Feels like a set of ideas being tested more than a finished & cohesive game, in part due to every map using the same 3-5 textures and in part due to the really broad collection of gameplay mechanics. You have a set of stuff hinting towards tactical FPS gameplay like aiming down sights, gun jamming and bullet arcs, alongside some movement mechanics that mostly end up letting you sequence break or outright skip levels, and then a hunger meter which seems to be there mostly for vibes.

To be clear, I do enjoy the really wide net of mechanics, and the gunplay feels great once you get used to it, it's just that a lot of it feels extraneous to the challenges provided by the level design - at least on normal difficulty, you could probably just play it like unmodded Doom and be more or less fine. I'm hoping the followup, Beyond Citadel, ends up feeling more cohesive in that regard.

I love the gameplay here. Fun movement and a great balance of being able to go fast as fuck and being able to take your time by peeking around corners. Very satisfying gunplay especially with reloading being a tad more nuanced than usual, fun level design, some pretty good music. Overall, a damn fine FPS!

I do have two big gripes with it though. First one is the environments, which look the same for the entire game. The second is the bosses, which just suck ass as they just mostly stand around spamming shit while you unload 500 bullets into them hoping they just fuck off and die already.

Enemy variety is also weak, but it works well enough for the game's length.

I hope the sequel (Beyond Citadel, IIRC) fixes these issues. It actually seems like it does improve on them from what I've seen of the demo so far, at least, while also doubling down on the parts I did like!

PS: anyone who calls it "anime Doom" has not played Doom. Also, anyone who gets filtered by weapons being projectile-based (with arcs and shit) and the reload mechanics is honestly a moron.

uoooh, another anime shooter, seriously though I know this game from gmanlives, I like doom and wolfenstein so why don't try this one out, because the nature of unreal engine, this game is quite heavy and crash a lot on my potato laptop, but I can still finished it albeit in easiest difficulty, it's hard to keep consistence framerate and when bosses unleashed all their balls, the frames drop like hell, but hey it's still a a very fun journey, your mission is simple go through the citadel and descending to kill the sleeping god, I don't know why but for lore reason you can just search on steam discussion or on the author discord, this game is heavily focused on gameplay and parkour like boomer shooter, your arsenal consist of many weapons that none of them feel weak, all of them is powerful in the right time and place, beware though dual wieilding some weapon may cause frame drop and funny glitches, in default the game contains intense gore and you can disable it on setting but what fun in that? the enemy and the sprites looks very good, all enemy shoot projectiles so your ability to dodge will be tested, and your parkour skills will be strained in some levels, even on easy level the enemies are quite challenging with me died many times, this game encourage to explore and give many loots along the way, overall a very good experience, this game deserve a video on youtube, a hidden gem

(copying my steam review to here)

one of the only games where i have felt the joy of mjolnir recon unit 54's slippy slidey movement (with a very thrilling double jump and sprint) combined with some odd, granular mechanics like managing an overall hunger meter that controls the cap of your hp and stamina. this terrifying cyborg martyr girl needs her snacks.

the weapons are awesome, the shotgun shreds as it would have to, double flechettes are a blast (alongside the gratification of actually getting to use them where Marathon: Infinity gives you about 3 ammo drops for it and then leaves you dry for the rest of the runtime) and they seem to be kind of controversial here but i LOVE the reload mechanics. many tense situations sprung up where i had forgotten to replace a clip or jam some bullets back into my magnum and it was scramble or die, which i found exciting (and rewarding to master)

biggest issue imo is that it crashes a lot and theres only one set of environmental textures so i really hope you like Being In The Citadel. the translation is also rough, but given the one person team i'm not inclined to harp on it. personally i think the level design more than makes up for the sameyness because every new area still felt rewarding to explore - hi tycho! it also really reminds me of marathon's commitment to taking place largely in one place except marathon is very hit or miss with it and the citadel knocks it out of the park

anyway this is super long i played it bc i <3 marathon and it gave me all that and much more thumbsup

Один самых кровавых ретро-шутеров после Брутал Дума.
Богатый арсенал оружия, почти каждое из которых имеет альтернативный вид стрельбы. Хороший дизайн персонажей, но этого не могу сказать про окружение. Оно не блещет разнообразием, но есть разрушаемые стены, пусть и не везде.
Бегать и стрелять одно удовольствие. Так бы поставил 4.5, но игра раз 5 за прохождение крашнулась.

Отдельно хочу отметить, тот факт, что у героини есть не только ноги, но и грудь, лол.

Pretty good retro-style FPS. But instead of being dynamic and crazy like it's many counterparts, it's more tactical and moody. You move slower, enemies are very deadly, your health restricted by hunger meter (which acts as a kind of second health bar - I found this mechanic rather underdeveloped, but it's still interesting idea, and it does not get in the way of action), you can lean, aim down sight, crouch to reduce sight jitter, and this game even have realistic, relatively complex reload mechanic. There are almost no saves throughout the levels, which gives weight and consequences to death. Citadel encourages you to play very carefully and tactically, and I very much enjoyed this tense gameplay. Game feel in this game is also incredible, every weapon bangs and clangs magnificently.

Guns look, sound and twitch in an incredibly impactful way. Every burst of shots is accompanied by a barrage of shell casings clanking very satisfyingly, and every kill is accompanied by an explosion of gibs. Gibs system is very thoughtfully done, and it makes killing enemies incredibly enjoyable.

The world around you is an abstract, greenish metal hellscape under heavy scarlet sky, populated with your former comrades who have gone insane. Heavily featured gore punctuates not only how fun it is to spray walls with their guts, but also how pitiful it would be to be in their place - you often see ripped faces of your enemies, full of regret and sorrow amidst the wreckage you just caused.

Citadel can feel very amateurish at times - visual design of maps is always the same and too monotonous, enemy design is far too boring compared to main character and bosses, a couple of music tracks do not fit the mood, and the game becomes too easy in later levels. But even amateurish elements of this game form a strangely alluring atmosphere.

Also, this game has the most disturbing yet satisfying flamethrower kill effects.

This game is a doozy...

Its pros are REALLY good and, its cons... REALLY bad

For the pros:
The levels are incredibly fun to explore and are well designed.

The playstyles and options you have are incredibly varied: you can play this like a movement heavy boomer shooter or a tactical FPS and both are very viable!

The weapons feel, AMAZING to use, they feel genuinely so satisfying!

The enemies are fun to tackle and challenging, and the vast variety of them makes each level feel refreshing to play.

The boss and enemy designs, and the story and setting of the game, are incredibly unique and eerie, it makes me so excited for tits sequel.

Tycho is Best boy

And the cons:
The entire game has like, 20 textures, the majority of them are this tealish blue, and while the designs of the levels are unique like I mentioned before, it makes their actual looks Very samey.

No unique music, the music that exists in-game is royalty free, and while they do fit the game's atmosphere and levels, none of them really stick with you.

The bosses are... non-animating PNGs that shoot stuff at you, they're incredibly boring to fight and feel extremely low effort.

Crashes, not a lot of them... but frequent enough to be annoying.

This was very obviously made by one person, and what they made is genuinely amazing for what it is, and the sequel already looks 10 times better, I very much look forward to seeing what they make next!

there's an unfortunate number of people whose knowledge of the citadel stops at "retro pervert fps". so we're gonna get this out of the way first: the guro is subtle enough that if the creator wasn't an anime artist much fewer people would been suspicious. i know a game where your modus operandi is "gib bitches" doesn't scream subtle, but the violence is standard fare for graphic shooters like postal 4. you'll be fine. you can also disable gore in the settings! point is, if you find guro gross, don't let that stop you.

despite what the boomshoot mcretro artstyle is immediately going to activate in everyone’s neurons, the citadel is NOT a doom clone! (or a quake clone!) personally, i identified more dna from that of the shadow warrior series, which the creator themselves cites as inspiration for the over-the-top gore, so you can’t call me racist for comparing two of the only first-person shooters to star japanese people.

you play as a freakishly agile anime chick with adorable hair. being a human in a world of robots (who are not all women, doekuramori just likes his characters andro), you will get curb stomped if you attempt to run and gun. in a post-ultrakill world where many of the popular indie shooters boil down to overstimulating power fantasies, i was excited to find that this game pushes you to take your time. soak in the level. manage your health and hunger bars. use your aim down sights and lean from behind corners to take out baddies stronger than you. when you do get to go fast, its in controlled, cathartic bursts. that slower pace reflects every aspect of the citadel’s design. for example, rather than aggressive wubs or shitty djent guitars, the soundtrack opts for melancholic piano & synths arrangements and ominous drones. even when it is aggressive (see: e3m4 - the downfall), it evokes desperation rather than testosterone. certified anime teardrop shit.

the detailed gore is another point i'd pin in the game's slow design tenants. in retro first perosn shooters, the gore tends to be homogenized. shoot a fucker and red blood spurts out as they fly back. explode a fucker and they are reduced to red chunks. it's a simple visual language where red=dead. in the citadel, things are a little more complex; the style here is dismemberment. on hit, enemies lose limbs or fall to the ground wounded, often with organs exposed in a very grotesque manner. hit an enemy hard enough and you’ll expose their insides completely, littering the ground with intestines. like, a lot of intestines. in a game like dusk, this would create visual clutter and lag as you mow down hordes of enemies. you're not intended to dash through every level like a lunatic. there's a stamina bar restricting you from doing that. the unusually elaborate gore provides a more, if nothing else, some extra moment-to-moment entertainment. i could go on and on about the pacing decisions. i'll leave it at this: the keyword is carefully.

i've noticed complaints about the repetitive visuals, likely as a side effect of the slow pace. i get where they're coming from. the limited tileset doesn't change. yet the levels had so much going on geometrically that i didn't even notice the repetition until these reviews pointed it out! there's an interesting emphasis on verticality not only in liberating moments ("video games peak at jumping from rooftop to rooftop"), but also in restrictive ones. the game is littered with facsimiles of buildings like a less underwhelming version of doom ii’s city levels. it never feels the same, even if it all looks more or less that way. the use of negative space here is also great. shoutout to e3m5! doekuramori knows how to get full mileage out of their building blocks.

we’re 600 words in and i still haven't mentioned the guns in this shooter? shit. uh, the shotguns in this game. there's two of them. they're my beautiful twin babies. yeah, there's like an assortment of weapons with an upgrade system and alt fires and - do you really care about all that when the game has TWO SHOTGUNS and BOTH of them are good? the sequel is going to have even more shotguns, so you better play that when it drops too.

conclusion paragraphs are for posers. play the citadel or my autistic ass will break into your house and eat your dog

It's an extremely short romp of a boomer shooter that could do with more interesting levels, but I'm not gonna pretend that the visceral hand-drawn art and the weighty weapons don't tickle the lizard part of my brain enough to find it enjoyable.

Just don't try to figure out what's going on with the story: the creator's attempts to explain it have resulted in diagrams that look like something that would be scribbled on the wall of an insane asylum and if you go back far enough you just end up seeing him try to say that he's not a guro artist despite nearly everything pointing it to him being one.

Interesting indie FPS. Kind of a mash-up of multiple gameplay elements and ideas; the aesthetics and level design are very clearly inspired by classic FPSes like Wolfenstein and Doom, yet there are several modern FPS elements in this game's design, such as aiming down sights, holding down a button to sprint, leaning, etc. Kind of a curious hybrid of ideas, but I think it generally works, in spite of itself. I mostly just wish the stamina/food/etc. meters weren't a thing, here.

Game is very gory, and almost all of the enemies are anime girls. This tends to lead people to feel uncomfortable with the game's level of gore and violence toward them. I wasn't really bothered by it personally, but I guess it's worth being aware of.

The Citadel's gunplay is okay, in that the weapons shoot and do damage and that's fun, but there are a lot of tacked on mechanics that don't fit with each other. Lean-aiming, low player health, and very particular timing and penalties around reloading indicate that The Citadel is played slow and tactically. Open levels, high move speeds, and roof-to-roof mobile combat suggest running and gunning. These mechanics don't support each other, and they don't overlap enough to warrant a "pick how you play" approach to the game. I found myself leaning into tactical play simply because such a play style has more mechanical punishments to juggle.

The Citadel's environment and prop art is acceptably bland; not good but with enough consistency to still create a readable artistic picture. The sound design doesn't do as well The music does fit the game, sometimes, but the remaining audio elements lack a purpose other than to check the box of being there, with one exception:

The Citadel's got a lot of moe murder, and it's unnervingly brutal. At first I thought that was the point: the painful, dissonant anguish of a world in such inhuman/posthuman peril. But the player is so empowered in their brutality that I feel like I'm supposed to enjoy it? It's very creepy, and not in an enjoyable way.

Barely disguised (and honestly pretty terrible) fetish be damned my boy can cook a non-traditional boomer FPS!

Hot on the heels of the retro FPS revival comes a pretty interesting take on the mind fuckery and cooky gunfeel from both Outlaws and Marathon (something the devs fully admit), combining the esoteric ramblings of Bungie's and the gameplay style of Lucasart's foray into first person action. In a pretty succesfull way, I might add. From the reload of the "meta-magnum" (Jodorowsky eat your heart out) to the fairly big selection of optional types of ammo and fire capacity the game gives you. The enemy positioning and space on the levels can create some really fun and tense situations, where you actually need to take into account reloading and ammo capacity.

It's origin from the faraway lands of Zipango adds, in my opinion, some interesting differences from the usual formula of western rooty tooty point and shooty, like the platforming being an integral part of the level structure and a pretty effective (I'm looking at you, Fi Da Puti Samurai) anime aesthetic.

Sadly the game has some pretty noticeable holes in it's presentation, like the almost absent plot besides the most wireframe justification for you to go from point A and B, given to you in the first 30 seconds of play. But first and foremost, my main gripe is the design of its enemies and even the protagonist itself. The fact the enemies explode into a shower of viscera and oddly sexual appendages is honestly a choice(tm) that I wish they kept on their personal drives and MAYBE ghost release it as a mod if they really wanted for the world to see it. And don't get me started on the actual designs of some characters, I dread for the devs if they ever do a Q&A and get asked their opinion on the age of consent worldwide.

All in all, a pretty good inclusion into the modern FPS landscape, never overstaying it's welcome. Don't check the devs' twitter.