Citizen Sleeper 2 was provided by Fellow Traveller for review. Thank you!
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a curious one. While officially marketed as an "Adventure RPG," I would define it more as a Visual Novel with lite RPG elements. Normally, I'd be up for this mash-up of genres, but when you take into account all the other aspects of Citizen Sleeper 2, it left me feeling as though this game is one big missed opportunity.
Citizen Sleeper 2 is incredibly text-heavy. I know it's an RPG, and they naturally tend to have an emphasis on story and text, but this falls into the realms of Visual Novel territory that sees you spending several minutes reading the non-voiced dialogue as it's displayed on the screen, with some occasional crucial choices through the dialogue screen.
Unfortunately, I wasn't a huge fan of the way this was handled. The fact that there are no voices for the characters is strange, considering that the game's main emphasis is the story, the characters, and their background. Perhaps even more strange is that there seems to be very little use of music or sound effects to match the situation. Something tense happens in the text on-screen, and the music carries on being a calm space ambiance. All characters are also represented by a still image, which doesn't alter depending on the situation.
While the text is fairly well-written from my point of view and can cause tension and sometimes make you think, the utter lack of atmosphere-building from a sound design and often visual perspective is quite baffling to me and harms the game's ability to tell its story.
The story itself is... Well, it's fairly straightforward. You are a "Sleeper," a humanoid who emulates a human mind in an artificial body on the run from a corporation that built you and seeks to maintain control of you. Someone else enslaved by the corporation helps you escape, and the game is then focused on staying one step ahead of the corporation pursuing you by making sure your "Rig" (spaceship) is spaceworthy and assembling a crew to take on new contracts and earn that coveted Cryo (the game's currency).
The story isn't anything outlandish, and to be honest, I found many people online saying that Citizen Sleeper 1 was quite an emotional game, and I didn't find that to be the case with Citizen Sleeper 2. The writing is descriptive, but I wasn't finding myself getting attached to any of the characters, possibly due to the already-mentioned issues. You also don't get to dive deep into the character's backgrounds, so they can sometimes feel shallow.
You can't name yourself in the game either; everyone merely refers to you as "Sleeper." This made me start to wonder whether people were just saying it as a kind of derogatory term at points; it seems like an alienating design choice for the player. It really made me struggle to care about a player character who seems inhuman and essentially has no dialogue in the game beyond the actual choices you are given.
As for the gameplay, Citizen Sleeper 2 employs an interesting mechanic where the dice that you roll at the start of each "cycle" (day) can be used to perform certain actions. It goes a bit more intricate than that, with certain characters having dice that can use their skills to boost the value of their dice. Still, ultimately, the gameplay hinges on RNG, with the random numbers on your rolled dice at the start of the cycle largely dictating how your next few actions will go.
It's a curious choice to add RNG to a largely story-based game, where players might feel that they lose the game through no fault of their own, especially considering the game has a hardcore mode where your save is lost upon death. As I said above, you can mitigate the RNG by leveling up your character and giving yourself an advantage, but there will always be a reasonable amount of randomness that impacts your gameplay and the choices you decide to make.
Aside from the dice rolls, you'll also be doing resource management. Citizen Sleeper 2 has key resources for you to balance, such as fuel, supplies, and Cryo. Fuel allows you to move around the map and increase the timer before your pursuers catch up to you. Supplies are used to keep your energy levels up and thus stave off "stress," which is a mechanic that can negatively impact your dice rolls. Cryo is money, which is used to buy fuel, supplies, and other resources, such as components that can fix dice that have been broken by stress, for example.
This does add some amount of strategy to the game, requiring players to prioritize what resources they want to gather at that particular time, mostly to keep extending the number of cycles until you are caught by your pursuers while still having crucial resources available to progress the game's storyline. In my opinion, this is the most well-executed part of the game, and having to think about your next few moves helped keep me engaged, even if it was disappointing how much RNG could affect my plans.
In terms of presentation, Citizen Sleeper 2 is pretty basic. The UI is laid out clearly and boldly, which I was thankful for. The "background" is a 3D rendered environment that is pretty low poly, but it does a decent job of representing your world. The sound design, as I mentioned before, is a little lackluster. The game's audio is largely just space ambiance, with the occasional slight adjustment depending on what's happening on screen, but there's no real music or sound effects present in the game.
Citizen Sleeper 2 works well for the most part on Steam Deck. The game supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so there are no black borders around the screen. The game also has controller support, although sometimes navigating the UI on a controller can be a little frustrating. Some text is small but generally readable. You can also increase the size of dialogue text, which I recommend.
The graphical settings are non-existent, so we cannot adjust them. I recommend you limit your Steam Deck to 30 FPS in the SteamOS frame limiter. Otherwise, the CPU goes into overdrive to hit 60 or 90 FPS, and at points, I dropped below 60 when playing. Given the game's style, 30 FPS is perfectly fine.
A TDP Limit of 5W generally works fine, but you may need 6W for some environments.
With a 30 FPS limit, the game tends to use around 8-10W on my Steam Deck OLED, meaning you should see around 5 hours of battery life, while the Steam Deck LCD would manage around 3.5 hours. Temperatures largely stayed around 55C.
There is an ability to increase the text size of dialogue in the options menu, which I recommend, as well as the choice of 3 difficulties, Story mode, Normal, and Hardcore. Aside from that, there are no accessibility options in Citizen Sleeper 2.
Citizen Sleeper 2 is a curious game. While billed as an Adventure RPG, it plays far more like a Visual Novel with light RPG elements. Is it well-written? Absolutely. The text is descriptive and does help build some word pictures in your mind, but that's not a replacement for the lack of graphic and audio design that lets the game down. The story also failed to grab my attention, as I struggled to care about the player character due to how "inhuman" the game portrays them and their interactions with others.
Making the game quite reliant on RNG was also a curious choice for a story-based game, particularly one that penalizes death heavily. While it can add some extra tension to the game, it can also feel cheap when your "25% chance to fail" keeps failing repeatedly. It can make you feel helpless through no fault of your own.
As for how Citizen Sleeper 2 runs on the Steam Deck, aside from some control issues selecting the right buttons on the UI and some overly CPU-intensive scenes, the game runs well when locked to 30 FPS, and you can fully enjoy the game on the Steam Deck.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
Slay the Princess was provided by Serenity Forge for review. Thank you!
This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out at a later date.
Slay The Princess is a hallmark of how visual novels should be made. While they are not my favorite genre to play, they have grown on me over the past few years. Steins Gate, The Hungry Lamb, Scarlet Hollow, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim are great visual novels that have recently caught my attention. Black Tabby Games, developer of Slay the Princess, are masters of their craft, and this team might have the best visual novels on the market today.
While Slay the Princess was released in 2023, they released an update titled Pristine Cut last month. Calling it an update is not doing it justice, as it adds more of everything. There are new endings, more events, new characters, and thousands more voiced lines of dialogue. This was the perfect opportunity to try it again on my Steam Deck.
Slay The Princess gives you one goal. You're on a path in the woods, and a cabin is at the end of that path. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You must kill her. If not, the world ends. The tale is narrated by a witty voice who took things personally whenever I questioned his authority. Why do I have to kill her? Why does it have to be me? Do I get rewarded for my exceptional assassination skills? And more importantly, why is a ‘Voice Of The Hero?’ narrating my inner turmoil? There are many characters and story branches, but with the incredible voice acting, they are all brought to life, and each path feels fulfilling.
The visual design deserves praise. Every scene and interior is lovingly hand-drawn by award-winning novelist Abby Howard. The world feels like it's living and breathing, while the excellent music adds to the atmosphere. This dark, disturbing game holds nothing back, but even in the height of horror, I was drawn into the world Black Tabby Games have created.
The Princess herself might be one of my favorite video game characters overall. Every choice you make has consequences, some of which might not be applicable immediately. There are many options to explore and discover more about the world, and things get increasingly weird. She is dangerous, bloodthirsty, and fragile. Can I kill her? What is the Narrator doing? After some branching paths, things begin to make sense. The world is strange for a good reason, and learning more about it left me enthralled, desperate to uncover more with every branching path. Things become clear a few hours in, leaving you on your journey of death and rebirth.
I very rarely cry from a video game. I am the kind of player who enjoys things such as my Rimworld prison colonies of death or massacring peasants in Kingdom Come Deliverance. A few games have made me cry, and Slay The Princess has joined the list. It’s a chilling and intelligent take on what death means, and each chapter made me want to keep the story moving along through my teary eyes.
These emotions play into the music, which is a rare thing to commend for a visual novel. Slay The Princess has some of the most memorable and beautiful music designs. The soundtracks match every theme and scene wonderfully, and when combined with the narrative, it heightens the emotional impact. The critically acclaimed Skyrim Mod, Enderal, still has the best music for me, but this is right up there.
That does not mean it is always an emotional heartbreaker! Many scenes had me laughing from disbelief. The Narrator's antics, combined with all the players' personalities voicing their opinions on why every action you’re taking is wrong, lead to hilarious fights.
Some games are best to experience blind, and this is one you won't regret diving into.
According to Valve, Slay the Princess is classified as Verified, with ProtonDB giving it a Native rating. In my experience, this is very accurate.
For transparency's sake, I played Slay The Princess in two phases. The first was for a few hours earlier this year for a Steam event, and the rest for this review after the stable Steam OS 3.6.19 update in October. This ‘stable update’ has caused several problems on my Steam Deck. While I cannot fault the game on the Steam Deck, the performance at low wattage TDP is considerably worse than it used to be because of the OS update. These performance regressions are on the LCD Steam Deck model and do not happen to everyone. Hopefully, Valve can fix the issue.
Fortunately, it runs out of the box on the Steam Deck, with solid controls and performance across the board. While visual novels are usually fairly lightweight, Slay The Princess has some pretty impressive animations and high-fidelity artwork, requiring more power than most. The Steam Deck is more than up to the task, and it chews through even the most demanding scenes on stock settings (Unlocked TDP, 60hz Refresh Rate, 60FPS lock). There are no graphical settings to tweak, and we are limited on how much we can change. Apart from minor drops in the more intensive animated scenes, it is as good as possible.
Despite the enormous amount of text, it is easy to read on the Steam Deck, and Black Tabby Games knows how to make their novels enjoyable whether you are reading the dialogue or listening to it. There are plenty of accessibility options available, too.
The only potential issue I have found is that the controller sometimes makes it hard to see what button you are pressing. Sometimes, I found I was accidentally going into the settings menu when I intended to click Autoplay. However, this is a minor quibble and has not derided my opinion of the game so far. It also might take a while to load on the Steam Deck, as I experienced longer loading times since the most recent Stable update. Again, this is a minor issue that is probably unrelated to the game.
Slay The Princess is a little more power-hungry than other visual novels I have played on the Deck, but it is still fairly efficient regarding battery life. Its overall power drain is hard to pin down as it fluctuates between 9 and 11 watts without any adjustments. That still translated into over 4 hours of battery life with the LCD Steam Deck, an impressive average.
Visual novels are a genre I like to play on the go or during long Steam Deck sessions without plugging it into a charger every few hours. Despite our few in-game options, Slay The Princess scales fairly well on lower TDPs, although not as well as it used to. I’m considering the current tests the norm unless Valve fixes them.
It maintains fairly stable at these settings with a 40hz refresh rate, 4-watt TDP, and framerate locked to 40FPS. A couple of intensive moments might cause a few frame dips, but these are minor and only last a few seconds. The most I experienced was transitioning into the cabin, but this happened on my RTX 3060 laptop, so it is not something to worry about. This averaged a power draw of 8 watts. The LCD Steam Deck model gives a respectable battery life of up to 5 hours.
Previously, I could play on a 3W TDP with no frame drops and an average power draw of 6 watts (for nearly 7 hours of battery life!). Still, for the best balance between performance and battery life, a 4W TDP is the best compromise because the power savings aren't significant.
Slay The Princess is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish- - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, and Traditional Chinese.
You can change the font size, toggle a few font styles, and change the line spacing. There is also text-to-speech support with a few options, including high-contrast text. If you find flickering images uncomfortable, you can turn them off. Overall, there are has impressive customization options.
Had this game debuted in 2024, this would likely win my Game Of The Year award. Even when not on sale, its base price of $17.99 is a steal for the quality of what’s on offer. There have been a few minor bugs, but these were so infrequent that they were barely worth mentioning. Chilling, brilliant, and disturbing, Slay The Princess is in its best condition yet with the arrival of the Pristine Cut.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.