Science fiction has a long history of telling poignant human stories through the lens of non-human subjects. 2022’s Citizen Sleeper earned its place alongside stories like Blade Runner almost instantly thanks to its introspective interrogation of personhood and community in a world where all of it feels fragile, and this sequel’s strong, system-hopping story consistently hits the same highs. And though it can be very slow paced, repetitive, and full of walls of text, a byproduct of its tabletop-inspired design, overhauled survival systems, new multilayered crew missions, and an upgraded sense of tension in every dice roll makes Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector more engaging more often.
Citizen Sleeper’s RPG qualities resemble pen and paper systems like Blades in the Dark and Ironsworn more than popular RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons or video games like Final Fantasy. This is most evident in how little you interact with your stats from a planning and preparation perspective. How good and bad you are at things affects everything you do, and proper allocation of the limited amount of dice you have for the tasks ahead is the crux of your decision making, but there’s very little you can do to modify the outcome of these rolls or buffer yourself against potential consequences outside of that. This is a limitation that can also be freeing. Without the chance to get in the weeds in the way more dense RPGs let you, you spend way less time trying to shield yourself from Citizen Sleeper’s whims and more time learning to go with the flow, cheering your triumphs and swallowing your defeats. Starward Vector stays committed to the idea that great drama arises when you can’t just min-max your way through adversity in a way that still feels just as novel as it did the first time. I welcomed this drama with open arms, as it solved my issue with the previous game’s passivity and made sure I had to really consider every option every time.
Citizen Sleeper 2 makes good use of its all new crew systems.
Your Sleeper, an android protagonist who is a machine in body but an emulation of a long deceased human in mind, still comes in three classes. I chose the Extractor, well-equipped for enduring physical labor and excelling at diving headlong into risky environments, but woefully unfit for more delicate and technical work. The strengths and weaknesses of each class are expressed slightly differently here than in the original, all in pursuit of making the dice rolling portions of Citizen Sleeper 2 more tenuous. Your dump stat – the lowest of the five available on your character sheet – can’t be improved at all, and spending your dice on any action that uses that stat as its basis, like the Extractor’s Inuit skill, gets a -2 penalty. Most actions have at least two different stats that could be used to attempt a task, but it can be devastating in the uncommon event that the only way to succeed a check is rolling at such a severe disadvantage.
Citizen Sleeper 2 makes good use of its all new crew systems, putting your hangers-on to work during more elaborate sequences. You can take up to two crew members with you on special jobs like scrapping old derelict ships out in space, or surveying an asteroid for drinkable water, each with their own specializations and a pair of dice that you can assign to tasks. Missions that require more hands are often longer and take several cycles of multiple steps to be completed; bashing open the hull of a ship so that a more hardware-inclined ally can find the mainframe and prep it for your hacker to steal some data, for example. Efficiency is key, because every cycle costs supplies, and once you run out of those, disaster escalates quickly.
Mixing and matching crew to shore up your weaknesses is handy, and your Sleeper’s new Push abilities, like the Extractor’s Rally that buffs their die but also stresses everyone out, can be tactical godsends. Outside of supply limits, many of these special jobs can trigger a crisis, which put a new layer of time constraint on your work before some previously unforeseen calamity ruins your progress. These were easily the most fun parts of Citizen Sleeper 2. It’s where I had to think the most on my feet, prep the most before shipping out, and regretted it the most when I failed.
The new Stress meter replaces the old condition system, and though it affects your dice from cycle to cycle in similar ways, it can be a bit more brutal. Instead of a status bar that gradually ticks down, cutting off access to dice as the meter shrinks that you can roll again once your condition returns to normal, Stress points accumulate whenever you fail a check or some other unfortunate happening takes place. As your Stress rises, so does the amount of numbers you will be penalized for rolling every cycle. For instance, if your Stress meter is past the halfway mark and any of your dice show between a 1 and 3, they all take damage.
There’s a sense of danger that was sorely missing from the first game.
Dice can take three damage each before they break, at which point they cannot be used again until they are repaired, which requires not so rare but not always accessible resources to do. More than once have I been stuck mid-mission, down a couple of dice and pushing the limits of my remaining ones. These are frustrating moments, but they really do add a sense of danger that was sorely missing from the first game. It’s also not as much of a problem late-game, when getting around is less of a hassle.
Almost every mission (called Drives here) involves making connections and building relationships with people. Community building in the static space station of Erlin’s Eye was a core value of the original’s plot, and Starward Vector re-emphasizes this message in its system-spanning journey both in story and gameplay. It’s a message that feels even more important these days, as well: solidarity among like-minded people and a collective wit and will to fight for change can help overcome the limitations of class and resources when up against seemingly impossible odds.
The writing itself is satisfying, on the whole. It’s not overly flowery or descriptive, allowing plenty of space between the mind and the words for your imagination to fill. It can be biting and direct when describing tense exploration sequences. It also really excels at creating dense webs of philosophical and existential conflict when dissecting concepts of personhood revolving around the android protagonist, as well as personal agency as more than one outside agitator attempts to claim ownership over you in different, sometimes chilling ways. That said, it doesn’t have the same kick when it comes to physical conflict, as its scenes of hectic gun fights and daring escapes don’t quite hit in comparison.
The colorful characters you meet along the journey are mostly believable individuals, even if they aren’t all that layered or deep. Though enjoyable, especially when some familiar names show up in unfamiliar places, you won’t find many of these travelers and tinkerers to have surprising turns of personality or purpose outside of your first impressions. Even some of my favorite potential crewmates follow archetypes you’ve seen just about everywhere, like the jetbike-riding space courier Kadet, who fills the role of spunky go-getter. Many NPCs that can’t be lured into your party, from dutiful caretakers of small settlements to hardened bounty hunters, are one-note caricatures that stay long enough to be novel when needed and vanish right before they become burdensome, a good quality borrowed from pulp noir and sci-fi novels that keeps the intrigue machine churning.
