Thanks to KEMCO for the review code
Title: Citizens Unite! Earth X Space
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 01/28/2021
Story
A looooooong time ago, I reviewed the quirky RPG Citizens of Earth for the Wii U. Now, that same game along with its sequel are compiled into one adventure for the Switch! Thus, all the stuff about Citizens of Earth regarding plot and presentation I mentioned back then still hold up. As for Citizens of Space, that’s uncharted territory for this site, and that RPG revolves around an ambassador heading to space in order to represent his home planet. This compilation allows you to swap between the two RPGs on the fly with a simple select button press, offering a clever way of linking the two titles, and even adding extra content for this, such as new citizens in both titles and a small scenario connecting the two together.
Presentation
Citizens Unite opens on a cool little title screen, allowing you to jump into either of the two games from there, with switching to the other title being as simple as a press of the – button. Otherwise, the core UI is pretty much the same for both games as their original console counterparts, save for how the save menu works. (since both games share the same file, and even autosave pretty frequently) For Citizens of Earth, this means pretty much everything I noted back then rings true now for the presentation, (just with the game running much nicer and feeling silky smooth to play here on Switch, which is much better than the buggy Wii U experience I dealt with back in the day) so we’ll focus primarily on Space for this section.
Space looks a lot like a cartoon, even moreso than the previous entry. The characters have been designed to be a lot more expressive, the worlds and planets are distinct, and there’s even a nifty day-night cycle that really makes the environments pop. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t really run that well on switch, with a lot of the more spacious areas causing a lot of irritating framerate dips, with the game feeling as if it can barely keep itself together at points.
The bright side is just like the first game, the voice acting efforts here are remarkably solid, and the music is pretty catchy too, with the battle themes being a lot more bombastic than the ones from Earth, and the rest of the score fitting in with that cartoony/silly vibe the whole series is going for. Pretty solid stuff to listen to here!
Gameplay
Despite the lengths of the games and the interesting crossover elements added to connect the two, I’m formatting this review like a usual compilation, mainly to give myself a bit of an easier time covering the games by themselves, along with making it easier to point out the various differences between the two; one came out many years after the other, after all, and the battle systems are pretty different, taking inspiration from different RPGs rather than sticking with one constant and rolling with it.
Regardless of what game you pick though, both have you completing tasks in a humorous environment and recruiting a variety of NPCs to fill up your party, with their attributes usually relating to the sort of job or profession they have. Considering that Earth was one of my earlier reviews, I aimed to give that a lot more time than I did previously in this visit, and the Space portion is unsurprisingly what made this review linger on the backlog longer than I’d like, especially considering this set launched in a state where Space had quite a few bugs and I wanted to hold off a bit until those got ironed out.
Citizens of Earth: Previously published by Atlus/Sega (along with the sequel), this quirky RPG has you controlling a VP who suddenly has to save the world after his town gets overrun by protesters, and taking them out leads to finding out a bunch of other wild stuff that results in him banding together with various citizens to take care of these strange circumstances.
And yeah, Citizens of Earth runs and plays much nicer than it did on Wii U, with the game feeling very snappy to control and not suffering from any of the annoying hitches and bugs I encountered in my Wii U review, and that others suffered while playing the 3DS port. Besides the small way this game links over to the sequel, the version here in Unite pretty much plays the same as the original, just a lot more polished on a performance level and just as fun as I remember it. This was a very early Earthbound throwback in the 2010s indie scene, and the first person, DQ-like battles sure drive that point home, but exploring the overworld is fun, the combat is pretty solid, and the quests are funny enough to keep you interested in seeing what’s coming up next.
Likewise, the game has a lot of funny voice acting, but sadly not every scene is voiced, so it might seem a bit jarring for some of that optional dialogue to just pop up without the VP saying a word on it. Still, for the time this game was made, it was a solid throwback, and even now despite how much indie RPGs have come in the years since, I really dug my time with Citizens of Earth, and I’ll not be ashamed to admit that in all of my play sessions to cover this duology, I kept on playing through Earth more than the other game.
Citizens of Space: The sequel to Earth, but this time, you play as the ambassador of Earth, only to find that it has mysteriously gone missing. Cue more funny shenanigans and recruiting a variety of citizens from across space, with the combat shifting more towards one that resembles Mario RPGs due to the focus on timed action command minigames.
While the game is a lot more helpful to the player when indicating what to do next and detailing where everything is, I found this entry in the series to be a lot tougher to get into than Earth, mainly because the game just runs weirdly poor on Switch when compared to Earth. Not “oh my god the game is unplayably choppy”, just “oh, this game definitely took a bit of a framerate hit compared to the first game and the frame pacing is all weird!”
Still, a lot of things got expanded upon here besides the presentation, as you now have the ability to assign assistants to your main citizen party to change their stats, chain battles together for easier grinding, (but with a risk of losing all of that if a group of foes knock you out) travel to various different planets with their own set of citizens, and even deal with random encounters, rather than ones you just run into like in Earth.
The dialogue is still pretty funny at points, but I found Earth to be overall more humorous, and just more to the point as a whole. There’s a focus on bigger and better here, and while Space is still solid as a game, it definitely feels like a step back when compared to the simplicity and the engagement factor Earth provides. A lot of the recruitment quests in Space were boring compared to the ones in Earth, and while both basically amount to a lot of backtracking and checking lists until the citizen is satisfied, Earth’s nature makes quests in that game more to the point, while Space had a lot of moments where I felt like the quest was wrapping up, only to be told “do it again, but in X location”, which just made it drag.
Even with the game telling me where to go next thanks to a helpful compass and map, little things annoyed me such as the amount of slow popups whenever a new task or mission was updated, (which also brings up the menu for it if you press Y, which also serves as the compass, so that was a fairly annoying pacebreaker) the fact that the ability to reduce the amount of action commands via the Teacher actually makes the game more difficult, (if you try to eliminate them to play like a normal RPG, you just flat out can’t deal as much damage or defend as much as if you had them on and nailed them properly, so it really doesn’t work as a preference toggle at all) and the fact that while exploring the areas can be fun, the fact a lot of visible things on the map like NPCs are just not interactable at all really made the whole experience feel a lot more dull, and one with definitely a much slower start than Earth. Even after clearing the first big area and all the sidequests I could find in that first place, it still felt glacial for anything major to get going.
I basically had to force myself to push ahead just to see if things would hook me more like they did for Earth (which gets you into the swing of it and engaged very quickly), and I felt no more satisfied after doing so, and would just spend more time revisiting Earth instead. Maybe the game performing a bit better on other systems would make it feel more snappy, but I can at least say for the action commands the lower framerate didn’t seem to impact my ability to pull them off at all, so at least that works well in battle. I just found them a lot more boring than Earth’s classic combat system.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this is a very weird situation I’m in. Normally for queue reviews I like to play through every game in a set for as long as I’m able or wanting to to learn and feel all the mechanics, and see when a game’s “hook” comes into play. For Earth, that was pretty immediate and I gladly spent several hours enjoying my time with it, as a nice reminder for one of my earlier reviews for the website back when I covered the original version. But for Space, I never played that before I received the game around launch, and I was very eager to jump into it and give it equal attention, but from the less interesting combat, the more boring map design, and the dialogue not being nearly as funny as the original game, it just really failed to hook me, and I just wanted to play the other game instead!
And yeah, at the end of the day, Citizens of Earth still holds up darn well and is a very funny RPG gem I can’t recommend enough, and I’d even say the price of Unite is worth it for that game alone. Space isn’t bad by any means, but as a sequel to Earth it feels like a step back in so many ways and just takes so long to get going it basically lost me by the time I saw glimmers of that happening. If you like the Mario RPGs or any sort of RPG with timed reactions, you’ll like Space a lot, but if you like the simple Mother/Dragon Quest style of RPG and want a funny, modern take on it, then Citizens of Earth is definitely a must play.
This review took a while partly because I was waiting for bugfixes for Space to come to see if that would make the game feel a bit smoother on Switch, and partly because of all the stuff that 2022 did to keep me busy. but while it does seem like the biggest, nastiest bugs are gone, the game still is a step back compared to Earth’s silky smooth gameplay, and I can’t help but feel like Citizens of Space could have been so much better than it ended up being. Still, this is a great way to combine two solid RPGs, with one of them being a hilarious ride I encourage you to embark on.
I give Citizens Unite! Earth X Space a 7 out of 10, and you can find the eShop link for the game here.