Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

A game without gravity to ground it. Citizen Sleeper is a dystopian sci-fi filled with existential themes, anti-corporation sentiment, and diverse (both colloquially and literally) characters. The game is at its best when the music, art design, and prose coalesce. For that moment you are floating in space, uncertain about who you are and cut off from your humanity. Cut off from your very being, but desperately desiring to go on. To live. It explores humanity by isolating it. Like points of light in that inky blackness you meet the characters. Humans surviving in space, just trying to get by. In these moments the game shines. These flashes of "waking up" to being human again. From that cold distance to the warmth that is people. The first game captured this best. Citizen Sleeper 2 is less about this world and telling its story (at which the first game did quite well... until the DLC), but more about emotional wish fulfillment. Want to get lectured on how it feels to be non-binary? In space? While you are running for your life? Moments like these break the world. Unfortunately, there is more emphasis on the gameplay in this game. The gameplay is "drag dice into square and wait for thing to happen". This is fine when you are emotionally invested in the result. Will the odds be in your favor? With the additional questing nature of the game I was able to nearly max every stat. You get to rig (ha!) the game in your favor. Is that fun? Overall the game has excellent music and sound design. It has a lovely art design. It has a unique mechanics, but ones that it quickly outgrows. It has mixed writing. There are times it shines, but overall, as a collective work, this fails where the first title mostly succeeded. And, it saddens me to say that. I got some good out of Citizen Sleeper 2. I enjoyed some of my time with this game. But, I could see the writer there, telling me how to feel. Telling instead of showing.

CS2 builds on CS1 but reworks stat progression and abilities. The biggest change is the addition of class specific abilities, which cost points to upgrade. CS1 allowed you to be a jack of all trades, but you'll need to plan your builds a bit more here. The story is also quite different. You play as a different sleeper, just in the same world space. This time around, you've got around 10 distinct locations to visit instead of one. Many of these changes are for the better. The gameplay seems to flow better and you can also unlock some non-character related upgrades. My problem, however, is the story moves away from the human aspect that made CS1 so special. Don't get me wrong, it's still distinctly human but I didn't connect with this iteration of the world or its characters. CS1 makes you feel like you're building something. It also shows the ways humanity can be messy, despite good intentions. The game doesn't present easy solutions but it gives you an idea of what community building in a world experiencing late stage capitalism might look like. In CS2, all that takes a back seat to the main quest and themes of confronting death. You help out several communities and characters but don't get to learn much, if anything, about them. Several CS1 characters also make appearances but only minor ones. It's very hard to feel invested in this world because there seems to be very little, if any progression over CS1. The main story doesn't help with this, as it's very same-y after playing CS1. In terms of gameplay, this is better than CS1. In terms of story and character writing? CS1 has it beat. I might revise this later on after a replay, but this did not gel with me the way CS1 did. Sorry. :(

It's not acceptable in 2025 to not have an in game options menu to change literally anything to do with the technical function of the game. You cannot change the resolution, window mode, window size, or anything to do with the graphics from within the game. You are required to add switches onto the start up command like it's the early 2000s. I know this is a very simple game visually but you still need to let me set the resolution and window mode.

This sequel features the same stelar art and soundscape as the previous entry, Guillaume Singelin once again gives is a messy decaying yet cartoony vission of the future. Overall the games does a magnificant job at delivering both melancholia and hope for a society bursting at the seams with economic and social issues. Mechanically, the game is broader but shallower, I find the new expeditions and crew systems to be very enjoyable but the less linear appoach given to the gmaeplay makes interactions with other characters less meaningfull, their character arcs are very limited, given they "need" to stay aboard once you recruited them. The story and choices are the game's biggest flaws, I don't want to stir up useless controversy around DEI or diversity but good and evil characters are divided across race and gender in a VERY predictible way, (if its a white man with all his limbs attatched, keep away, if two characters disagree, pick the female choice), effectively removing any tension when picking choices in the story, a bit more nuance would have been welcome. Since following the above isntruction will allow you to ace the game without breaking a sweat. Overall the game was enjoyable and I would gladly replay an updated version of it but some of the story choices just didn't feel meaningfull because they lacked nuance were boringly predictible.

Loved the first version for its narrative pace, ethical stance and the game mechanics with its dices and counters. When I read about part 2 that 'your dice can break' I feared that it might disrupt the just this kind of soothing flow-with-a-little-bit-of-spice balance. But it didn't and this sequel is different enough to be a fresh experience and close enough to the original to keep its identity. Brilliant in many ways and highly recommended for all beings with or without a soul. On a side note: producing, playing and liking games (and other art) with non-binary characters has turned almost to a political act of resistance by itself in these interesting times (2025). For this alone: buy the game, support the dev. Thanks!