This is a solid sequel to an indie RPG released in 2022. It expands the gameplay and setting established by the original game, and provides greater agency in navigation, recruitment and missions.

CS1 was limited to a space station but CS2 takes place in a much larger game world: an asteroid belt. After the initial onboarding you're free to visit its various locations and pick up major and minor missions here and there. Upgrading the spaceship and completing major missions unlock access to extra locations. This nonlinearity in storytelling feels great. You can get involved in coups, trade deals, a manhunt, an advertising campaign, a three-way standoff over a corporate asset… At some point a smartly written love story quietly unfolds in the background. It feels like we're a small part of a greater living world, but a small part able to make choices, overcome hardship, turn the tables and make some friends on the way.

Scattered through the Belt is a roster of potential crewmates to discover and hire. They're very useful to complete the skillset of the protagonist during missions. If you've played the first game, you'll find out that some of its characters have found their way to the Starward Belt as companions or quest givers. They're not the same though, they've grown and changed in personality and outlook: the doubtful has found confidence, the embittered has turned to organized crime, the exiles may or may not settle down.

Before the story and companions, the daily routine of CS is its strangely fulfilling gameplay. Making the best of a bad situation, carefully allocating dice rolls between several tasks according to skills and threats, taking risks in a time-limited mission, being rewarded (or not) with a positive outcome plus some currency and upgrades: few other games manage to provide this satisfaction of a job well done.

All in all it's a well-polished experience. You don't need to have played the first game to enjoy the second, though it'll add some extra value.

By the way, here's something for newcomers and returning players who may need a refresher.


Locations
- The Core Systems: the center of the galaxy from which mankind spread, now presumably rich and highly populated. Ruled by corporations and the Core System law, which bans sentient AI but allows sleeper labor.
- The Helion System: the solar system where CS1 and CS2 take place. Its sun is named H1. Orbiting around it are the planets Stoker, Cinder and Ember as well as their moons, two clusters of asteroids named the Sunward Belt and the Starward Belt, and the space station Erlin's Eye.

Corporations
- Conway Extractions: a major corp specialized in resource extraction. Conway builds and uses a fleet of extraction and security drones, piloted from different star systems with top proprietary tech. Its armed drones are used in its war against SenetStat for the control of the inner Helion System.
- Cybele: a minor corp specialized in terraforming technology
- Essen-Arp: a major corp specialized in production and operation of Sleepers. Sleepers are synthetic bodies run by an emulated human mind scanned from an actual human being, but considered as non-human assets by the Core System law. They require stabilizer drugs produced by Essen-Arp to prevent planned obsolescence. Essen-Arp employs armed sleepers to capture escaped sleepers.
- NEOVEND: a minor corp specialized in providing paid services to colonists of the Helion System
- SenetStat: a major corp specialized in data analysis. SenetStat has purchased the ownership of the Helion System from Solheim, and employs mercenaries to wage war against Conway for the control of the system.
- Solheim: a former major corp which has collapsed before the events of CS1 and CS2. It led the colonization of the Helion System and the exploitation of its resources, and built a lot of stations and outposts which are now abandoned or repurposed, such as Æ1, the space station where CS1 is set (renamed Erlin's Eye after the fall of Solheim).
- XPR: a minor service corporation which provides logistical support to their corporate clients, such as refueling stations. It lost its main business partner when Solheim collapsed.

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For those with disabilties.
For those with trauma.
For those railing against the entropic flow of time itself and the aging it inflicts on your body.

Play this and feel, for a breath, for a heartbeat, for this one sacred moment in a ream of sacred moments...

Feel that you aren't alone.

All the precarious warmth of the first game but with the added chaos of being constantly on the run from a maniac and your own degradation.