  As you hit certain benchmarks, you'll achieve higher levels of prestige, unlocking new buildings and options. There's a good range of all the expected buildings - various farms, decorations, military, theatres, circus, baths, all the classics.  The building part of the game's surprisingly simple. Occasionally the gods will get angry and come down to burn a few buildings, and there's a chance of getting attacked, but generally speaking it's really easy to manage your economy and so growth the game's all about growth and expansion with very little challenge. One thing the devs nailed is the growth curve - it feels like there's always something to do and I never seemed to need to fast forward to skip until I could do things again. The combat's similarly simple. Although it looks like Total War, it's pretty much all automatic, so if you've got a bigger army than the other guy you're going to win.   What could have been Citadelum's best feature is the missions. They each have a little history attached and set goals to achieve in order to progress but the progression of the goals from one mission to the next are a little illogical and usually easy to achieve. Unfortunately, this does lend to a sense of repetition after the first few games when the novelty wears off.

Verdict

Citadelum's a very chill building experience. If that's what you're looking for, and you love the Roman theme, you'll have fun with it. If you're looking for a challenge, or more in-depth gameplay, it misses the mark. Having said that, Citadelum also features a sandbox and access to user-made missions, so there's certainly plenty of potential. 

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2603020/Citadelum/