WHERE THE VP IS THE STAR OF THE SHOW
Do you make corny jokes? Can you motivate friends, family members, and total strangers to follow you around the world? Are you able to coordinate fierce battles with strange yet humorous monsters? If so, I’m placing my vote for you as Vice President of Earth in the new game, Citizens of Earth!
Citizens of Earth originally began as a Kickstarter in October 2013, but fell short of its goal by quite a large margin. Atlus saw something in this little game when then brought it back to life and decided to pick up the publishing rights in 2014. Eden Industries continued to develop the game and offered this completed piece of work to us today.
The story begins just like many RPGs – the protagonist, in this instance the Vice President of Earth, wakes up in his bed to a slew of commotion. Protesters are petitioning “something”, and it’s up to you to quash the uprises and get to the root of the trouble in town. The plot continues in a very free method, allowing you to naturally progress through the main storyline at your leisure while also exploring a plethora of side stories and missions. The plotline continued wonderfully in conjunction with each other and the main storyline. Sometimes I would forget which plotlines correlated with which storyline, but that only further enhanced how engrossed I was with the game. The one drawback to the story was that the first hour or two felt very confusing. There was absolutely no focus and total free range to figure out where you need to go (I’m sure some people would consider this a pro, but the sheer unguided force, at least compared to the rest of the story, really irked me).
What was one of the more stellar characteristics of this game was the simple, yet sophisticated presentation of the game. The graphics were very clean, but that certainly does not mean boring. The refinement of the graphics, mixed with the complete color palette, offered a beautiful world to explore. To my pleasant surprise, there was voice acting for each and every character. Yes, some characters had more voice acting than others, but for the ones that actually orated the dialogue, it was spot on. The expressiveness of their sarcasm, paired with the clear speech made me want to turn the sound up (a rare occurrence for me).
The actual gameplay runs very similar to more classic-esque RPGs with hints of more modern RPGs. Some parallels can obviously be made with Earthbound, an inspiration for Citizens of Earth, and Final Fantasy (1987), with its widely explorative world and battle sequences. Other parallels can be brought up with the Pokémon series, where you need to recruit up to 40 other characters that can level up, learn specific moves, and fight alongside each other (I guess you “Gotta recruit ‘em all!”). Something that I thought was brilliant was that each citizen you recruit has a unique battle style. Yes, some overarching themes can be seen, like a “healer” and “physical fighter” just like any other RPG, but no character learns the same set of moves. The baker learns baker-oriented attacks, the mom learns more matronly moves, and so on. More amazing is that even outside battles, each character has a unique trait. The lifeguard allows you to move underwater, the car salesman allows you to drive a car (and thus travel quicker), the barista can create coffee items at the coffee shop, and much more. It’s evident that Eden Industries wanted to make each character unique and allow for multiple methods of gameplay so that each player can have a unique and individualized experience based on how they want to play an RPG.
Unfortunately, there are a slew of glitches. If there were one or two that formed strange or awkward moments, I wouldn’t be so offput, but there were six separate instances where the game would glitch and force me to make a hard reset. Luckily, Citizens of Earth auto-saves often enough where I wouldn’t lose too much progress. But, the autosave happens ALL THE TIME and takes about 6 seconds each time you move into a building, new section of a town, or new terrain. To offset this obvious frustration, Eden Industries reminds players of one of the quests that are currently open – ie: It will remind you to “Talk to the President” to progress the storyline.
The Verdict: 8.3 out of 10
Though there are some glaring glitches and annoying autosaves, Citizens of Earth offers a great RPG experience for both classic and modern gamers. The story is filled with plenty of pop culture references for the older gamers, youthful puns for the younger gamers, and a varied system of gameplay for any gamer. I highly suggest this for anyone who wants to try a new, yet familiar RPG, and for $14.99, you’ll certainly get your money’s worth.
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Follow Harry Loizides, a Senior Editor, through his life of video games, obstacle races, and other adventures with Instagram, Twitter, and IGN
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