Beyond Citadel Review - Proclaimers and Disclaimers

Get used to messing up the correct year on your documents for a while, because 2025 is hot on its heels after the true trash fire that was 2024. Still, you should always look to the start of the year to set your standards for what’s to come, and if Beyond Citadel is anything to go by? Well, then the year is going to get weird.

This is the latest title from solo Japanese developer Doekuramori, and the long-awaited sequel to their 2020 DOOM-like FPS The Citadel. You play as “The Martyr”, humanity’s only hope against a heavenly mandate which has caused the near-extinction of Earth’s population, reducing it to a meager 144,000. After the Martyr’s brother sacrifices himself to save her from an angelic demise, she sets it upon herself to settle the score against heaven and hell, with both parties having used what’s left of the world for separate nefarious gains.

Got all that? Good, because the game will rarely mention it again. What’s transcribed from the story is settled between small, somewhat scanty NPC conversations and loading screen tips, and even then, the clarity is dubious. At times, it works in the game's favor, mostly due to some fantastic world-building efforts from Doekuramori, demonstrating how well and truly bunged up Earth is in the aftermath of these events.

Still, it must be said that Beyond Citadel does suffer from some rather unfortunate translation errors, which can distort the presentation of some character moments and story beats. It’s never something truly egregious that can ruin the mood, but with the aforementioned scanty storytelling, your mileage may vary in regards to how an unusual vernacular or punctual typo can ruin your immersion.

Not that this gets in the way of the gameplay, as Beyond Citadel sets its sights on some truly tactical combat, the likes of which you rarely see in this format. The 2.5D sprite work and blocky maps return from the original, with a lot of upgrades in regards to firearm functionality, and accurate weapon handling. Doekuramori cites, among the more obvious Marathon, the oft-forgotten LucasArts FPS Outlaws when it comes to Beyond Citadel’s inspirations, and that becomes a true statement when your first weapon is a beastly carbine repeater.

The actual flow and cadence of combat is fantastic. Once you get into the routine of unloading, reloading, and pulling the bolt back, you will have some outrageously fun firefights, punctuated by some varied arenas and adequate pacing to suit. The AI isn’t nearly as tactical as the gameplay around it, which is why Beyond Citadel focuses more on enemy placement and weapon variety to elevate the intensity this combat can exhibit.

When it works, it’s some of the best combat in this boomer-shooter/Wolfenstein-esque space.  When it doesn’t, that’s when you’ll be dealing with the bosses, who bookend each separate act in their biblically accurate format. It’s a tried and true testament that most boomer-shooter bosses tend to deflate the excitement that precedes it, and Beyond Citadel is no exception, relying mostly on an overwhelming battalion of ads to punctuate each fight against some of God’s rowdiest outliers.

It’s not like the game is hard either. Where the difficulty lies in how well you gel with the weapon handling mechanics, as infinite lives and checkpoints exist within each level, so the name of the game is endurance. Both thematically and mechanically, Beyond Citadel is about rhythm, struggle, and the sheer unbreakable will of human survival.

Mind you, it’s not all perfect. Despite some fantastic pacing toward the second half of Beyond Citadel’s firefights, the final act is a gimmick in and of itself, introducing a brand new movement mechanic that plays awkwardly in the 2.5d format. At the game's worst, it becomes a firing range, and nowhere is it showcased better than in its final steps.

When you compare Beyond Citadel and The Citadel side-by-side, it’s easy to see what’s been kept thematically relevant, what’s improved, and what appears to be a downgrade. The biggest outlier of the supposed downgrades is the visual design, with the game favoring much greyer and constricting skyboxes in their fidelity and saturation. With that said, Beyond Citadel seems to favor scale in this instance, with whole cities to traverse in mechs and pulls it off brilliantly.

There’s also the elephant in the room, which is the applied anime style of “ero-guro”, or erotic gore. Ultraviolence is expected in the medium, sure, but watch with a certain horror as each enemy you face, and indeed yourself, is likely to become a well-drawn, albeit horrifying gibbed cadaver of a young woman beneath their battle armor and angelic upgrades. On top of that, Beyond Citadel also has a gallery, which expands as you find secret artwork within the levels, including art that is either narratively relevant or softcore pornography.

Is it exploitative? Yes. Can it be mean-spirited? At the worst of times, yes. Is it a downgrade from The Citadel? No, don’t be silly. In the 4 years since the original, it’s clear Doekuramuri is maturing, well past the teething phase as they truly get to grips with the world they’ve created, and find themselves focusing more on removing pretension. More importantly, there’s an effort on how to apply the context of this ero-guro aesthetic to the narrative without feeling like both occupy different spaces for different reasons.

It can be off-putting at first, but once Beyond Citadel is given some space to breathe and expand, not even inaccurate translations can dissuade the genuinely inspired posturing of a crisis of faith. Whether or not The Martyr is a good catalyst for this becomes a side-show considering the uhh, blasphemous reasons as to why they’re here in the first place. What takes the Martyrs’ place is an argument of individuality, exasperation at the supposed will of the chosen people, mixed in with some mildly juvenile nihilism.

After all, man proposes, but God disposes.

Still, this isn’t to say that the ero-guro elements have an objectively adequate element to exist alongside this philosophical - potentially pretentious - pondering, pertaining to processing Pantheism. In its purest essence, this is a mileage-may-vary FPS depending on whether or not you can stand one element enough to subject yourself through the rest. The answer to that being just as nebulous as Beyond Citadel itself.

Beyond Citadel Review | Final Verdict

From most standpoints taken, Beyond Citadel is a clear improvement on its 2020 counterpart, both narratively and mechanically. It’s still not leaps and bounds beyond, as the game struggles to truly let its FPS core roam free, and the storytelling tends to waver in its briskness, but there’s a world here that seeks to be worthy. As we all seek to be.

Beyond Citadel was reviewed on PC using a copy purchased by the reviewer over the course of 21 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.