Citizens Unite! Earth X Space

[Nemomon]

A new topic, because the previous one is in the JP section.

The game got a new trailer:



And the release date - the end of January, 2021.

There is also an English website available. It's there: https://www.kemco.jp/game/citizensunite/en/

[Victar]

Apparently this is a remake of the original two Citizens games, with added content and storyline crossover stuff. I don't think Kemco had anything to do with the initial publications of Citizens of Earth, or Citizens of Space. I'm pretty sure they were originally published by Sega/Atlus.

I played the original Citizens of Earth on the Nintendo 3DS. It was a cute little turn-based RPG, deliberately similar to Earthbound in several respects (modern-day setting, quirky dialogue, wacky characters, lots of humor).

The 3DS version crashed repeatedly on the final boss fight, something that I worked around by using the game's cutscene skip button to bypass whatever scripted problem was making the game crash. I would have seriously raged  (or at least, posted an angry video game review) if I hadn't been able to finish the game due to bugs.

I got Citizens of Space on sale months ago, and it's part of my PS4 digital backlog. I'm undecided whether to just play it, or to get the re-release. I'm leaning toward just playing it.

$30 isn't a bad price for two full-length RPGs in one, but while I did enjoy playing Citizens of Earth, I don't think it has a lot of replayability. One could spice up a second playthrough by experimenting with teams of different citizens, I guess.

[Nemomon]

Thanks for the info! I was thinking about purchasing this game as I have never played any Citizens game before and this one looks kinda fun (although I can't say I like the art of it).

How good is this game gameplay wise (especially RPG wise)? Atlus is known for heavy grind, does it appear here too?

[Victar]

Atlus didn't develop the Citizens games. A Canadian developer ("Eden Industries", if I'm reading their website correctly) made the games, and Atlus decided to publish them.

Citizens of Earth was originally a failed Kickstarter project. (This is purely a guess on my part, but the Kickstarter may have failed because the developers openly admitted that half of the Kickstarter money would go to taxes and fees.)  Atlus ultimately saw the game's potential, even if not enough Kickstarter backers did.

Citizens of Earth was quite easy to beat, and I would be very surprised if Citizens of Space were difficult. There's room for self-imposed challenges since the player has a lot of freedom with regard to which citizens they use on their team.

This Citizens remake has new content, which presumably includes bonus bosses, so it's possible that some Atlus-tough optional bosses have been added.

The art style is admittedly terrible, but it grew on me as I played. I tolerated the iffy art because the story was funny and the gameplay was a nice comfy cozy turn-based RPG.

Almost no grinding was required in Citizens of Earth, although that was partly because I didn't change the citizens on my team very often. Citizens of Earth also had an optional in-game system where citizens not in the party could automatically level up in real time; using this system meant that the automatically-leveled citizens didn't get quite as high battle statistics, though.

TLDR: Atlus didn't make it, so it's easy and not grindy, although the remake could have optional superbosses so who knows.