Sacred Citadel Review – PC

I love a great beat-em up and always have since the days of the arcade generation and my early Nintendo days. That’s why when I heard that Sacred, an action RPG franchise that I’m fond of, was getting a side-scrolling adventure in the form of Sacred Citadel for PC, I had to check it out. I will admit that I had a little trepidation about this game going in, as I’ve found that most deviations from a series’ bread and butter formula usually don’t go over that well.

I can happily say that I wasn’t disappointed about Citadel’s overall package through after going though both the single player and multiplayer modes. Sacred Citadel’s story follows four adventurers as they seek to chase after the enemies that attack a village in search of a powerful artifact that when combined with a second one will grant the wielder immense power. As you progress though each of Citadel’s four main acts you’ll encounter a variety of new enemies, mini-bosses and the inevitable act boss at the end of each chapter.

One of the odd things that I noticed starting out is that despite there being four characters to choose from, Sacred Citadel only allows three people to play co-op at any given time. Personally I think it was more of a matter of character balance and less of the issue that things would be a lot more chaotic on the screen. Each of the four characters: Warrior, Mage, Shaman and Ranger start out as dual sword-wielding combatants, with their own secondary weapon unique to their own role like a bow for the ranger, staff for the mage, etc. While each of the characters may seem like shallowly designed stereotypes with no background beyond a brief description in the manual, there are actually differences in combat tactics between all of them.

For example the “dodge roll” is different for each character and fits their role. The Seraphim mage can pirouette around the battlefield while the Ranger does a tumble roll which I used to great effect dodging enemy attacks. I did experiment with each of the classes but choose the Ranger for both my single and multiplayer playthroughs due to his ability to keep most enemies at bay especially at higher levels. Teaming up with a friend or random player over Steam is enjoyable and offers some excellent combat moments. When I teamed up with a fellow friend and reviewer, we often decimated enemies with a mage/ranger duo once we got a rhythm down, tweaking it slightly as needed as we encountered new enemies or variants. Every once in a while, the developer mixes things up by throwing in a mount to use such as tank or giant enemy creature that can cause localized destruction on enemies in your vicinity, which is a lot of fun and allows for your finger to take a brief break from the button combos.

I would also mention that each character and player slot has their own “game saves” as it were. Player one can get their Ranger up in level but if they want to use a different class you start over from the beginning of the game, which is good because a low level character wouldn’t stand a chance in the later acts even with another high-level character. The same goes for each player in both the on and offline modes.

Sacred Citadel, while deviating from the franchise’s traditional gameplay, still features some RPG elements. For starters, as you defeat enemies you gain XP and level up unlocking new abilities like the Bomb Shot at higher levels. Each character also gains a super attack by filling a gauge that can be triggered with a press of a button. The Ranger’s ultimate attack is so devastatingly awesome that you have to wait until around level 20 to use it and for good reason. Most mini-bosses can be defeated by just using it let alone clearing a screen full of enemies. And nothing puts a smile on your face like having your Mage turn several enemies into clucking chickens.

Another awesome RPG element is all the various weapons, armor and items you can purchase or earn from loot drops. Most of the weapons in Citadel have varying elemental effects such as causing fire or ice damage or weakening defenses, but they also have natural attributes as well like sword being faster to swing for fast melee or maces having the ability to potentially stun enemies. As you level up you spend points into one of the four skill attributes: Attack, Defense, Dexterity and Power to make your character stronger but there is another way to temporarily boost your stats with Crystals. These crystals only last for 10 minutes at a time and only three can be equipped once. It should also be noted that it is a really bad idea to spend all your points into one attribute track as the game does force your change up tactics, especially on solo runs later on in the game.

Sacred Citadel has a unique visual style with overall bright coloring and a cool, almost hand-drawn look and cell shading style when it comes to graphics. While the other games in the series take a more serious tone in the art department, Citadel goes for the cartoonish approach but still maintains a serious edge to it with nicely designed levels. The level designs are varied enough throughout the four acts that it kept the game constantly fresh. There is also the fact that you can move your characters not only left and right but up and down in a 2.5D space with enemies often attacking on multiple planes at the same time that make combat somewhat challenging and fast paced.

The only real issue I have with the game’s graphics is that the resolution maxes out at 1600X900 even in full-screen which is really off putting as 1920×1080 is the norm these days, especially if you are playing on your HDTV in Steam Big Picture mode. After several consecutive hours of playing though, even when on a 60” HDTV, I started to not really care about it as much as I thought I would given the nature of the art style. The lower resolution only affects the text which gets a bit blurry when you start stretching pixels to fit your native screen resolution. Regardless it’s still unusual that a company wouldn’t go for a 1080 output and worth mentioning. Hopefully a future patches fixes the issue.

Sacred Citadel is one of those brawlers that you could easily burn through in about six or so hours depending on if you play alone or not, but it adds just enough depth and character variation to make someone like me want to replay it as the other characters or try to complete the gambling challenges like beating a level under a time limit or not taking damage. That alone can add some replay value to it if you’re so inclined. There is also a Jungle Hunt DLC that adds an extra act to the game that you can tackle alone or with friends. Despite the developer’s weird resolution choice, Sacred Citadel was a rather enjoyable experience that will definitely hold off my anticipation of Sacred 3 for at least a little while. So if you want a pretty decent side-scrolling brawler to play alone or with a few of your friends then get Sacred Citadel on the Steam Store today.


Author: Jason Flick
Started my gaming life with a NES and copy of Mario at a young age. Since then I've found a love for all gaming things dealing with adventure, roleplaying and first person shooters across all systems, handhelds and PC. Joined up with Game Chronicles years ago to write about the games I love to play.

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