REVIEW: Citizens of Earth


Title	Citizens of Earth
Developer	Eden Industries
Publisher	ATLUS
Release Date	January 20, 2015
Genre	RPG
Platform	PC, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS
Age Rating	ESRB – E10+
Official Website

The Vice President of the World isn’t a title given to just anyone. To be such a great guy known to everyone in the world, you have to be a great guy who uses his charming smile and smooth talking to get out of almost any situation. I’m sure you’re thinking, “What kind of situation would a Vice President of the entire world get into?” Luckily, Citizens of Earth decided to show us!

Citizens of Earth combines interesting characters and turn-based strategy to create a fun and quirky game where you play as the Vice President of Earth in charge of getting to the bottom of suspicious goings-on in the world. Luckily, as a bigshot politician, you have the gift of delegation and recruitment! You can recruit everyone from your Mom, the Executive Gardener to the ever-raving Conspiracy Guy. Not only are your allies varied, your enemies are different, as well, with strengths and weakness based on the type of enemy they are. Of course, there are different flavors for attacks. You have Normal, Thermal, Bio, Hydro, Static, Muscle and Verbal. Some enemies are weak to Verbal and strong against Muscle. All of the citizens you can get to come with you are the same way. Mom specializes in Verbal attacks while being weak to Muscle attacks. You can easily switch between characters to defeat enemies. However, you do have to make sure their levels are high enough for the area you’re exploring.

Battle in this game is very simple and straightforward. You pick an attack, preferably one that that is strong against your enemies weakness, and attack them. There are of course a couple of things you want to remember. You have some attacks and moves that let you earn small orbs called Energy. You have to use the Energy you collect to power more and more advanced and stronger moves as your character levels up. Each character levels up only while they are in your party, so that makes leveling your characters and keeping them on the same level a lot harder.

It can be very tedious trying to keep all 40 of your people around the same level. Luckily, the game was kind enough to give you ways to level up your crew of everyday heroes. Of course, it doesn’t help that those ways are a bit tedious, as well. One character, Teacher, has the talent to train your recruits in school over real time. A lot of different features are similar. You can order things from your brother, using his talent of having things delivered by FedUPs, but you have to wait a minimum of 30 minutes in real time to get anything. While this could be a fun feature, it comes off as more tedious and annoying than I’m sure the developers realized. You can get Scientist to speed up time for you, but, until you can recruit them, it’s pretty much just a pain.

It’s not just Teacher and Brother who have talents; every single person you can recruit in the game has one, and some are quite useful, like Car Salesman’s ability to let you drive to get around easier. Some actually help you advance the plot, like Mechanic’s ability to open broken doors. Some, however, are fairly useless, like Baker, who, while you’re in his shop, will sell you baked goods. Some people can use their talents for you anywhere in the world, such as how Weather Lady can change the weather from anywhere. However, you only unlock these skills by recruiting them to your team. You can get them to do it when you find them in the world, but, unless you recruit them, you have to go find them instead of just accessing the main menu and selecting them.

Baker was easy to recruit as part of the plot while others, like Mechanic, are people you actually have to hunt down. Considering some are very important to advancing the story, you could spend many hours hunting around and just looking for them. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Kelsey, you incompetent finder, why don’t you just consult the map the developers were kind enough to give to you?” Well, you see, dear reader, the map is the single most impossible thing about this game.

The map is a full bird’s-eye view of the entire area you’re currently exploring, with markers absolutely everywhere. Later on in the game, it’s pretty much impossible to know where exactly you’re supposed to be going — especially when the game doesn’t tell you where you need to go. At one point, I was told only to find Moonbucks and was left alone in a large desert. I wandered around the whole game map for a good six hours, lost, until my game crashed and I took a break, coming back to it the next day.

That’s definitely not the only time I got lost, either. It would have been a lot better if you could highlight quests and have the game only show you one you want to work on. By the time I finished the main storyline, I had only collected the easier-to-get citizens and left the rest. I am planning to go back and recruit them a bit later just for completion, but the map is so confusing that you really need to decide ahead of time who exactly you want to recruit and stick with them. Otherwise, you’re just wandering from map to map with a rather blank look on your face, becoming a bit frustrated by the goings-on.

I loved how many different citizens you could have in your party. I feel like the wide range of playable characters really make this game fun and interesting, and everyone feels great to play since they’re all so different. Their different attacks and powers do a lot to help make each character their own person without the need for backstory or a long introduction. Take Teacher, for instance. His character has fun school- and teaching-based attacks. While he might use verbal attacks, like Mom, each of their attacks easily has their own personality.

The music in this game was fun and cute, but fighting and battle music was always the same, so I got rather tired of that quickly. Each area has its own theme song, but, by the time you’re done with an area, of course, you’re ready to change the music station. I won’t say the music was bad or terrible, just pretty average. Nothing’s wrong with average — it’s just not something you want to buy the soundtrack for.

Citizens of Earth is a fun, enjoyable RPG with delightful characters and very tongue-in-cheek humor. It’s very entertaining, and I had a lot of fun with it. The price is $14.99 or 11.99 EU. At this price, it’s an easy recommendation if this style of game is for you. Unfortunately, there isn’t much replay value. Once you get all the citizens and defeat the game, that’s pretty much it for you, but, for the price, that’s not too bad. I’d love to see some DLC for this title that adds on new places, new characters and a new fun story.