I love "TTRPG Design", and it can be magical when a videogame captures TTRPG play without losing the spark in translation. Very few games have ever pulled this off (for my wants, anyway), and nearly all "TTRPG-inspired" games hew too close to D&D rulesets and philosophies for my palate, even within the subset of otherwise-successful titles.

Citizen Sleeper 2 is very clearly leaning over the shoulders of Forged in the Dark games and copying their homework. ... And that is Good!! I will have lived well if I never again roll Stat vs AC for the rest of my time on this earth.

The original Citizen Sleeper (excluding its post-launch Episodes) felt a little "Branched-choice Visual Novel with added TTRPG mechanics" -- and, to be clear, that wasn't necessarily a Bad thing!! -- but the dice problems felt largely "solvable", and were frequently isolated from the real Decisions, which were made through dialogue selections.

The sequel, by contrast, often presents the player with mechanically driven choices. Some problems lack clearly "good" or "smart" decisions, especially when stuck with a string of unlucky dice rolls. Citizen Sleeper 2 stressed me out in Delicious ways, and occasionally forced me to put the controller down for a minute or two while considering my options, even in relatively low-stakes circumstances.

That all being said, if you carefully optimize your turns, you can unintentionally sap away most of the game's tension by its midpoint. I hit the ending with over 2000 credits stashed! Then again, I wasn't on the Maximum Difficulty. Cranking it up would have likely solved some of these issues.

... But mechanical praise only really serves to contrast the bulk of CS2 from CS1. Praise for the first game's writing got me to pick it up in the first place. A thirst for more of that sweet, sweet prose got me through the Starward Belt's front doors on launch day... and it delivers!! I'd imagine most of the thematic material hits much softer if you're full-bore cishet, but if you're any kind of queer -- especially re:gender -- then I can easily recommend picking this up. Time spent reflecting on the Sleepers' trapped-in-a-body-that-isn't-my-own-and-isolates-me-ism hits home in ways that should be obvious.

It's only February, but I'm confident this is going to be on a lot of end-of-year Best Of lists in December, and it will almost certainly be on my own.

The writing is so magical... I feel uncomfortable writing review text anywhere in its vicinity. So I'm going to write this just once, no edits, stream-of-consciousness style. This is one of the very best games of the past decade. And it's only four hours!!

But every second of that runtime is spent articulating the exact feelings of late-capitalist post-internet anxious malaise with a precision that is simultaneously messy yet surgical. It made me feel seen, and understood, and isolated, and hopeful, and desperate. It made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It made me want to make art with a panicked urgency, like it's the only thing I have left, and isn't it?, and I need to be doing it all the time or I'll die, and you'll rot away too if you don't start nurturing something you truly care about. We're trapped in a proto-fascist trillionaire algorithm heckscape, but we can make things for eachother, and we can share them and feel them and love them and support eachother in our creative ambition, and that can never be taken from us as long as we cling to it with all our might.

Buy weird art and treasure it. Buy this game on itch instead of steam. Listen to artists you've never heard of. Pirate a weird foreign film. Delete all your socials. Torch a McDonald's in a wealthy neighborhood. Make your own website, and never shut up about it. Send me your zine.

If you crave unique games, hilariously grim prose, or emotionally resonant art in general, this an absolute must-play.