Critadel Reviews

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] I once heard from someone that the first two or three hours of any game is a very important part of them; Because many players gauge the quality of their experience in the beginning hours to see if a game is actually worth continuing past that point and if they are not satisfied, they're going to drop it. I kinda agree with this statement. With the way refund systems work and the fact that many of us are very busy with our lives, not being able to dedicate our limited free time to waste on something we do not enjoy, this time period is indeed very important. Something needs to be there in a game to interest you and drive you to continue with it, and this becomes more important if that game is a roguelite, as this specific genre relies on the longetivity of its experience. I think it's now obvious why this review is a negative one, right? [h2]It looks good, BUT...[/h2] Critadel is a roguelite twin-stick shooter which utilizes a side-view camera, something akin to games like Fury Unleashed and Neon Abyss, which means it feels more like a run'n gun rather than what you usually see from this genre. Every level in the game is randomly generated using a pre-made batch of rooms and the player can use various weapons & equipment given to them by the RNG drops to overcome the enemies, even upgrading those guns in various ways to make them more powerful. Then there's the synergy system, which rewards you with various buffs depending on the weapon and bullet types you have equipped at a given time. All of these give you this first impression that the game should be good, but actually the opposite is true. Critadel is seriously flawed, to the point of feeling like an unfinished early access game. It has so many critical problems that are quite baffling to see, as games that came years before it had completely solved them, and the new things it offers on its own bring nothing new to the table. The more you play Critadel, the more you get underwhelmed and will start to feel like maybe most of the development focus was on the eye-catching pixel art rather than the gameplay. [h2]Randomization? What's that?[/h2] The biggest problem with Critadel is how it loses steam about 2 hours into the gameplay and fails to give you any encouragement to push forward. It quickly starts to turn into a repetitive borefest, which is quite disasterous for a roguelite. The story plot is an uninteresting cliché, lengthy side missions have no worthwhile rewards, playable characters don't feel very different from each other aside from their starting weapon, and to add a cherry on top of everything, the randomization is also very poorly done. Not only the number of rooms you get in each level is pretty limited, but all of them have pre-determined enemy spawns; Which means the exact same enemies will always spawn in exact same locations. After two hours, you have seen everything in the first 3-4 levels and yet the game wants you to keep going. In absense of mechanics that exploit such limitations (e.g. Fury Unleashed's combo system), this makes for a severe case of repetition. You will run into the same special room in a level multiple times, with them even appearing back to back in some cases. You can encounter three shops in one level, with two of them being right next to each other! You can desperately hope for a good weapon to drop, only to get duplicates of the common weapons that you already have and don't need! [h2]But nothing is as bad as the meta progression...[/h2] Meta progression feels almost nonexistent in this game, which is one of the big reasons why it feels so boring. You can get new passive abilities with the XP you get after finishing a run, but you can't do much with the premium currency (soul cubes) that you get from defeating the bosses. Soul cubes are only used to unlock teleport stations (which are useless & we'll get to them later), unlock the extra characters and their costumes, opening cheap optional chests mid-run and getting cheap random items before starting a new run. The game unlocks new equipment by itself, so you never get to use you runs' rewards for them. Every time you beat a boss at the end of an even numbered floor, you will bring a colored core back to your base which unlocks a big batch of weapons and items for free, that you'll later find in your runs. You won't unlock these yourself, so your failed runs have no meaning and will be equal to wasted time. Not only that, it also makes things harder for players unable to beat those bosses, as many of the weapons are incredibly useless. [h2]Where did they get these guns from? Temu? Wish?[/h2] The majority of the available weapons, and especially the common ones, absolutely BLOW in this game. Unless you have a powerful weapon in your hand, the rest of them will feel like peashooters that barely damage the enemies, or literal jokes that do absolutely nothing to help you. The game expects you to change this situation using the synergy system, but that itself is another can of worms. The synergy system gives you various buffs depending on what weapons you have. If you have a specific number of weapons with the same type (rifle, pistol, etc.) or bullet types of the same kind (normal, laser, etc.) you'll get a buff. So you will be encouraged to pick up as many weapons as you can. Seems harmless, but there are two big problems with this system. One, you have to cycle through all your weapons in real time. There is no quick select ability like Enter the Gungeon to allow you switch between weapons in a firefight and not get distracted. Two, you only get ammo for your weapons by finding and spending money in a specific, RNG-based level tile. You can also resupply if you get a duplicate, but goodluck finding those for your good weapons. This literally forces you to keep playing with the bad guns and leave the good ones for the bosses, which ruins the fun. [h2]But wait! THERE'S MORE![/h2] Aside from all of the issues which I talked about so far, there are also a bunch of others that either add nothing to the game at best, and decrease its value at worst. The map is an unnecessary addition that adds nothing to the regular roguelite formula, and you can remove it without anything changing. You cannot go back to where you once were, and cannot see everything everywhere all at once, so it serves no purpose. If the map worked akin to something like Slay the Spire, where you can see the whole map and try to plan your progression ahead of time, we could have had something unique here. Teleporter is completely useless and makes the game unbeatable. After teleporting to your desired floor, you'll have to fight all of the tougher enemies with your basic starter weapon, praying to RNG gods to find a better weapon soon or your run is over. And the compensation of in-run currency is in no way helpful. Parts of the environment are in the foreground which obstruct your view, hiding hazards behind them. The artstyle fails to tell you which parts of environment can be passed/shot through at times. Enemies can attack you from offscreen. And if you REALLY want to see how little care was put into maintaining the game, then please look at the chests you can find mid-run that unlock with soul cubes, yet show you the image for the other currency! How is this mistake still in the game after roughly 3 years and no one has spotted it?! [h2]TL;DR[/h2] Another example of the weakest roguelites on Steam. Bad implementation of randomized content, lack of a proper meta progression and various other big issues all make for a repetitive and boring game.