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This follow-up maintains the well-written course of its predecessor, but fails to feel as fresh the second go-round
It absolutely has to be a challenge to follow up any game that finds pretty wild success in the market, but it seems that when you’re developing very personal works of love in the form of indie titles that degree of difficulty multiplies in a hurry. Citizen Sleeper was pretty well universally lauded for its excellent writing, interesting characters, and very specific vision of a sci-fi world. So when you make a sequel is it enough to essentially bring more of the same to the table? In this case the answer is both yes and no, and while the result will likely still be satisfying to its target audience, it doesn’t quite match the overall quality of the original.Starting with what works, the majority of critical elements that made the original so distinctive have remained. The futuristic setting, some of the themes, and most of the general mechanics for play are roughly similar, but with some tweaks to try to add more depth and flavor. In particular, on the strategic end of things, the challenges you’ll have every turn with your dice rolls have expanded. In addition to being subject to the whims of the RNG gods on a general level, being mindful of what tasks you commit your limited dice to each day, you have the added risk of taking on stress when your luck runs dry, adding the potential for dice to become broken and unusable until they’re repaired. Another higher-risk-higher-reward addition to the game are contract missions, which will give you the added benefit of having some crew to work with (who have their own dice to add to the mix), but with the added potential for ruin as you won’t be able to do things like repair your dice until the contract is complete, doubling down on the tension of your typical rolls.Some other changes could be counted as positives, like the necessity of flying to different systems in order to stay safe, but they also have some pitfalls. It’s pretty cool to continue to meet new characters as well as periodically bump into some from the original game, but there’s a cost to the depth of character development that comes with this. Since you won’t be spending much time in any particular location that robs you of the chance to repeatedly interact with them and develop deeper relationships and understandings with folks. While perhaps that could be considered a fair trade, depending on what you’re looking for it could also be a bit of a disappointment.In the end, this follow-up absolutely continues to deliver a distinctive flavor no other title in the eShop has offered, with its very mature and well-written sci-fi world. It’s also a game that will push your buttons and force you to make some tough decisions at times, take some risks, and try to always make the best of the situations you’re put in. Of course, the challenge here is that this sequel also needs to fight with its predecessor for which is the best, and at least in my eyes I think the original still comes out on top, even if this is still well worth your time if you enjoyed the original, or love great world-building and storytelling.
Justin Nation, Score:Nindie Choice! [8.4]