Citadels

Citadels is a real-time strategy game set against an Arthurian backdrop, developed by Games Distillery and published by HandyGames. On paper the pitch is reasonable: you command King Arthur's forces, manage a castle economy, and fight off waves of enemies across a campaign following the legendary king's rise and fall. Base building, unit production, resource gathering - the familiar RTS checklist is present. The reality of what shipped, however, is a different story. With a Metacritic score of 20 and only 15 percent positive Steam reviews from nearly 500 players, Citadels sits in genuinely rare territory. This is not a niche-audience misfire or a rough-around-the-edges indie that divided opinion. The consistent complaints across reviews point to severe bugs at launch, an AI that struggles to function correctly, pathfinding that breaks unit behavior in basic scenarios, and a campaign that becomes difficult to complete not because of difficulty design but because of outright technical failure. From a decision-depth standpoint - the thing I care about most in strategy - there is very little meaningful choice when the systems underneath refuse to work reliably. The tutorial does exist, and the Arthurian setting gives the game a visual identity that is at least distinct. Castle sieges and the idea of defending or attacking fortified positions had real potential here. A strategy game built around the mechanics of medieval fortification and siege warfare, with some narrative scaffolding around Arthur and his knights, could have found an audience. But potential and execution are two different columns in the spreadsheet, and Citadels scores poorly in the second one. For newcomers to the RTS genre looking for an entry point, there are far better options that will teach you mechanics correctly and reward the hours you put in. For veteran strategy players hoping to find a hidden gem underneath the low score, the reviews suggest there is not much to excavate. The mod ecosystem on Steam is effectively nonexistent, which removes one of the usual lifelines for a game with a troubled launch. Updates have not meaningfully reversed the critical consensus since release. I will occasionally argue that a poorly-reviewed grand strategy title deserves a second look if the complexity is misunderstood or the difficulty is mislabeled as bad design. Citadels does not qualify for that defense. The numbers here are not the result of a high skill floor or a demanding simulation model. They reflect a product that did not meet basic functional standards. File it under "historical curiosity" rather than anything you should spend time on.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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