Citadelum Review: A Solid Roman City Builder Held Back by Ambitious but Unrefined Features

Roman themed city builders are back on the menu - and you have no idea how happy it makes me to say that. 

This is Citadelum. Here you’ll have to plan around your aqueduct network, command legions to drive back barbarian rabbles - and organise gladiator bouts and theatre festivals for your citizens. You’ll have to think about agriculture, livestock, industry, weapons manufacturing, and even dealing with the whims of the gods.

This is for anyone who pines for days of city builders past, who’s got an itch to make a sprawling marble metropolis. It’s got a lot of moving parts, but it's simple enough to pick up and play - giving it a very friendly barrier of entry. 

Developing Your City and Building the Roman Dream

Your budding Roman city has two citizen classes. The Plebeians - who do all the work, and the Patricians, who do nothing. You might wonder why you want these layabouts at all - and it's simple. They pay taxes. Money makes everything turn in Citadelum. 

Both citizen classes have needs, and as you provide for them, their homes will rank up. They’ll contribute more to the workforce, and pay additional taxes for your coffers. So you’ve always got a new target to aim for, a new luxury or foodstuff to get into production. You’re always expanding, but that’s all very painless given the game’s intuitive building mechanics.

It uses a grid system, which is unsurprising - Romans loved straight lines. Houses must be in range of various services to function. Every building is intricate and interesting, they place together nicely to create a satisfying and varied city. Every single one has a detailed interior, which you can peer into and have a watch of your citizens if you're so inclined.

Decorations are tied to advancement, so you’ll have to spruce up your town to advance through the tiers. Or come up with an efficient grid system you can infinitely repeat ‘cos you’re not very good at making things look nice.

To feed your citizens, you need agriculture, and to construct your infrastructure and equip your legion, you’ll need industry. Resources in the game are attached to production chains - but these are all very simple. One input to one output - so it's linear across the board. Whether that’s a positive or a negative for you, depends on how much you like production chains.

The same thing goes for logistics. It exists as a mechanic in the game, but it’s not particularly complex. Nearly every problem I faced could be fixed by placing more storage buildings and throwing workers at them. 

It starts off steady, but as your town swells, you’ll hit milestones and unlock new buildings, resources, and mechanics. 

Getting Bigger: Worship and Warfare

At a point, the gods will start to take notice of you. They’ll want temples built in their honour and festivals thrown on their behalf. Doing so will grant their favour. However, if you shun the gods and shirk your duties - then they’ll hop down from the heavens and go on a mini rampage.

This is a really interesting twist, and something that sets Citadelum apart from the pack. And I like it - in theory. However, the more I played, the more I found myself ignoring this mechanic. The benefits aren’t that strong, and the negatives are easy to counteract. At a point I realised that you can simply ignore festivals almost entirely. Instead I opted to offload a few dozen pigs at each temple and sacrifice them to appease the gods. Sorry piggies.

As your population swells you’ll also garner the attention of barbarian tribes, who will try and raid, pillage and burn your settlement - as barbarians tend to do. 

Again, another mechanic I like in theory - but in reality they appear at a random position - and they’re simply a minor annoyance - until you get guard towers, in which case they stop being a problem altogether. They charge towards the nearest legionnaire, and die fairly easily. I love base defence as a system in city builders, but this felt quite lacklustre. 

The World Stage 

Now, all that is just the concerns of your city. In Citadelum, there’s a wider world to think about. This is where the game steps away from the genre and really feels quite individual. You’ll send out scouts to chart nearby regions, finding other towns to trade with, relics to offer to the gods, or yet more barbarians threatening your luxurious urban lifestyle. 

Here’s where all those weapons and soldiers you’ve been amassing come into play. You can raise a legion, have it march around the world, and combat those barbarian hordes. When you find an enemy to scrap with, you’re taken to a battle map. Here you’ll set up your legions and send them charging forward - though you can issue some basic commands in the heat of battle.

The combat is quite simple. Three unit classes, Infantry, Cavalry and Archers. Each one counters another in a rock-paper-scissors system. And that’s fine, but it does make me wonder - why are infantry countered by archers? Roman legionnaires were quite famous for having shield formations that negated arrow fire. Basically a classical armoured vehicle.

The battle screens are a nice addition that are quite fun initially. They were also way more bloody than I was expecting them to be. Like a Quentinus Tarantinus flick. As a scenario progresses however, sheer numbers will win any battle. When you’ve got plenty of men to spare, these lose their edge - as well as their novelty.

Inconsistencies and Missed Opportunities

And that’s a running theme - the combat, the city defence, the religion - they are great ideas, but they wear thin - to the point where I don’t feel like they add to the game. All these different systems, they don’t logically link together.

You can field a massive army and have it camped outside your city, but they’re powerless to do anything to the 12 naked barbarians that somehow make it through and attack your town centre.

The game ships with several maps and missions, but they all blend together. In each, you’re given a big open space to build with, and plenty of resource nodes. You end up just doing the same thing over and over. The objectives are just things you would complete along the way anyway - there’s no real challenge, or need to step away and try something different.

For a game that’s so dense in some areas, it feels empty in others. I loved the way that citizens flood the streets. It made the game feel alive. Until you turn off the music and listen, and there’s no chatter, no hustle and bustle, no Roman city clatter. 

Exceptional Craftsmanship: What Citadelum Gets Right

And that took me by surprise, because other parts of the game are filled with love and care and attention to detail. They’ve gone to immense effort to make every building interesting inside and out - and it really is impressive.

The tools you’re given are good. The game works with you to create interesting cities. Those mechanics are all really tight. It is forgiving, logical, and thoroughly enjoyable. 

The systems I had issues with, religion, war, city defence, the world at large - I like that these are features. They do make the game feel richer than just a standard city builder. As it stands, they need work, but the fact that they are there paints this as something really unique. 

It’s also got built in modding tools, and easy ways to share maps and campaigns for would-be map makers, which is always such a great thing to see. 

A Roman Dream That Captivates, Yet Confounds

So Citadelum has got its positives, as well as some unavoidable weak spots. Fundamentally, what it does well, it does very well. The issues I had, it wasn’t that these examples were out of place or bad systems - they just weren’t as fleshed out or compelling as the rest of the game. 

At the end of the day, I enjoyed playing it. I grew frustrated at times, yes, but the act of building my city, constructing specialised districts, and extorting as many taxes as I could from my Patricians, it kept me coming back.

I went into this game wanting to build a lovely, imposing Roman city, and the game provided that. The areas that fell short weren’t the selling points of the game by any means. Yes, the problems may have been frequent - but they didn't take away from the core purpose of the game. 

Some of the issues I faced - they’ll affect everyone who plays this. Others are a matter of taste. I felt the battles, siege and religion mechanics weren’t fleshed out enough. You might disagree. I would have preferred more complexity in the production chains and logistics - some of you prefer it as it is. For the record, things like that, I’m not going to mark a game down because of it. That’s just taste.

If you’re looking at this because you want to build a compelling Roman city - this provides that. The actual city building side of the game is really solid. If the game was just that, I’d have far fewer issues with it. 

However, if you’re expecting this big, grand title with city building at the bottom, mixed with a trading economy, tactical combat - and multifaceted exploration - it isn’t that. These things exist, but they’re on the periphery. It doesn’t tick all the boxes it sets out to - but it ticks the main one.

It’s also very beginner friendly. There are threats, but they won’t end your game. The city milestone caps can leave you a bit out of your depth but it is a game you can take at your own pace. If you get attacked, so be it. You lose a couple of buildings. You can rebuild them with the click of a button. 

It isn’t punishing. The UI is intuitive and helpful. Everything is laid out nicely and for the most part, the game works with you. Seasoned city builders might scoff at the simplification of some elements, but for many - it's a very accessible title.