I like Citizen Sleeper 2 because it is more of a jerk to me!
I played a bunch of CS2 last night!
One of my biggest takeaways from the first Citizen Sleeper was that it was a little too easy to become stable in that game. You started off weak but rapidly became stronger through the power of your local friend network. It seemed to me to be less a simulation of hardscrabble suffering, and more like a mechanical proof that having a lot of friends will keep you alive. By the end of the game you have so many options which you can understand so deeply that there is very little risk associated with most of the opportunities available to you.
CS2 Goes in a different direction. I think the resource economy is actually a lot tougher, and there are a lot more things to juggle, and multiple additional pals to manage in your little adventurer party, and the high-stress moments feel a lot more high-stress because of it.
There's also some mechanics I will not spoil which cause you to feel significantly more "disabled" over time by long-term debuffs that affect your dice and overall strength and flexibility. It's hitting the goals of the first game a lot more directly, I think.
This really is a game that starts off with the player being unaware of how strong and hale and hearty they are, and just undermining them repeatedly with resource spirals that make them feel weaker over time, which is... a rare decision to make, but I do appreciate the way it was made here, and I think it's effective. That's cool!
That said: boy howdy, it's hard to keep all the info in your head about where you can find which fixes for your various problems. I would really appreciate a belt-map-level reminder of what facilities are inside each map node. The worst I ever got fucked up, it was because I went to the wrong place looking for materials to repair my dice with. I would love to suffer only from bad tactical decisions, and not from being confused about where to go.
Otherwise, I do recommend it! It's got the juice. I think it has more juice than the first one and I'm glad I picked it up.