Day Sixteen

• Game: Citizens of Earth (Eden Industries).
• Release Month: January.
• Source: The Steam Explorer Sale.
• Quick Look: Here. (Alex/Vinny)
• Started: 12/12.

OK, so in the process of playing Citizens of Earth today I've come to two new realizations, the first being: Holy crap is this game bigger than I was expecting, and thus I spent almost all of today avoiding the plot so I could recruit people, find treasure and poke around areas that were clearly far too high level for me. This is something I do with almost every open-world game I start: I see the big old core mission marker and just head in every other direction to see what else lies in store.

Despite wasting almost the entire day on non-plot crucial pursuits, I'm still enjoying the game. I'm now realizing the uphill climb that some of these recruits are going to require - the Yoga Teacher who wants me to level everyone up to 20 is one such "Pfft" recruitment side-mission - but I'm getting into the habit of cycling in and out characters that max out their "talent". The talents, as I explained last time, are the special unique skills each of the forty characters have, and some are maxed out from the offset due to their nature - the guy who records monster data isn't ever going to get better at it - while others have several tiers. The vendors especially have some enviable Tier-3 rewards: they unlock new sale items every tier, which at the highest level tends to include special stat-boosting equipment for other characters. Having this revolving door character policy has also revealed quite a lot about who I should be bringing with me when the chips are down: the Architect with her ability that resurrects an enemy for a huge buff to the entire party, which - hey, spoilers - isn't going to do much harm when you use it at the start of battle when the enemies have yet to be touched; the Handyman with his powerful basic attacks and heal powers that don't cost him energy to use; or the Cop with her array of useful debuff attacks that hit every enemy. Each character has such a distinctive range of abilities, and while it isn't always balanced perfectly I haven't found anyone who's an OP gamebreaker or a complete lemon yet. I suspect there aren't any. If so, that'll alleviate any concerns I have that going into battle with my preferred team - rather than one configured for maximum damage output by min-maxing the system - will always be a tenable option.

In more "What Citizens of Earth Does Right" news:

1. I mentioned you can drop characters in and out of your party and use their talents anywhere, with a few exceptions for vendors who need to be inside their respective stores, and with the fifteen or so characters I have now there's a vast number of useful abilities I can count on at any time: going underwater, rummaging through trash, fixing doors, sending PCs I'm not using to get trained, moving through areas a lot faster. There's also a bevvy of optional side-quests that open up if you have specific characters in your group, like the Cop's "wanted criminal" list or the Journalist's "photo ops", and by increasing their talent level you unlock more of these bonus objectives to pursue. The game's not lacking for optional content to discover, though some of them - like the Exterminator's "kill 15 of these guys" missions - tend to be a bit on the grindy side. Most characters will let you use their talent before you've recruited them too, just not anytime you want.
2. Characters earn the XP from fallen enemies then and there in combat. If you're a few points away from leveling up and your health is low, killing a few of the adds in a boss fight will put you over and refill your health and energy right in the middle of battle. You can also start using any new abilities you've just learned.
3. Characters get a much bigger XP boost from an instant-kill enemy ambush if they're low level, as an extension of the game's Suikoden-style proportional XP gain. Most characters will be earning 1XP each time they bum rush a weaker enemy this way, but the poor guy who's ten levels behind everyone at the back will be getting a lot more. It mitigates the amount of grinding you have to do to bring new (or previously unemployed) characters up to speed.
4. There are multiple fast-travel systems, though you need the right recruits to use them. The most interesting one is the Psychiatrist's "dream world" ability: once falling asleep at a number of areas with beds - the hotel, the player character's home, the campgrounds - the player can cross from one region to another through a truncated dreamscape that links the far corners of the game's world together in just a handful of screens.
5. The game has a "VR arena" in which you can fight any enemy in the game and receive all the item drops and XP they would normally provide. It's the best way of fighting monsters that no longer spawn, or are in some far off place surrounded by other enemies that you'd prefer to avoid. You can even configure the VR arena's settings to fight multiple versions of the same monster too, if you're trying to farm.
6. There's more I'm forgetting - I need to make it a habit of Alt-Tabbing and writing them down once I encounter them - but fortunately I'll have one more day of updates tomorrow for anything I've missed.

The second realization I've made about the game, since I left that lede dangling, is that I will absolutely not be able to beat this game by tomorrow night. It'll be the first game in this year's Go! Go! GOTY! line-up to remain undefeated once the self-imposed time limit of three days expires. I actually only have one more 2015 game after this, so I'll probably be ending the feature early anyway and can get back to running around pretend-America with a posse of loyal constituents sooner rather than later. (Well, unless I want to try to pretend The Talos Principle is a 2015 release because coming out super late in December 2014 is almost the same thing...)

So yeah, still digging this game. With the exception of Undertale, it might be my favorite Indie JRPG throwback so far.

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You know what, I honestly think December releases should count to the following year's GoTY. E.g. I feel Xenoblade Chronicles X has zero chance because of the size of the game and the scheduling realities of the major sites producing their GotY stuff.

Same thing happened with Talos Principle

@slag: Yeah, Talos Principle got jacked because GotY was already done by the time it came out. And then I feel like nobody on GB staff even finished it aside from maybe...Vinny? Unless they're a big tentpole, Just Cause 3 sort of relief, it seems the staff skip over a lot of December releases because they've just marathoned through a bunch of games for Game of the Year, so they go back to playing games that aren't work and aren't new (Dota 2, Bruce Lee on C64, etc.).