Earthbound may be a niche game, but most folks who have played it have strong memories of it. It might be the almost-dreamlike mix of modern-day America, the over-the-top cartoonish characters, the tremendous sense of scale, or the catchy music. While one can try to copy the gameplay mechanics, it's difficult to replicate Earthbound's heart. Citizens of Earth was clearly inspired by Nintendo's cult classic, but Citizens tries to capture the ridiculous, over-the-top spirit of the original game. It's not perfect, but Citizens of Earth is a solid attempt at creating a game that's as funny and enjoyable as Earthbound.

Citizens of Earth follows the newly elected Vice President of the World. After a heated election, he and his running mate are crowned leaders of the free world. Not even a day later, everything starts to become strange. The VP wakes up to a protest outside his house, and before long, he's embroiled in a complex plot involving flying coffee houses, evil clones, bears made of honey, brainwashed hippies and other bizarre creatures that threaten the world. Of course, it's up to the VP to figure out what happened before he loses his cushy job — and he might try to save the entire world, too.

The plot, such as it is, exists mostly to deliver a heaping helping of comedy. The VP is charmingly dense, and most of the side characters are likeable. If I had one real complaint, it is that once a character is recruited, he or she falls to the wayside. There aren't any characters who exist to play off the VP's denseness. Your other characters speak in a more generic style. This can be funny, but I would've liked more individual humor. It doesn't matter if you're fighting Telefawns or pushing past convoluted paperwork; the game has its share of laugh-out-loud moments.

The title's big gimmick is the absurdly large cast of characters. Almost every NPC you meet in the game can be recruited into your party. Each party member also has an exclusive talent, and as the game progresses, the talents get more complex. You can get a pilot who offers transportation to various locations, an architect who can build shortcuts, a variety of salesman who offer new items for purchase, and so on. You even get citizens who can manipulate the game mechanics. To name a few, the school mascot can raise or lower the difficulty level (with associated rewards for raising it), the beekeeper can change the zoom level of your camera, and the schoolteacher passively levels up characters for you. Some of these characters even allow access to new areas, such as the psychologist's ability to enter dreams or the programmer's power to travel via the Internet.

You need a large cast because the VP of Earth is too important to do any fighting. Instead, you select up to three party members at a time to do your fighting for you. Combat borrows from Earthbound, with on-map sprites leading to first-person battles. The turn-based combat has a few interesting details. Combat is a balance between using weaker attacks that generate energy and stronger attacks that use it up. Hitting enemies with elemental weaknesses can generate extra energy, but hitting their strengths can lose it. Buffs and debuffs can be applied multiple times, each with their own durations. Multiple applications of the same buff or debuff increases the strength but not the duration. This means it's possible to stack strong buffs that last only a single turn or weaker buffs that last multiple turns — or a mix of the two. In addition to the proper use of the turn-based combat, this can greatly amplify your damage output.

Every character has a different fighting style. The pilot is based on using refueling abilities to regenerate her energy for high-damage, high-cost attacks. The soda shop owner can't attack but uses addictive soda drinks to power up his allies. The teacher can buff his allies or debuff his enemies. Mom can reduce an enemy's defense with her basic attack and can use different status effects. The musician can amplify his abilities by tuning his instrument before attacking, and the homeless man can tank attacks without dying. Each character also gains new and more complex abilities as they level up. Your brother, the first party member, begins as a simple attacker. As he levels up, he learns to taunt enemies, defend himself, and attack multiple foes at once.

As if that weren't cool enough, every character also has distinctive customizable items. Citizens of Earth doesn't have traditional equipment, but every character has a variety of equippable items that provide bonuses. Not every item is equal. Some are straightforward buffs, but some can completely change the way the character works. Proper equipment can turn a strong character into an unstoppable behemoth.

Combat in Citizens of Earth is fun. Every character feels so distinctive that I frequently swapped characters just to experience how they work. There are some interesting synergies you can perform. Different elemental strengths and weaknesses mean it's worthwhile to swap between characters in each area. Party members don't gain experience when not in combat, but experience gains are so quick that it's trivial to get an underused character up to par. The game even borrows Earthbound's system of letting you instantly kill enemies who are weaker if you manage to surprise them.

The title also features some nonlinearity, which can be both positive and negative. It's great when you're exploring the environments and finding new people to recruit or new places to explore, but it's possible to wander into the wrong place without much warning. Early on, I stepped into what seemed like a safe place and was killed by enemy attacks before my characters could retreat. Death is painless — you respawn at the entrance to the area with nothing lost — but it was a surprise. It's also difficult to tell which areas are intended for my characters, but this eases as you progress and multiple areas become available at once. I also had a situation where I couldn't advance the main plot until I did a side-quest because I had backtracked before the game expected it. As long as you don't mind the possibility of exploring or wandering around, Citizens of Earth does things well. The core story isn't brief, but you'll spend a lot of time doing side-quests.

The game may be cute and fun, but there's an overabundance of small, nagging flaws, and that lack of polish puts a damper on the entire experience. Dungeon design can be repetitive and circular, certain enemies feel designed to waste your time, and some minigames are awkward and poorly Implemented. There isn't a big game-breaking flaw, and many of the problems are minor annoyances. The only frustration is that many of them could've been easily fixed. For example, the used car salesman lets you drive around with a car on any road, which speeds up time and limits random encounters. However, the act of getting in and out of the car requires a lot of unnecessary menu-wrangling. One oddity is that the game treats the car as an NPC car as soon as you get out, so you can't just hop back in. A lot of little things like that drag down the game.

These rough edges don't hurt the spirit of the game, but they have an impact on the gameplay. I had several moments where I realized that I didn't want to recruit a character if it would mean going back through one of the dungeons again. I had points where the excellent combat began to drag as I fought enemies who I didn't want to fight, but the dungeon design didn't allow me to easily skip past them. Even pumping up the difficulty level could only help so much once I had a good setup for taking down enemies in an area. I also encountered a number of glitches, although some may be fixed in the final version of the game. There were empty text boxes, the music sometimes stopped playing, and the game crashed to desktop on a couple of occasions. None of these problems ruined the game, but it's a sharp contrast with the otherwise strong core gameplay.

Given the game's colorful and charming art style, every character is represented by a stylish HD sprite. The animation is limited, but there's enough variety and style that you can easily overlook it. I absolutely adored the monster designs, which do a great job of calling back to Earthbound and Mother 3's bizarre mix of people and animals. The voice acting is quite good, with characters who do an excellent job of pulling off the over-exaggerated tone that the game absolutely needs. The music is solid but mostly unmemorable, although there are a few good tunes here and there.

Citizens of Earth is a little rough around the edges, but it definitely has heart. The great humor is balanced out by an incredibly fun combat system with a ton of variety. Some lackluster dungeon design and somewhat tedious backtracking really drag down the gameplay. For every moment of frustration, there are two cool battles or laugh-out-loud jokes. It's got some serious RPG chops, too, so if you're a fan of lighthearted RPGs, you'll enjoy Citizens of Earth.

Score: 7.0/10