This review contains spoilers
Okay, so in Trauma Center Under the Knife 1 I complained that the game had a lack of variety, despite being otherwise a very great game. This game seems to have taken a note from the lack of variety in missions, and kind of stepped back everywhere else.
Let's start with the good. The sutures actually work as you'd expect in this game, compared to UtK1 where they just randomly didn't register sometimes. The game tells you how to use the drain properly this time. The characters of Adel Tulba and Heather Ross are magnificent additions: both great characters, and especially for Adel, 3D characters with decent motivations. The game isn't just "Fight GUILT, over and over again!" and you do quite a bit more. PGS is an especially cool twist on otherwise "normal" surgeries.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of repetition in that "more". You do two surgeries on spleen breaks, and two on arm breaks. And both times the fractures on the bones are exactly the same each time! A looot of the new content is directly pulled from New Blood (ligament surgery, no stabilizer mission, three-pronged aneurysms), which isn't inherently bad, but I feel like there isn't much this game actually does that it's own outside of GUILT mutations and Neo-GUILT.
Which isn't inherently bad. It's still a fairly fun game even with two missions that I find unfairly tight (the three aneurysm one and the one minute timer one). The other reason for this three star rating is because the story is all over the place. There's a great framework in how the game handles Neo-GUILT, and the forces of Acropolis/the Hands of Asclepius. Unfortunately, the story kind of fails at making Patrick Mercer a sympathetic figure enough to feel bad for him, even though you're clearly meant to feel that way, and it also inserts this very out of place and out of character love subplot between Angie and Derek, which involves Derek crushing on every new pair of breasts he sees (Reina and Heather) and Angie acting like a tsundere about it, yelling at him in the mid-game and then feeling bad and trying to follow him around while he leaves, while Cybil, Greg, and Mary try to hook them up. It's uncomfortable and actively detracts from the plot, a lot. Thankfully, this is mostly put away in Chapters 5-7 when things get serious and the game becomes about bioterrorism again.
I dunno. I liked this game but man there are some serious detractors from what I'd expect from a sequel. It's a fun time, but I'm kind of relieved I'm through with it.
Let's start with the good. The sutures actually work as you'd expect in this game, compared to UtK1 where they just randomly didn't register sometimes. The game tells you how to use the drain properly this time. The characters of Adel Tulba and Heather Ross are magnificent additions: both great characters, and especially for Adel, 3D characters with decent motivations. The game isn't just "Fight GUILT, over and over again!" and you do quite a bit more. PGS is an especially cool twist on otherwise "normal" surgeries.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of repetition in that "more". You do two surgeries on spleen breaks, and two on arm breaks. And both times the fractures on the bones are exactly the same each time! A looot of the new content is directly pulled from New Blood (ligament surgery, no stabilizer mission, three-pronged aneurysms), which isn't inherently bad, but I feel like there isn't much this game actually does that it's own outside of GUILT mutations and Neo-GUILT.
Which isn't inherently bad. It's still a fairly fun game even with two missions that I find unfairly tight (the three aneurysm one and the one minute timer one). The other reason for this three star rating is because the story is all over the place. There's a great framework in how the game handles Neo-GUILT, and the forces of Acropolis/the Hands of Asclepius. Unfortunately, the story kind of fails at making Patrick Mercer a sympathetic figure enough to feel bad for him, even though you're clearly meant to feel that way, and it also inserts this very out of place and out of character love subplot between Angie and Derek, which involves Derek crushing on every new pair of breasts he sees (Reina and Heather) and Angie acting like a tsundere about it, yelling at him in the mid-game and then feeling bad and trying to follow him around while he leaves, while Cybil, Greg, and Mary try to hook them up. It's uncomfortable and actively detracts from the plot, a lot. Thankfully, this is mostly put away in Chapters 5-7 when things get serious and the game becomes about bioterrorism again.
I dunno. I liked this game but man there are some serious detractors from what I'd expect from a sequel. It's a fun time, but I'm kind of relieved I'm through with it.