Beyond Citadel Review: The Most Realistic Gunplay in Any Boomer Shooter

Beyond Citadel is the sequel to solo developer doekuramori's earlier retro shooter The Citadel, and it arrives with a nearly unanimous 96% positive score across almost 3,000 English-language reviews. Before anything else needs to be said about this game, one thing needs to be said clearly: this is a strictly mature-audience title built around extremely graphic gore paired with sexualised anime-horror character design, sometimes described by reviewers themselves using the term "guro." That content is not a wrapper around the gameplay; reviewers consistently frame it as inseparable from the experience the developer set out to make. Setting that context aside doesn't do this review justice, because the review sample treats it as central, not incidental — but underneath that presentation is a shooter built around one of the most detailed manual firearm-handling systems that reviewers say they've encountered in any game, retro or modern.

Gunplay That Reviewers Say Ruins Other Shooters

The standout, most consistently praised element across the review sample is the game's approach to firearms. Rather than a single reload button, players manage each weapon's real mechanical operation: ejecting a magazine, inserting a fresh one, and racking the slide or bolt separately, with weapon-specific quirks layered on top — a lever-action rifle, a break-action double-barrelled shotgun loadable with individual shells or slugs, a revolver that switches between single-action and double-action fire. One extensive 56-hour review breaks this down at length, describing the rhythm of learning each weapon: "there's an initial hesitation... then there's the period of comfort... and then, when the stuffing really hits the fan, there's moments of panic when you know you messed up the operation." Another reviewer states flatly that the system "has ruined other shooters for me. I need these gun mechanics in every single other shooter game now." This isn't decorative complexity; multiple reviewers describe genuinely different tactical considerations, like managing limited speedloaders or risking a double-feed by inserting a magazine before clearing a chambered round.

Movement and Mission Variety Keep Pace

Layered on top of the gunplay is momentum-driven movement, starting with a double jump and expanding through unlockable air dashes into what one reviewer calls "a sprinting, screaming blender of death" by the back half of the campaign. Reviewers describe most encounters as playable through corner-peeking and precise shooting, with movement mastery reserved for specific, more demanding fights. The sequel also broadens mission variety substantially over the first game, adding mech-suit sections, underwater segments, and jetpack traversal — one September 2026 review specifically credits this variety with keeping "it fresh," noting most of the game's bosses lean into bullet-hell attack patterns rather than static tank-and-spank fights, even if several reviewers still describe them as bullet-spongy by the campaign's later stages.

The Content Warning Isn't a Footnote

Reviewers are unusually direct and self-aware about what they're recommending. One writes that the game "also just so happens to be a guro fetish game (maybe)," while another opens their review acknowledging they cannot speak to the developer's specific intent but describes the content plainly as extremely graphic sexualised gore throughout. A recent, more critical review pushes back on the overall consensus directly: "This is a gore-fetish (in the sexual sense) anime game first and a shooter second. Gameplay is simplistic and gets stale very fast, the levels are way too large and enemies have very little variety." That dissenting view matters as a counterweight to the overwhelmingly positive score — it's a reminder that some of the audience enthusiasm in this sample is inseparable from appreciation of the presentation itself, not purely the mechanics, and that judgment of "simplistic" gameplay is not baseless even if it's a minority position here.

A Genuine Improvement Over the First Game, With Some Steps Back

Reviewers who played the original Citadel are consistent that Beyond Citadel represents a substantial step up: expanded environments beyond the first game's narrower colour palette and corridors, more NPCs and lore, an added gallery of collectible art, and a more stable, less crash-prone build. But the sequel isn't a strict improvement across the board. One detailed 14-hour review notes the weapon-carrying system was changed so that only one firearm per category can be held at a time, requiring a full re-purchase at the in-game shop to switch back to a previously owned alternate, discouraging the kind of loadout experimentation the first game allowed. The same reviewer found the upgraded melee weapon underwhelming compared to its predecessor, and flagged one specific bug where a melee enemy became temporarily invincible, requiring a level restart to resolve — a rare technical complaint in an otherwise largely bug-light sample.

Length and Replayability

At least one very recent, detailed review raises a length concern worth flagging for prospective buyers: after roughly three and a half hours of thorough exploration, including side content, the reviewer reported being roughly halfway through the campaign, suggesting a full, completionist playthrough runs shorter than many genre peers. The game does offer hidden collectibles (art pieces and stat boosts) in each level plus bonus stages unlocked after each chapter, giving dedicated players reasons to explore beyond a straight run to the credits, and a hub area tracks which stages still have items to find — a thoughtful completionist tool for a genre that doesn't always bother with one.

Final Verdict

Beyond Citadel earns its overwhelmingly positive Steam score on the strength of gunplay mechanics that reviewers across the sample, almost without exception, describe as more detailed and more satisfying than anything else currently available in the boomer-shooter revival. That achievement is real and worth taking seriously on its own terms. But this is emphatically not a game to recommend broadly: its extremely graphic, sexualised gore content is, by the review sample's own consistent framing, as central to the experience as the shooting itself, and a credible minority view holds that the underlying level design and enemy variety don't fully justify a full playthrough once that presentation stops carrying the momentum. For the specific, mature audience this was built for, Beyond Citadel is close to essential. For everyone else, the content warning above should be read as a hard stop, not a formality.