Citizens of Earth is a name that you might remember from a failed kickstarter a couple years back in 2013. It made a lot of news for taking its inspiration from the cult classic game on the Super Nintendo, Earthbound.

Unfortunately though, even with the coverage they received, it wasn’t enough to make the dreams of developer Eden Industries a reality. Or so it seemed, until it was announced last year that Atlus would be picking the title up.

Atlus has a history of working with smaller independent developers and taking a risk on quirky, innovative titles like the recent Rollers of the Realm which we reviewed back in November. But they’re also well known for publishing Japanese RPGs, including the well-known and loved Persona series. So when I heard that they would be publishing Citizens of Earth, I knew the game was in good hands.

Naturally I was excited, because Earthbound is one of my favorite role-playing games of all time, particularly on the Super Nintendo. You see, I have a very long history with Earthbound, going all the way back to Blockbuster in 2001. I distinctly remember the local Blockbuster phasing out their Super Nintendo inventory and selling it off. I rummaged through the pile and found a copy of Earthbound, subsequently making the decision to purchase it based entirely on the box art alone.

I was eight years old at the time, and the Super Nintendo was a little bit out of date, but I still loved it. I loved Japanese RPGs too, and after discovering what Earthbound was I fell in love. The characters, the environment, the story. I loved how unique the characters were, since most RPGs took place in a fantasy world. Not Earthbound, though, Earthbound took place on Earth. In modern times. It even starred a young American boy.

Unfortunately, I didn’t grasp just how great Earthbound was until I got a little bit older and began to appreciate just how ridiculous it was, and in a great way. Before that happened, though, I ended up selling my original copy to GameStop in what may possibly be one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made (and one of my biggest regrets).

It is this reason that I was so excited to get my hands on Citizens of Earth. It’s hard to find another game like Earthbound, unless you look to the prequel and sequel — neither of which will likely be seeing a release in North America anytime soon. It’s also unlikely that we’ll get a new entry in the series, since Shigesato Itoi remains adamant that Mother 3 is marks the end.

With no future in sight for the Mother series, it would seem that Eden Industries decided to take matters into their own hands and design a game that fans of the series can appreciate. The question now is, have they managed to conjure something up that will capture the hearts and minds of Earthbound fans? Well, we’ll get to that, but for now let’s start from the beginning.

The story of the game revolves around you saving the Earth as Vice President of the World, and recruiting various party members along the way. One of the key selling features of this game besides the obvious Earthbound influence are the many followers you’ll be able to recruit as you progress through the story, of which there is a whopping total of 40. As you might imagine, that’s quite a few party members, though most of them are option and have no role in the story.

In keeping with the humorous theme, the first two you’ll recruit are your Mom and Brother, which you’ll pick up immediately after waking up in your bedroom with some accompanying humorous dialogue. You might already start to notice some parallels with Earthbound, and throughout the course of the story there are many more. Some may find this to be off-putting, but I’d like to think that it’s one of their many ways of paying homage to their biggest inspiration.

These parallels are very minute however, and if you haven’t played Earthbound going into this game, you probably wouldn’t notice them. Among the examples is the side mission to acquire the Police Officer as a party member. That mission requires you to defeat several members of the police force in one long battle, and if you’ve played Earthbound then it might sound pretty familiar. That’s because there’s a similar battle you’ll come across on your way out of Onett.

This is one of the many examples that shows just how much the team working on this game loves Earthbound, and if you’re like me, you’ll appreciate the references that you might find sprawled across the world of Citizens of Earth. This is a game that has no qualms letting you know where it draws inspiration from, and while some people may not enjoy that aspect of it, I think it serves to reinforce that this is a little something for the fans by the fans.

Moving away from the Earthbound parallels, when you undertake your quest of saving the world, you’ll find that Citizens of Earth has a large amount of voice-acted dialogue which is something that I didn’t expect to see given the title’s MSRP of $19.99. That isn’t the only surprising thing this game delivers on, though. The story will also run from 10-20 hours, depending on how often you decide to take on side missions. In my playthrough, I managed to finish the game somewhere in the middle after a good 15 hours or so which puts this game’s length past some titles that you’ll find at retail.

That’s pretty impressive, but it’s a little less so when you familiarize yourself with some of the mechanics. While the game offers a lengthy story, it also suffers from some poor design choices. They may not be enough to keep you from playing the game, but after 10 hours you might find yourself wishing they’d done a little more work on the interface. During your quest you’ll access your party members, items, statistics and options through a PDA. That’s all well enough, until you realize just what a pain it can be to navigate through the menu every time you need to do something with your party.

The options menu isn’t so bad since you’ll rarely find yourself making adjustments there, but the rest of it seems to be a mess — particularly when it comes to using your party member’s talents. One of the core focuses of Citizens of Earth is the collection of party members, and since there are 40 total, it can become quite a hassle managing them all. Some talents are more useful than others, so much so that you’ll find yourself relying on them regularly.

The Car Salesman, for example, has a talent which allows you to use a car. As you might expect, this makes for much faster travel. The only issue is that whenever you want to use it, you have to open up the menu, find him in your list of 40 party members, click on talent, and then click on him. It’s quite a hassle, and it’s something that could have been solved by using more buttons. During my time with the game I played on the PC as well as the PS4, both of which were with controllers, and there were a lot of buttons that seem to have gone unused.

Since you can have three party members out at a time, it would have been nice to have one button set aside for your active party member’s talents. That way you could access the talents without going into the menu and avoid the monotony of searching for the party member and pressing extra buttons. This might sound like a minor complaint, but when you’re frequently bringing the menu up, it begins to feel cumbersome.

There’s also a problem with the inventory and certain talents like your Brother’s FedUps talent which allows you to purchase items that will then be sent directly to your inventory. It sounds good in theory, but each item takes time to get to you, and it passes in real time. If that wasn’t enough though, the higher tier items take longer with some taking up to an hour. That’s a lot of time when you take into consideration that you’ll probably spend between 10 and 20 completing the story. The clock only moves when you’re playing the game too, making it that much worse.

The inventory itself is extremely limited, with items decreasing in maximum quantity the higher you go. This makes things much more difficult later on, and while some people may enjoy that challenge I found it to be particularly frustrating when the game spiked in difficulty on the 5th chapter. There are plenty of characters with healing abilities, but the ridiculous cap on items was a bit too much.

Speaking of talents, each individual party member has a talent rank. Some max out at level one, but the most of the useful party members can go all the way to rank three. These include party members like the Handyman, the Gardener, your Brother, and the Baker. To increase their talent levels, you have to use them in battle, and in the case of the Baker who you get rather early on, you’ll certainly want to do that because the game hits a rather large difficulty spike later on.

The talents range from transportation to shopping, and can be extremely helpful. Some of them are even necessary to progress through the story, like the Lifeguard, who gives you the ability to breathe underwater. The Handyman, who I’ve previously mentioned will allow you to open broken doors while the Gardener will open previously inaccessible areas by cutting away the shrubs which you’ll find blocking your path.

Unfortunately, some party members seem to be completely useless in regard to their talents. The Musician, Painter, and Baker all have limited use outside of combat. The Musician is possibly the worst offender because his talent allows for you to listen to the music from the game. The only problem is that you can’t actually change it, and once you leave the talent menu it goes back to the music of the area you’re in.

The battles themselves are another area where the game draws inspiration from Earthbound, both in terms of the unique enemies and flashing backgrounds. You’ll also find some interesting abilities that reflect the real world role and abilities of your party members, which are good for a laugh or two. I also found myself particularly enjoying the sound of hearing my party members take a hit, because they make a lot of noise that you might get sick of if not for how overtly silly it is.

While Citizens of Earth might have some blunders and poor design choices, they weren’t enough to keep me away from the game. During the review process I allocated myself time to play the game, but even while I had a bit of trouble, I found myself enjoying my time so much that I couldn’t stop playing. Between the great humor, the solid gameplay and the emphasis on acquiring party members, I had a blast, and if you’re a fan of Earthbound, you definitely will too. If you’re looking for a fun RPG that isn’t afraid to pay tribute to the games it was influenced by, give Citizens of Earth a shot because you’ll be glad you did.

Developer: Eden Industries

Publisher: Atlus

Platform: PC/PS4/Vita/Wii U/3DS

Rating: E10+

Release Date: 1/20/15

MSRP: $19.99

Pros

A lengthy story that will last you 10-20 hours

A quirky sense of humor with enemies to match

New Game+

Controller support for PC

Cons

Some poor design choices make using the menus a hassle

Occasional bugs, but nothing game-breaking

Limited configuration for PC users

No Steam trading cards

Disclaimer: A copy of Citizens of Earth for the PC was provided to BentoByte by Atlus for the purpose of review.