Today I would like to present you a rather interesting project in a non-typical setting and with non-typical mechanics.

Citadel: Forged With Fire is an online Sandbox RPG with elements of sorcery and the ability to engage in combat with other players for territory. As a newly minted student of the magical arts, you will set out to explore the dangerous world of Ignus. Your goal is to make a name for yourself and achieve fame and power among the ruling Houses.

You have complete freedom of action. The player can form his own clan to battle with other players for territory, become a notorious hunter of other players, build massive and unique castles, tame mighty beasts to do your bidding, and explore uncharted territories to unravel their rich and intriguing history. The path to power and influence is up to you.

Sounds good, right? But how is it really?

As with most online sandboxes, the story is not the first place in the game. In our case, there is none. But in order to fill in the sector of the story, I will note that it’s quite an interesting setting. The player will play as a mage in a typical fantasy game world. In his travels you will encounter orcs, zombies, dragons, magic towers with points of rapid movement, caves, etc. Also scattered across the map are camps with enemies who guard chests with valuable items, which should motivate the player to clear them. The world itself consists of two biomes, forest and snow. Here I would also note that you only need to play in co-op or online mode, as one in the game:
a) will not be easy,
b) just do nothing.

Speaking of gameplay, the first thing I noticed is a relatively fine-tuned server. Creating your server, you can determine the experience modifier, choose PVP or PVE mode, limited weight or not. And what is most attractive is the presence of “unlimited resources” mode. On the one hand, this tab kills grind completely, because you no longer need to collect resources to make items. It’s enough to open a recipe with a certain LVL and pump it with skill points. On the other hand there is so much grind in the game, that to build your own castle or to craft more or less advanced items the lion’s share of time is spent on grind and you can safely forget about the exploration of the world.

Like any RPG, Citadel: Forged With Fire has its own progression implemented in the form of the LVL-ing of the character. With each level the character can pump up one characteristic, such as “damage, health, mana and allowable weight” and several points in knowledge, thereby opening up new recipes for crafting furniture, workbenches, ammunition and the like. It should pay tribute to the developers, the character receives EXP not only for completing quests and battles with mobs, but also for crafting things, building and collecting rare resources. The list of recipes is quite impressive, it includes different types of armor, weapons, accessories, and a large number of elements associated with the construction of their homes.

Various junk in a heap, so there’s room to run wild

Construction can safely be called one of the main positive aspects of the game. I at the time of writing, just started to equip his fortress on a gorgeous lake in a snowy biome, but traveling, I stumbled upon the buildings of other players and they inspired by their size and appearance. The game has a system of privatization of the territory, due to the so-called throne. Once the player lays the foundation for his castle, he will need to put the throne, which privatizes all further blocks in any way related to this throne. If you want to build a house not alone, but with your companions, level 5 opens up the possibility of creating a common house. You only need to put your companions on the list and each member of this house, can make changes to the construction.

However, you must understand that peaceful construction is only available in PVE mode, and with certain server settings for your throne requires care or over time it will collapse, and all your building will lose its status as a private. If you play in PVP mode, you also need to build traps for your building, which will not allow attackers to destroy the throne and seize the castle.

Already by the evening after the release, someone managed to build such a machina

As a separate plus I would like to mention the absence of survival elements, forcing the player to constantly spend time not on construction with the exploration of the world, and the search for food, water heat and other nonsense. The game has no such thing, so the player is free to do whatever he wants.

Well, the last feature of the game, refers to the ability to fly on a broomstick and taming of wild animals. For the first you just need to get a level 10 and personal transport, albeit not the fastest in your pocket. For the second, you need companions to help tame the wild beast, up to dragons, thereby helping to tame them.

Some people, create a field for Quiditch from the novel of the same name

What I couldn’t make up my mind about was the combat system. The system is mostly based on fighting with magic using a wand, staff or magic gloves. However, the player is free to choose a simple melee weapon, which in some cases can be much more effective. The very idea of fighting with magic alone appeals to me, considering that the visual effect of the skills is made very juicy and bright, but there are some negative aspects.

First of all, the game has a very strange and sparse skill system. By default, the character only owns the school of sorcery, and to acquire the skills of other schools, the player has to look for magic spheres. It is impossible to combine spheres with each other, and each of them gives only 4 skills, of which only 2 can be used on weapons. And here begins the difficulty.

A character can carry 4 types of weapons, each type of weapon can hold only 2 skills out of the 4. The skills themselves are usually divided into an area attack, a specific enemy, a buffing skin, and a support skin. It is impossible to find out what a skill does without putting it in the weapon box, and in case you use spheres, each attempt to find out the ability of your skill, will cost you 1 sphere. Such a system, in addition to forcing a waste of not rare, but not infinite spheres, deprives the possibility as well to carry out related combinations. For the alternation of different skills, you have to frantically switch between the weapon, which are assigned one or another ability.

In addition to the problems with combinations, the game observed a very killed hit box and through too annoying targeting. In the first case, the opponents will hit you even if you are a few meters away, dodging or running away from him. In the second case, enemies will annoyingly chase you until you take off, hide in a peaceful area or go into the water.

If the bear has his paws up there is nothing to save you)

There is also a problem with the level of the opponents. If the starting points, the opponents are more or less balanced in level, in a couple of hundred meters their level is noticeably high. Thus not allowing you to explore another biome without spending a lot of time on pumping. Reading the reviews of players who have spent more time in the game, some note the inability to pass the final dungeon in solo mode because of the overly high complexity.

Another disadvantage I would like to refer to the semi-empty world. Certainly, there are many camps with enemies, dungeons and chests in the game, but it’s all very local. In places where there is no such activity, it is quite sad. Also not happy with the quest system. Games of such a setting allow you to implement a lot of options for quests, or at least diversify the banal fetch – serve. In Citadel: Forged With Fire, there are only tutorial tasks, which by the way can be repeated at each starting point and get extra experience, and daily tasks on the type to pick n amount of grass and kill n number of animals.

Poisonous days and romantic nights

Speaking of graphics, with great joy I will note the almost perfect optimization. On ultra settings the game runs at a smooth 60 frames at Full HD resolution. The world itself looks very colorful, and perfectly copes with the goal to convey a fantasy setting. However, in my opinion, the developers went too much with acid colors, which can cut the eye in the morning, but the nights in the game are very atmospheric. I am also happy about the visual diversity of the opponents, which let the mechanics are similar to each other, but the variety of opponents is quite large. For all the beauty of the game is responsible not unknown to you engine, which appears in almost every my review.

Sound component alas can not boast such achievements. The music in the menu is quite epic, no doubt, but in the game itself I did not notice any variety of soundtracks. Also, the game has some problems with sound effects. So, for example, wandering around the world, the game can make quite a loud sound to alert the player that somewhere are fighting mobs, even though the enemies themselves will be at a decent distance.

Not bad, but you can do much better

Maybe it was the long vacation that spoiled my taste in gaming, or maybe good optimization where you don’t expect it clouded my view, but Citadel: Forged With Fire really pulled me in. And if it weren’t for other games to familiarize myself with, I would have spent a lot more time in the game. The game has good graphics, optimization, a lot of abilities to build your castle and nice mesh. Many complain about the various bugs, I have not met them. If the developers will work with combat system, content and balance, they can get quite good game. This game will suit those who primarily miss sandboxes and only then those who want to dive into the fantasy world. This is a game I recommend you to check out, and whether it will pull you in or not is up to you to decide.

Thank you for your attention, don’t use magic outside of games and see you soon.