The big appeal of Citizens of Earth is that you can recruit almost every NPC to your cause, and boy, did Eden Industries accomplish that! Your party is incredibly fluid, and will see School Mascots, Conspiracy Theorists, hobos, and even your own mother joining the ranks. Each party member also grows in effectiveness the more you use them, which encourages experimentation. They also have talents that apply to overworld exploration, and these range from purchasing items, to fast travelling, or even re-battling old enemies.
The game makes use of an energy system, with each character having the ability to regenerate it with certain weaker attacks or expend it to perform their special skills or stronger abilities. Enemies are just outright automatically defeated if you ambush them and are higher level, helping to prevent dungeons from becoming tedious. It’s a shame this wasn’t seen in all areas of the game though. Menus are tedious, recruitment is a pain to perform, and the combat can be incredibly boring at times.
Characters fill a variety of roles, such as healer, damage dealer, or support, and as you use them more and more, you’ll find they learn new skills. They can also be further augmented via equipment you find around the world, offering some interesting strategies.
One such example was the Bowling Shoes for The Brother, which lets him double up on his moves at the cost of offense. Where it got interesting though is this applied to him defending. By doubling up, he could turn 2 defensive buffs into 4, letting him be a tank, as well as still churn out respectable damage. This is just but one example of the ways that the numerous party members can all carve out their own niche throughout the game.
This niche is sometimes tricky to find though. There is a LOT of backtracking in Citizens of Earth, especially when it comes to the recruitment quests for the various party members. This doesn't apply to every single one, but there are some people that require a fair bit of effort to move their quest along. The objectives are a little murky too, and when recruiting the Conspiracy Guy it took me a long time to find the needed evidence item from some enemies nearby. Nobody said “oh go kill those java beans, they might know something!” The idea of doing a unique quest-line for each character is definitely something that entices me, but the way that Eden opted to execute it left me confused and disappointed.
Navigating the menus to find party info, swap team members, and even look at your objectives is an outright mess. Each option is hidden behind clutter, and it feels like some Citizen’s special talents are made redundant by others. Why make use of the farmer’s ability to combine ingredients when I can just buy them at a cheap price from the Baker when I’m in his store?
I feel like the roles of the citizens could be made to feel a bit more unique to cut out the overlap in some cases, but overall they did a decent job in making the characters feel different.
Overall, Citizens of Earth disappointed me for not seizing the potential it had. They could have made each character’s recruitment quest more engaging and actually reward going out of your way to explore, versus making it a test of patience and excessive backtracking. If this is what it takes to be the Vice President of the world, I’ll pass, even if the game is really charming.
- Scott Sullivan
The Good:
- Tons of characters to recruit, each feeling pretty unique
- Interesting ideas in the combat system
- Charming art style that is vibrant.
The Bad:
- Backtracking and backtracking and backtracking.
- Tries too hard to be like Earthbound and other old, classic RPGs.
- Combat turns into a tedious cycle of cycling weak attacks to use your strong ones.
Seemingly unstable. Crashed numerous times for me during playtime.
