Assessment information
Platform reviewed: PC
Accessible on: PS5, Xbox Collection X|S, Nintendo Change, PC
Launch date: January 31, 2025
Moderately than simply the bombast of dizzying intergalactic battles, fashionable science fiction tales are imagining futures formed by pervasive inequality and technological conquest. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, a roleplaying game by Gareth Damian Martin and one-person studio Soar Over the Age, is a science fiction story of that pedigree.
It additionally brings to thoughts a New Yorker profile of science fiction writer Liu Cixin from just a few years in the past, who achieved worldwide popularity of his ebook, The Three Physique Drawback. Liu insisted science fiction merely permits readers to take pleasure in escapism reasonably than function metaphors for real-world affairs. Maybe this displays his perspective that Chinese language persons are extra involved about quick wants like healthcare and the financial system, versus extra altruistic ideas like particular person liberty – a pleasant to have, however not a necessity.
It’s an outlook that’s troublesome to reconcile with, particularly when confronted with a story as introspective as Starward Vector that carries shades of ethical complexity. As an example, an early contract – the sport’s extra treacherous gigs – includes preserving a knowledge core with immense historic worth, or promoting it to a mercenary who’ll inevitably scrap the relic, in order to get the gas it’s worthwhile to escape your captor.
It’s a alternative between addressing quick wants versus pursuing a extra humanistic objective for the far future. However whereas most video games would clumsily nudge you in the direction of the latter, presenting this quandary as a type of delayed gratification by promising higher, future rewards, Starward Vector tackles this alternative extra elegantly, gently suggesting that you just lean on group in instances of want.
On the run once more
Like the primary Citizen Sleeper, Starward Vector places you within the footwear of a Sleeper, an indentured android and an emulation of a flesh-and-blood human being who owes an incredible debt to an organization. This time, nevertheless, you’re on the run from a sinister determine named Laine who needs you – his property – again. What this implies is that you just’ll want to remain one step forward of his relentless pursuit, as you trawl the Helion photo voltaic system in your ship (which can be stolen from Laine) to eek out a residing.
In fact, this can be a perilous journey. For individuals who have performed Citizen Sleeper earlier than, Starward Vector will largely be a well-recognized expertise, however for the uninitiated, this cadence will take a little bit of getting used to. The sport progresses by means of cycles, with cube rolls figuring out how properly you carry out your duties; the upper the quantity, the higher the end result. That mentioned, there are just a few key variations from the unique, equivalent to a definite lack of a situation bar, as this explicit Sleeper is now not reliant on medication to stop their physique from decaying.
However as a substitute of a failing synthetic physique, you’ll accrue stress from, properly, nearly something. A poor end result from a cube roll can induce stress, in addition to having to plow by means of work whereas ravenous. Accumulate an excessive amount of stress, and your cube can disintegrate. As soon as damaged, they can’t be used, limiting the quantity of actions you possibly can take per cycle till you garner the proper parts to restore them.
Sometimes, you’ll additionally must embark on contracts, that are high-risk jobs that provide a major quantity of cryos (the sport’s type of foreign money). Make too many errors throughout these contracts, and you’ll set off crises, occasions that put you in stress cooker situations; the longer you are taking to finish contracts, the extra worrying the gig shall be.
That is how Starward Vector reminds you of the precarity of your scenario. Even a streak of totally perverse luck can derail your cycles, like a horrid day when Murphy’s Regulation is in full swing. For a Sleeper, the stakes are infinitely excessive, the specter of sure failure ratcheting up the stress at each flip.
A motley crew
Fortuitously, you’re not alone. A ragtag crew of spacefarers will be a part of you over the course of your expedition, with the primary being Serafin, an in depth pal who’s instrumental in breaking your oppressive servitude underneath Laine. Then there’s Juni, a quiet character you’ll meet in the course of the recreation’s earliest contract with the info core. These crew members have expertise they’re notably adept in, and that you would be able to leverage throughout contracts.
Your crew could have their very own cube rolls, which you’ll be able to choose to carry out duties they’re inclined in the direction of. Juni, as an illustration, will get a bonus to her Interface trait, so that you’ll do properly by assigning her to a process that requires that individual ability. Doing so successfully is important in serving to you full contracts with out burning your self out. That’s as a result of, in contrast to most RPGs, being self-sufficient isn’t the purpose; relying in your class, some expertise can’t be maxed out and even unlocked.
However reasonably than body your companions as further sources to take advantage of, the sport’s impeccably polished prose helps to brighten the crew’s rising kinship with the Sleeper. Serafin, for all his dour cynicism, is a welcomed presence, his steely visage betraying a deep affection for the Sleeper – and all these are inferred simply from the sport’s pithy, but ornately penned paragraphs.
Greatest bit
Overcoming the a number of perils of contract work, equivalent to conserving your stress stage low amidst quite a few crises or just getting an excellent set of cube rolls after a bout of misfortunes, is exhilarating in its personal approach – particularly while you accomplish that with a few of your favourite companions.
Thus past simply issues of survival, your relationships supply one thing extra: group. Take the info core contract; Juni, a relative stranger then, requested that you just give her the info for archival functions, in trade for nothing greater than a promise of help along with your gas drawback.
Regardless of preliminary misgivings, you possibly can hand the info to her, together with her later returning the favor in sudden methods. One other branching story, which includes doubtlessly helping a union chief, additionally feeds into this sense of camaraderie. Such situations of solidarity suffuse your ill-fated journey with one thing maybe resembling hope, an aspiration of not having to battle in opposition to the hegemony of company energy over the working class alone.
That mentioned, it’s potential to make a cushty residing and save a good-looking sum of cryos, the cycles of worrying useful resource administration a factor of the previous. Finally, you could grow to be adept at gaming the very system itself.
Even a single cycle marred with sheer, unbelievably dangerous luck – a collection of shoddy cube rolls, maybe resulting in an exhausting, energy-draining day of labor – turns into simpler to recuperate from. What you do with this extra, nevertheless, is as much as you, equivalent to selecting to pay one other crew their charges, turning down the fee owed to you by one other employee, or simply burning all of your cryos at a playing den.
Tinged with hope
The sport’s onerous system factors to a actuality that’s attuned to our wretched instances: a pandemic that has uncovered structural inequality, governments which are slipping into authoritarianism, and international locations that refuse to acknowledge genocides. However Starward Vector is greater than only a bleak universe writhing with doom and peril; its vivid spots are undoubtedly its well-written, likable characters, whose help and assist you’ll be taught to lean into whilst structural oppression looms.
It has achieved the uncommon feat of balancing its narrative with a multi-faceted system with out drowning its humanity in these particulars – all of the whereas imparting the worth of collective motion and mutual help. For a story set in a cyber dystopia, it’s an uncharacteristically hopeful story.
Must you play Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector?
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Accessibility options
Starward Vector presents three issue settings: protected, dangerous, and harmful, which will be modified at any time in the course of the recreation. This adjustments the penalties from poor cube rolls, equivalent to elevated vitality depletion and everlasting demise within the harmful setting. Scene textual content will be enlarged, whereas the textual content scroll velocity will be elevated and lowered.
How I reviewed Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
I spent round 16 hours on the sport, finishing the principle quest, exploring its in depth photo voltaic system and planets, and experiencing its facet content material within the type of its contracts. I additionally reviewed the sport on an unique LCD Steam Deck, taking part in the sport in handheld mode, with the gadget offering hours of seamless gameplay.
First reviewed January 2025