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Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 66.2 hrs on record (20.1 hrs at review time)
Posted: 3 Sep, 2018 @ 6:01am
Updated: 3 Sep, 2018 @ 6:02am

Worthy successor of the All time classic – 1997 Theme Hospital?

Where it all began
I've spent countless hours with the classic Bullfrog playing over and over again levels 7-12. Those levels had the right amount of tech and challenge without too much of a tutorial remaining.

Watching patients getting their tongues cut, heads pinched, psychiatrist curing poor Elvis impersonators, getting their Alien DNA purged and I think my favorite, walking Stick with hat and glasses got their body visible with miracle of modern pharmacy science.

All of this while listening to never ending radio announcements calling doctors, epidemics or VIP visitors. Janitors running around watering plants, sweeping garbage or vomit pools left over by poor patients and occasionally hammering delicate hospital machinery till its completely fixed.

Spirit of Theme Hospital was also brought forward by cute graphics, making sure that you understand that this is all about fun. Crazy diseases with even more crazier cures and execution of those procedures.
Hospital is reality is not that much of a fun. For some it can be pretty scary and dark place where lives are changed forever. But while playing good old Theme Hospital, you could easily forget on real world.


The Good
Now why have I spent describing for some time the old game, instead of the new one? Well, because most of the above applies on the Two Point Hospital.

Cartoonish graphics resembling Wallace and Gromit games will once again welcome you to a friendly hospital world. You can nearly here it screaming “come, lets have fun!” Characters will walk, work and dance around just like you would expect from entertaining cartoon.
You can again hear radio announcement with line “Maintenance attention, automated snack machines need manual restocking.” And I would swear they had found the same lady that did these lines back in the original game. And if its not her, it is absolutely spot on.

While I havent seen so far any of the old “diseases,” most likely due to a copyright issue, I have seen many of new ones which are on par with the original.
One type of patients walks around very sadly and they gray. Their clothes, skin, everything is in shades of gray. You have to research new cure for them and it can all be summed up as:“Have you life turned you monochromatic? Are you seeing only shades of gray? Come, we will spray paint on you so you are colorful again.”

So not only it nails the atmosphere and gameplay of the original, but it adds what was missing in the old game. Or lets say, it was not missing, but it adds Quality of Life improvements. Hospital staff has been given variety of perks. Either you can hire staff with those perks, or you can hire fresh people and train them yourself. By this way you can train up very powerful and professional staff with variety of bonuses for curing this and that. And what was annoying in the old game? When you highest ranking Psychiatrist waltzed across the whole hospital to treat patient with bloated head. Two Point hospital adds a control where you can choose which jobs will doctor/nurse/assistant/janitor be allowed to do. So you can “lock” your best Psychiatrist to only work in those departments.
And there are many more QoL improvements like these which help you manage your hospital more efficiently.

The Bad
While it is all fun and joy, there are some not nice stuff I have to mention. I could overlook the absence of Windowed Borderless mode, as you can still play in windows and maximaze it. Not the same thing, but better than full screen.
But after about 2 hours of enjoying 5th or 6th level, game started to act… strange. Icons above heads of patients wound not go away. As well as other “status” messages that popped stayed where they were. This lasted about minute or two before I noticed and after this, framerate seemed to drop a lot. I have quite the game with saving my progress and started it again. Everything was once again smooth. However the nasty surprise came when I attempted to continue my saved progress. As I was welcomed by basically a message “Your save is corrupted, cannot be loaded, we are sorry.” Which I am sorry as well. As up until this point for about 10 hours it was only fun for me. This however shattered my pink glasses. I hope this will be addressed in upcoming patches, but still I have to mention it.

The Ugly
Denuvo.
I mean, really? Why? Hackers seems to crack this game even before release. Why would you employ such measure? I have nearly literally threw my credit card on my monitor when I have discovered by accident that this game actually launched. The same day I have bought it. Only after that I have noticed Denuvo is present. I have strict policy not buying anything with that crap, at least not until it is removed by developers when breached.
Another stuff, when I have bought the game and started to play, I have discovered in other news that there is a discount running for few hours where you can save up to 25-30% from the new purchase. Again WHAT THE HELL?


I would give you 10/10 for the game itself. I could even look over technical stuff I have encountered. But just for the Management Deunovo decision, this game will leave bitter mark.
And while I have no problem supporting monetary developers doing great job, I still want to be efficient with my budget so “WTF” on the other thing.
There was really a great run for this game to be absolutely fantastic and it is. However one should look on rest of the story as well, before making decision.

I will leave that up to you dear reader.
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1 Comments
Ava Louise 15 Oct @ 3:18am 
Wow,your review is on point! So much info and thought put into it. I'm seriously impressed. Keep it up! 💖👏