Citadale - The Ancestral Strain

I went into Citadale - The Ancestral Strain with genuine goodwill, the kind you build up when you see a solo developer (ERMedia, one person by most accounts) quietly releasing entry after entry in a self-made franchise that almost nobody covers. There is something admirable about that stubbornness. Unfortunately, admiration and enjoyment are different things, and this fourth mainline chapter in the Citadale series sits uneasily between them. The game is a stage-based retro action platformer, closer in spirit to the linear, level-select side of classic Castlevania than to any modern Metroidvania. You play as Arion Dorleac, wielding the Shadow Blade against the returning villain Rhogul and his army of undead, traps, and demons. The structure leans hard into old-school design conventions: long, punishing stages, tight platforming, and enemy placements that feel deliberately unkind. Hidden exits branch you into alternative stages, and two separate endings reward players who seek out the less obvious routes. On paper, that is a solid loop with meaningful replay incentive. In practice, the stage length is the core tension point - reviews consistently flag it, and not as a compliment. When levels run long without offering enough rhythmic variation in enemy types or environmental design, the challenge stops feeling earned and starts feeling like padding. The pixel art has a certain handmade quality that fans of the aesthetic will recognize immediately. It is not trying to be Shovel Knight. The sprite work is modest, the animations functional rather than expressive, and the color palette leans into gothic browns and midnight blues in a way that reads more atmospheric than technically impressive. The soundscape carries more weight than the visuals do - there is a gothic undertone to the music that suggests the developer has a genuine feel for the mood the series wants to project, even if the execution elsewhere is uneven. Controller support is included but comes with a caveat buried in the game's own documentation: certain gamepads, specifically 8bitdo controllers, may not function correctly due to engine limitations. That is a real friction point in 2025, and worth knowing before you commit to a particular input method. Keyboard play is the safer bet here. The Steam community has spoken fairly decisively - a mostly-negative rating from 11 reviews, sitting at 36% positive. That is a thin sample, but the signal is consistent. The game is part of a larger ERMedia franchise bundle, which is probably its most compelling entry point: as a standalone purchase it is harder to justify unless you already have affection for the earlier Citadale titles and want to see the lore continue. If you discovered the series through the Legends Trilogy and want more, this scratches the same itch in roughly the same way. For everyone else, the rough edges are difficult to argue past.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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