Cataclismo – The Old Kingdom Review – A Kingdom Under Siege

One of my favorite games of the past couple of years has been Digital Sun’s Cataclismo. It combined elements from the real-time strategy, colony sim, modular base-building, and tower defense genres and offered an innovative and enjoyable gameplay experience. I have played Cataclismo for dozens of hours since its release, and have finished the campaign twice and dabbled in the survival and skirmish modes. I was excited at the announcement of its first DLC, and eager to dive back into the world of Cataclismo and experience new content. Cataclismo – The Old Kingdom introduces a new game mode focused on managing a kingdom, building up and defending multiple citadels against hordes of monsters, and dealing with the logistics of running multiple bases at the same time.

There isn’t much of a story in The Old Kingdom DLC, only a small written intro to set the scene in the beginning. The Old Kingdom game mode can be viewed as a continuation of the main campaign. We have found our foothold in the corrupted lands of Catacalismo and are now expanding and conquering new areas and pushing back the monsters. Since we are outside of the campaign levels, the exploration aspect of the base game does not come into play in a significant capacity. Each citadel has an enclosed map that we can explore to expand the base and find new resources, and there are some points of interest in the overworld map that can only be interacted with through the management gameplay.

The core gameplay experience is not affected much by the DLC. It’s still about resource management, building up defenses and troops, and facing incoming hordes of monsters each night. What The Old Kingdom adds to Cataclismo is the management systems that come with managing multiple bases. At the beginning, we can trade in our starting resources for some troops and conquer the first citadel on the map. We spend a day in the citadel, building up as much as we can, and fight the monsters at night. Then we go back to the overworld map to decide our next move.

We have to build up our troops and gather resources through our citadels or by trade, and then expand our reach. There are six citadels to conquer in this game mode, with multiple landmarks in between them, such as bridges that shorten the travel time between our citadels, ruins that give us knowledge points, and watch towers that weaken the enemy hordes that attack our citadels. We conquer each citadel by sending enough troops to survive one night, and can conquer the landmarks by sending resources and repairing them. We can use knowledge points in a new talent tree to improve elements of the management gameplay, such as faster movement for troops and trade convoys, or for the main gameplay loop, such as unlocking and improving our troops and buildings.

Each day that passes increases the threat level, making hordes larger and harder to defeat. And, once every few days, we get a notification about large incoming attacks on one of our citadels that we need to prepare for. The game gets more challenging as we expand, as we have to deal with tougher enemies and manage more complicated logistics between our citadels and other landmarks.

I played the DLC for about 10 hours, and I was enjoying my time with it. But I slowly started to realize it wasn’t really the DLC that I was enjoying. I still liked the core gameplay of Cataclismo, and The Old Kingdom felt pretty much the same. When I heard about a new DLC coming to the game, I was hoping for an expanded gameplay experience. Maybe new troops and buildings, more enemy variety, or even a new faction or more story campaigns to expand the worldbuilding. But The Old Kingdom had almost none of that. The game mode itself is interesting. It is still a fresh addition and a new way to play a game that I already liked. The management gameplay is designed well and works as an additional layer to the old mechanics, but it just doesn’t feel enough for a brand new DLC.

At the time of writing this review, the price of Cataclismo – The Old Kingdom has not been revealed yet. Cataclismo‘s base game is very well priced and worth every penny for both the quality of the experience and the dozens of hours of fun that it offers. But the only way I could justify recommending the DLC is if it’s not more than $5 at launch. At a low price, I can see it as a great reason to go back to the game and enjoy a few hours of the new game mode.

Nima reviewed Cataclismo – The Old Kingdom on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game that was available at the time of writing, and our score will not be changed.