Adventure Game Summer: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Rating: 3.5/5
I really, really wanted more citizen sleeper. What I got was an interesting iteration that created more mechanical tension, but failed to draw me completely into its world, characters and narrative. At the edge of a system in turmoil, I did not find anywhere I particularly wanted to rest my weary frame. Every station, after exhausted of its limited story and reason for being there, became much like any other. I enjoyed it well enough, but when the time came for my journey's end, I went without a fight. Thoughts on specific aspects below. Thanks for reading!
Music: Amos Roddy returns for the sequel, and I have no complaints. I haven't had any tracks get stuck in my head like the first game, but with 50% more music than the last game that may come down to less repetition. It's still great stuff and I'm excited to listen to more of it.
Body: The sleeper's body degrades different in this game, with energy much the same, but taking stress from failed actions and on contracts, in lieu of condition damage. Once your stress reaches certain thresholds, rolling lower numbers on your dice at the start of the day damages that specific dice. Once it takes three points of damage, it breaks, and has to be repaired with a semi-rare resource, or a less rare resource resulting in more complications. Your body glitches after repairs or specific story moments. This set of mechanics serves the game fine, but does result in points of friction where you can lose most of your dice, leading to less chances for success, leading to more stress and more dice damage in a cascading failure. The game does allow for switching difficulty from the pause menu, allowing you to work your way out with death disabled and your broken dice allowing you to still use them as 1s. The only time I felt the need to do this was when the game put me into two contracts back to back, with no chance to reset my resources and repair. It lead to a lot of downtime afterwards, a real frustration, but that was the only time I felt the crunch like that. While the individual consequences of actions are generally more punishing in this game than the first, if you play smart and stockpile resources where you can, you will mostly be able to outmaneuver bad luck.
Contracts: The standout part of the game for me. Choose two crew members to accompany you on jobs, who contribute their own dice and skill allotments. The pacing is tight, the stress mechanics build the tension nicely, and the option for extra payouts that reaaally don't work out most of the time unless you play perfect tantalized me. The consequences for failure here are sharper than the first game, but the story adapts well around the failstates, for the most part. There were one or two missions I failed badly enough that I expected something truly catastrophic would happen. The first lead to a bout of unwanted violence and did feel briefly painful, but the second was solved relatively easily with a skill check during the outcome. Other than this minor quibble, these were the main improvement over the first game.
Crew: Many new characters and a few returning from the first game, I did not feel as attached to my crew as I had to the denizens of Erlin's Eye in the first game. Their plotlines were generally shorter and also spread further across the map, so I would do a bit, leave it on the side for a while, go to the next spot, and usually culminate each story with a contract, some of which were compelling and some of which just kind of happened. Characterization varies from "fairly well realized for their given plotline" to "very one note" (as is the case for the other sleeper you can recruit. sorry Flint.). That leads me into the writing...
Writing: There are some points where you have to make a hard choice, either in the course of the mechanics or the course of the story. These choices worked best for me when allowed to breath, to linger in the mind because of how they weighed on you and their consequences. Unfortunately, most of the instances of character interaction do not linger in my mind. They are bland, and often end with the writer spelling out as many questions the conversation could have raised for the player as they can think of, regardless of whether or not the writing was actually doing that. This game really likes a large paragraph of questions. I did not find this particularly thought-provoking. Dialogue is also somewhat limited in choice, something I was hoping might be improved on from the first game, but alas, the shortage of characterization extends to the sleeper as well.
Locations: The stations of the Belt have some interesting designs among them, but as noted at the start, none of them felt like much of a much after their location-specific plotlines were through. It's always fuel, rations, an eatery, a location-specific work opportunity, and maybe an opportunity to sell something specific to the location. No lingering nodes like the first game, where even if you no longer visited most of them, the fact you still could at least helped the place feel less dead. Most of the side tasks vanish after you do them for a bit, triggering a side objective. This moves things along but gives you little reason to return. Also missing is the network aspect of the first game, another avenue each location could have had to differentiate itself, but data collection in the game as a whole is reduced to two instances that I can recall. Conclusion: After the inciting incident is resolved in an alright segment towards the end of the game, you have the possibility of wandering and completing drives or ending the game, as your body requires repairs and the outcome is uncertain. It is a potentially compelling turn in the story, somewhat undercut by the fact that in the leadup to the obvious endgame, I tried to finish what tasks I had left in order to, y'know, not leave my stories undone if the ending was nigh. When the dust settled, I could do a couple very minor things, or I could face the future and end the game. I chose the latter. There was no station calling my name again that I felt compelled to go to and so I rebooted. As the scene went on, it asked me where I wanted to go when I woke up. I didn't know what to tell it. The characters and places I was offered were all fine, places I felt amicably towards, but neither leaving the belt or staying had a firm pull on me. In the first game, I stayed. I was given three opportunities to leave (and one to leave my body) and I stayed because I cared about the station and did not want to leave my remaining friends alone to face corporate malfeasance and slow decay. I had built a love for them, for the Eye. At the end of Citizen Sleeper 2, I was glad I played it, but I was no longer wishing for more, or thinking about the people I'd met and the person I'd been. Your mileage may vary. Maybe you will find what I did not, out there. I think, if I get the urge to visit the Helion system again, I'll stick to the Eye.
