Citizens of Earth

I originally played Citizens of Earth on it's launch day early in 2015 because I happened to have $15 lying around on my 3DS, and I enjoyed it but never beat it. A recent sale had me revisit it to put this game to rest, and I while I did manage to beat it; I definitely remember now why I stopped playing originally. Gameplay: ------------ Turn based RPG with 40 recruitable party members. This is cool, but they stretched themselves too thin here. While each character has a unique skillset, they stop learning new skills around level 15-20, which means combat will get old pretty fast. Speaking of combat, enemies are fully animated- which means they couldn't make too many for each area. It doesn't start off too bad, but the problem comes to a head around the middle of the game when dungeons and areas start to feature only 2-3 enemies, it makes an already dull combat system even more boring. The last area has a single enemy type in it, yippee. You can try to avoid enemies on the overworld, but honest to god I wish this game had random encounters instead because I feel like I would have fought fewer battles by luck than I could avoid manually. Almost every dungeon is just tight corridors with no way to avoid enemies, so be prepared to go though long boring fight after long boring fight. Story ------ It's pretty bad, the writing in general is hit or miss, leaning heavily on the miss side. It tries desperately to be funny like it's not-so-subtle inspiration, but it rarely lands. The main character is intentionally made to be an oblivious unlikable cowardly politician, and this probably could have been interesting had there not been 3 of 40 possible party members with you at any given time. Yes, your party members talk, but they just say generic lines that are not unique to them during story cutscenes. It's pretty lame, it makes characters who should be manic and weird like the Conspiracy Guy into reasonable human beings, which I think detracts a lot from the appeal of getting all these party members to begin with. There's also just absolutely no real character interaction as a result, which does not help this game's case as an RPG. Also, the plot goes nowhere and ends on a really lame note with essentially nothing of real consequence happening. Cool! Presentation -------------- I originally played the 3DS version back in 2015 and I remember the presentation being pretty rough. Long load times, lots of bugs, blurry visuals- But that was the 3DS, how does the PC version fare? Well it's even worse than I remember to be honest. The music cuts out at random and doesn't come back until you leave the area. Lots of random lines are voice acted and lots are randomly not. Some characters will still talk about certain things like certain story events never happened. Recruiting certain party members like the Weather Lady or the Pilot can be extremely difficult due to bizarre bugs. There are plenty of softlocks, and it's not even a little difficult to clip out of bounds. Some enemies look great, while others look blurry and unfinished. There are CONSTANT artstyle clashes between enemy designs. Many enemies reuse behaviour from others, not even changing the wording of attacks around to make it fit the new enemy (example: Cone Crabs in the Capital share an attack with the Clams in the ocean. When the Clams hide in their shells, it still says they hide in their cones- it was lazily ripped right from the Cone Crabs!) I could go on, but needless to say the presentation is quite bad. I will give some credit though: The area maps are large and intricately designed. It's hard to say they're all well designed, but they certainly are fun to look at. Sometimes. Sound ------- This soundtrack is bad 90% of the time with a few genuine bangers here and there. But for the most part, it's bad. The ordinary battle theme barely even has any progression in it and loops after like 30 seconds. (There are a few battle themes though, and I would say 2 are decent) Most of the area themes sound like clowns farting in a bathtub, and don't even get me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ STARTED on the music that plays at Kamp KooKoo. The voice acting is O.K at times, but for the most part it's annoying, and of course the characters say stupid repetitive ♥♥♥♥ while in combat. Thankfully the protagonist has the best VA, but that's not saying much. Folio design is passable, nothing to write about honestly. Overall -------- Bad, real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad. It was ambitious, and I had fun around the start, but this game is slog to try and actually beat. If I had to offer criticism that wasn't purely fuelled by hatred, I would say this game might have fared better had they cut the amount of recruits down to 20, and NOT VOICE ACTED EVERY CHARACTER. I can't imagine how much time money and R&D was wasted on trying to balance 40 characters, each with a unique moveset, talent, recruitment method and voice acting. I really just think they stretched themselves too thin here, and I was disappointed to see that a sequel was made and seems to suffer from all if not more problems than it's predecessor. So long Citizens of Earth. You've haunted me for the past 8 years, but today I put you to rest.