I don't wanna talk about greater mechanical complexity, I don't wanna talk about effectively replicating the archetypal crew of misfits (people wanna reference firefly but it's giving the expanse), I don't wanna talk about whether the ending was abrupt or I just beefed a few plot threads, I don't wanna talk about how half the characters you meet are (apparently) from the previous game and what it says that I recognized none of them even though I played the last game's dlc not even that long ago and what is says that characters I really cared about did not stick in my memory as individuals but just vibes attached to plot threads (like I remember really liking the girl I opened a restaurant with in the first game but logged her away only as "warm presence who cooked mushrooms"), I don't wanna talk about many endings vs. one ending you can approach in many ways and how different a vibe it creates, and I don't wanna talk about which short story from the 80's that ending reminded me of (but it's a good one!).

I wanna talk about tension.

citizen sleeper 2's tension is fundamentally other than that of the first, and it is quite delectable. this is like my third consecutive text-heavy adventure/rpg hybrid I've played, and the last two followed a very similar arc to the original citizen sleeper: as in that game, dreams in the witch house and roadwarden are games about steadily getting the universe's foot out of your ass. you start off with a collection of profound lacks: never enough time, health, money, energy, and so forth. you are learning the game's possibility space while also having to manage it, and you will likely fail and learn the consequences for failure. my run of the first citizen sleeper had some rough patches, where I crashed out of health and energy and nearly lost it all.

but you can, and do, eventually get a handle on things. this is a mix of mastery and simple progress: in roadwarden I locked down a few reliable sources of income, a fuller bathing kit so I didn't look like shit all the time, a cheap bed, and a handful of crossbow bolts, and the challenges became manageable. in dreams in the witch house, I saved up for some thermal clothes so I didn't get sick on cold days, learned to balance my occult studies with nights on the town to maintain sanity, figured how to brew my own rat poison so I could kill brown jenkin without spending all my money, etc. in citizen sleeper, I secured safe houses where I could sleep for free, friends who would feed me, places I could synthesize as much stabilizer as I needed so I my electronic body would never crash again like it did in those early days.

they are all games about tension, but they evolve from games of crisis to games of managing stress. you only occasionally escape one of your stressors, but you do, with practice, learn to handle them better.

citizen sleeper 2's series of contract missions, however... I mean dang. they stayed proper tense right to the end.

where cs1 took place in a single - if sizable - space station, cs2 has you flying all around an asteroid belt. this helps limit how "knowable" its world can get. where, on the station, once I secured a place to sleep for free I knew I'd never have to pay for a room again. here, even if I did have a secure place to buy cheap supplies, I still had to fly there and burn fuel in the process. pacing was balanced such that only occasionally, and only very late in the game, did I stop somewhere and just mindlessly refuel, resupply, and shove off without engaging in the space, whereas, in cs1, whole sections of the station became places I just needed to get through on my way to where the action still was.

but, all through, you are taking on contract missions. many are plot-critical, and a handful of others are just ways of getting a decent payday (all other labor offers variable pittances). you pull together a crew, you have limited supplies, all kinds of things can go wrong. I had missions where I ran out of food and had to work through starvation. I had missions where I overtaxed myself so hard I could only take one action per day. I scrubbed missions by taking too many risks and coming home empty-handed. I had missions where I took the wrong crewperson whose skills I couldn't find a use for. missions were something you could get better at preparing for, and probably, if I went back and checked, I got better at them over time. but the omnipresent feeling that things could go wrong, of having both limited time and limited tolerance for mistakes, of having to not push myself too hard nor play things too safe... every single one was a low-level nailbiter.

cs2 took what cs1 was and found a way to do something different but consonant. it is not so much an expansion as a translation to a new idiom. I think I loved it slightly more than the original.

Citizen Sleeper is a relatively chill game. Most of the time, how you spend a cycle is entirely up to you, and you need not risk failure if you don't want to. When there are time-sensitive events, it's generally pretty easy to prioritize them and not get too stressed out (unless, like me, you start the DLC too early and have like 3 timed clocks going at once). Often you'll have been able to prepare for them and have the resources necessary to account for any bad dice rolls. While I'm sure I technically failed a few events, my memory of the game is that generally I was able to make the choices I wanted to make and shape the narrative as I pleased.

Citizen Sleeper 2 is a game about the inevitability of failure, and it makes this clear right from the start. Try to have your cake and eat it too on Hexport, and you'll find you have no cake and are (possibly literally) starving. Believe me, I've played through Hexport 3 times, I know.

From stress to glitches to timed clocks that keep going even as you're forced to prioritize other things, I can pretty much guarantee that at some point (at probably multiple points) you will fail to accomplish something you set out to do.

But Citizen Sleeper 2 is also a game about persistence. About people refusing to accept inevitabilities. About finding light in the darkness, creating success from the wreckage of failure. In a world built on ruins, any loss can be a foundation on which to build something new.

And, sometimes, things work out anyway. About a third of the way through the game, some inopportune timing led to me being forced to let a red timed clock run out. The nature of this clock was such that it didn't immediately resolve, and I spent the rest of the game waiting to find out what the consequences of that failure would be, and being frankly pissed that the game had forced me into that position. And when I say "the rest of the game" I mean literally until I reloaded the save after rolling credits. Finally, a cutscene triggered. The situation resolved. And you know what? It was fine. Not the resolution I wanted, but one I could live with. A story worth telling.

So don't be afraid of failure. There's always something on the other side.

p.s. I did, of course, play this game exclusively between the hours of 3 and 6 am, as per the tradition established in my Citizen Sleeper playthrough. Ok well if I'm being honest a couple sessions extended a little past 7 because it's really hard to put this game down, but it was still relatively dark out.

4.5/5

Citizen Sleeper 2 is a standalone sequel that's also developed by a single developer. The game is a CRPG taking place in space where you play as a "sleeper" which is a human mind/conscience housed within a robotic body. Your main objective is to free yourself from a criminal entity that seems to constantly be there, no matter where you flee within space. The story has both some light hearted missions where you are trying to find who or what is lurking on your ship stealing your food supplies, to very touching moments where a character overcomes a tragic backstory to keep pushing on. The writing within this game is fantastic and feels like one of the best interactive stories in the media in a long time.

Gameplay consists of taking on missions, contracts, and other various tasks with a set of randomly decided die that you are given at the start of each in game day (cycle). These determine your success or failure rate for all tasks you do in that day. You are given the danger levels of any negative consequences prior to inserting the die (Safe, Risky, Dangerous) then given the success rate of what that roll will be. Higher number die equates to higher chances of success. What this (and the first game) does so well is an unsuccessful roll doesn't always mean failure. You'll take on negative conditions, but even "failing" a mission or task in the game doesn't mean game over. The game will adapt to what happens and open up other avenues you may need to pursue for success. This adds a unique level of stress and need for adapting to the outcomes. There is the obvious main story quest line to follow, but you'll also discover a large amount of side quests. These will often grant you additional supplies, experience points, as well as unlocking additional crew members to bring along on your ship and with you on future missions.

My only minor complaint is the tutorial here is not very good. Even with playing the first game and understanding everything there, the second entry introduces a few new mechanics that I'm still not sure I ever fully understood by the end of the game. I would know how to react to situations that arise, but never fully figured out WHY they happened.

I was able to finish this game just within a few days prior to it leaving Xbox GamePass, but just like the first game would really encourage everyone to pay for this game on whatever the platform of their choosing to support this developer. It's a shame this game is not as talked about as it should, as it's a marvel from front to back!