It is clear that a lot of hard labor went into Citadels, but it is difficult to ascertain whether it was a labor of love. If it was, it never shines through. Citadels feels empty of spirit, empty of passion and the crashes destroy what little fun there is to be had playing it.

Citadels makes Stronghold 3 look like a masterpiece.

Put it back in the oven; this game is not ready. Citadels is simply tedious to play. I never once found myself having any semblance of fun. Not only is Citadels not worth the $40 price tag it is somehow selling for, I couldn’t recommend this game even if it were free-to-play.

There might be an honest-to-goodness game somewhere in here, lurking underneath the slew of technical issues, uninspired gameplay, game-breaking mechanics and cryptic explanations for how everything fits together. Not that the game would have fit together in the first place, anyway. Whatever may be underneath the game, it’s really not worth the trouble of finding out.

Citadels is a sorry mess that should be avoided. Perhaps the developers will fix at least the basic functions in a few months but there is nothing here that raises any hope that it will even match its competitors then.

Not only is Citadels an incredibly awful mixture of Stronghold and Age of Empires with outdated graphics, it also features an abundance of bugs: Persistent crashes, physics errors, AI mishaps and non-existent path-finding are but the tip of the iceberg.