Citizens of Earth

Overview

In Eden Industries' RPG Citizens of Earth, the player explores a real-world inspired place as the Vice President of Earth who prefers to recruit people with various specialties to let them fight his turn-based battles for him while he figures out what on earth is going on.

In April 2014, ATLUS announced that it had picked up Citizens of Earth to publish on PC, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, PS4 and PSVita later in 2014. Before that, Eden Industries ran a Kickstarter campaign in the Fall of 2013 but it failed to meet its goal by a long shot. ATLUS will be publishing the game across North America and Europe.

The game got published on January 20th, 2015 on PSN, Steam ad the Nintendo E-Shop.

Gameplay

The VP has the ability to recruit many different characters (through quests or mini games), which he can then command to do battle for him. The battles take place turn based and are reminiscent of the combat in Earthbound.

Each potential recruit has a unique world-ability as well as a battle-ability. Among the 40 possible choices is the Barista who can scald enemies with hot coffee or sell useful power-up items to other party members. In the VP's party of three, you might also come across the baker who produces freshly baked, health-restoring bread to the Veep and his trusty citizens. The recruits become more proficient in their day-job (which essentially means they level up their world-ability) by being used in battles and learn new abilities such as the baker being able to produce rarer health items. Switching characters out regularly is highly encouraged, although there are ways to level characters even out of combat.

The game offers a ton of content with a lot of it being optional to avoid forcing players to slog through hours and hours if they just want to get through the main content. There are insect extermination missions, hunts for various items as well as wanted poster quests.

Customization and evolution of the world are also a big part of the game, with the option to change the background music (through the Musician), the zoom factor (through the Beekeeper), the time (through the Scientist) and even the weather (through the Weather Lady).

Citizens of Earth does not hide its inspirations and aside from a very similar visual aesthetic and comedic tone, it also adopts the instant-win mechanic from EarthBound which means that should players get into a battle with weaker enemies from the early game, they instantly win without ever entering the battle screen.

Story

The story follows the exploits of the newly appointed Vice President (known simply as the VP) of Earth, who has been in office for a single day (which he spent entirely in his bed), who is initially just trying to get to his office and fulfil his daily duties.

Along the way the VP encounters various absurd things (among them a Moonbucks coffee shop with an alien spaceship in it's basement, crazed teenage campers and evil Hippies) and also some citizens in distress. After a few encouraging/berating words from his mother and brother he decides to help the citizens and find out what's going on.

After meeting with the President the VP then finds out that there's a big conspiracy for him to uncover and a good change to come out a hero (which of course is good for the next polls) in the end.