Video Game / Citizens of Space

Citizens of Space is a quirky, turn-based RPG just like its predecessor Citizens of Earth, developed by Eden Industries and published by Sega. Once again you are thrust into the shoes of a red-haired, self-absorbed politician trying to do good despite what their, uh, limited worldview would otherwise indicate. In this case you play as the ambassador of Earth, which had finally gotten accepted into the Galactic Confederation. During his speech, the ambassador learns that the planet he represents has gone missing, and figures the best solution would be to just go out and find it so he can do his job properly.

There are plenty of changes to the battle system compared to the previous game. Encounters are now truly random rather than showing up on the world map. Rather than all citizens being party members, you have three classes of citizens: Fighters, Partners, and Summons. Fighters will be put in the party to trade blows, partners are somewhat like equipment but they will not only alter the stats of the fighter they're equipped to but also add their own moveset to that fighter's pool, and summons which can be used much like items. Summons, items, escaping, and a new feature that enforces battle conditions for both friend and foe cost charisma, the ambassador's own energy bar that fills up from fighting and winning battles. The ambassador in this game can step in during allied phase and do his charisma costing actions without using up the citizen's turn. For all the changes the actual battles are still mostly the same as before: each citizen has their own skills and energy, some attacks give energy or use energy, and their skills are based mostly on their job.

A Compilation Re-release titled Citizens Unite: Earth x Space was released on January 28, 2021, published by Kemco instead of Sega. It features new content that ties both games together.

I would like to thank all the tropes:

• Action Commands: A new part in this game is each action has commands you can use to increase damage, a la Paper Mario. You can turn them off.
• Anti-Frustration Features: You can get the Teacher and Assistant early on, and both their talents are designed to let the player customize difficulty. The Teacher lets you adjust how easy it is to preform action commands, or even lets you turn them off to no real penalty, while the assistant lets you adjust encounter frequency once you've fought a few enemies in an area. The teacher's talent levels let you make it more difficult on yourself while all the easier options are unlocked by default while the Assistant lets you adjust the rate further and either direction with his talent levels.
• Big Bad: GalactiCo turns out to be the cause behind the disappearance and scattering of the Earth after scamming Earth's President, seeking to use the spot for corporate expansion.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The line between game and character gets leaned on, with the characters occasionally lampooning the sillier parts, engaging in Conversational Troping (like the Ambassador outright referring to the fight with Emperor Pengrill as a "boss battle," and then namedropping the character's Heel–Face Turn afterwards), but is also outright broken on occasion - such as the first meeting with the Exterminator, where a battle seems to start, only for the Ambassador to stop the pre-battle screen wipe and reverse it because they object.
• Bribe Backfire: GalactiCo offers the Ambassador escalating offers to join forces, up to and including being equal counterparts to the spokesman itself. The way the Ambassador speaks, he doesn't even seem phased by the temptation, and shortly he and his party destroy GalactiCo for good.
  Ambassador: I thought you were good at making deals.
• Diplomatic Impunity: Weaponized and invoked by the Ambassador himself. When the party needs to investigate GalactiCo but can't do so legally, he reminds them that he is an ambassador with all the perks that come with it. As Assistant puts it, they could just waltz right in like they own the place.
• The Final Temptation: The Big Bad tries to tempt the Ambassador with wealth and power, but he, along with everyone else, ignore him and walk to the final battle.
• Fusion Dance: During the final battle, the Final Boss GalactiCo fuses with the traitorous President, becoming the Super President.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All:
  • There are many citizens to recruit that you must go out of your way to find.
  • The main focus of the game is to find Earth, which is soon revealed to have not only stolen, but broken up for its resources. Once enough of it has been found, the final stretch of the game begins.
• Here We Go Again!: Narrowly avoided. After defeating GalactiCo and saving Earth, the ending reveals that a new start up company wishes to operate in their galaxy, GalactiCorp. Nobody fails for it and refuses to let them work in their galaxy anymore.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Double Subverted with Emperor Pengrill. While his name actually is "Emperor Pengrill", Charfrost is actually a democracy. In fact, Pengrill himself is actually Charfrost's ambassador.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Like the Vice President before him, the Ambassador can be very rude through his sheer ignorance and self-focused world view, but the truth he really does want to help people. He's not going to turn down a legitimate request for help if he can solve it, and as much as he focuses on his own goals he clearly is willing to take time to help others with theirs, even if he bungles the actual helping part. He especially cares for Assistant, even though Ambassador can be unintentionally insulting and oblivious to him. To the point that at the game's end, he turns down the offer to run for president of Earth—while nominating Assistant and cheerfully encouraging his abilities to do so. Assistant is touched by this.
• Monster Clown: Ambiguously the Clown you can recruit. While they're on your side, they're INCREDIBLY creepy, to the point of terrifying Assistant. It's also not human; evidently Clown is from a planet of Clowns and its species came to Earth to make people "laugh". The Laughing Mad tendencies don't help.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo:
  • In the Citizens Unite version of the game, The Vice President of Earth can join your party. He even has a battle minigame that takes this trope even further, having you pick out silhouettes of whatever Citizen you're trying to summon.
  • The Photon can also join you as a summon, if you can beat his minigame.
• The Reveal: It's eventually revealed that the Earth was never stolen, but in fact sold away by the President to GalactiCo so that they could use the space it occupies.
• Time Master:
  • The Time Cop, obviously. To recruit him, you have to fight the "Time Crook" who turns out to be a past version of the Time Cop who stole the future Time Cop's sandwich.
  • Added in Citizens Unite The Chronies can pop up in combat randomly and start attacking you with crazy time powers. In addition, the Librarian (another citizen exclusive to Citizens Unite) has his own powers over space and time.

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