skitty
Bio
i will forever be in video game hell
there's some visual novels currently not on the list (20)
when i'm not playing video games by myself or with loved ones, i play them as an anime character on twitch
i will forever be in video game hell
there's some visual novels currently not on the list (20)
when i'm not playing video games by myself or with loved ones, i play them as an anime character on twitch
Badges
Best Friends
Become mutual friends with at least 3 others
Gone Gold
Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page
Noticed
Gained 3+ followers
Shreked
Found the secret ogre page
Roadtrip
Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap
Elite Gamer
Played 500+ games
3 Years of Service
Being part of the Backloggd community for 3 years
Liked
Gained 10+ total review likes
Gamer
Played 250+ games
N00b
Played 100+ games
Favorite Games
727
Total Games Played
014
Played in 2024
733
Games Backloggd
Recently Played See More
Recently Reviewed See More
This review contains spoilers
i don't know why they didn't put a difficulty option until the sequel games but thank god for that, honestly.
has some more interesting operations such as brain surgery (well... more like brain aneurysms and not really cutting into the brain but still) and doing surgery in the dark. we even get the irrelevant mission but it's not bomb diffusing this time, thank god. it's just breaking locks and it's not as complicated as the bomb was. the only struggle i had was with the last stage. the grievances i have for this series are more plot related. it makes no sense for there to be a time skip and have the 17 year old stay 17 even though she should be in college. we also get a promising male character, only for him to be pushed to the sidelines until it's revealed that the HOA (its a coincidental abbreviation i swear its hands of asclepius) and acropolis pharmaceuticals are actually EVIL organizations. not a shocker, because it was foreshadowed in the opening and they've already acted suspicious to begin with.
even though delphi comes back, it mainly focuses on those two organizations. i wish delphi was slightly more threatening in this game compared to the organizations though, especially since the villain guy who is an ancestor of our last delphi leader, managed to make clones of his own henchmen. surely he could've made something more threatening if the story writers allowed him to.
at least the neo guilt was pretty interesting, both design and concept wise.
actually, a lot of these plot twists weren't shocking whatsoever. while i could understand the flubs for the surgery in the car, they randomly decide that there's not much supplies because of caduceus losing team members and the stockers 'forgetting' to get supplies. which probably shouldn't happen in a place where life-saving surgeries happen... at least nobody died?
there is also a romantic subplot between derek and angie which gets awkward. derek, who seemed to barely have any interest in women suddenly gets flustered over any new woman that shows up. then angie yells at him and drama between them ensues. their co-workers try to bring them together too and it makes me think about how this probably wouldn't be allowed in real life. workplaces say co-workers shouldn't date (they do anyways) but i feel like a doctor dating his own nurse may have some pretty dangerous consequences. though they seem like a pretty decent couple near the end but that's only because angie finally sees him as a human being and not a verbal punching bag. but hey, at least it's better than the options he seemed to have which was: a woman part of a shady organization, a girl who is many years younger than him, and his mentor/parent co-worker from the first game that's like 10+ years older than him.
the funny thing is that despite the romantic subplot being so pushed, there's only implications that they're together with co-worker gossip, angie saying 'the girl by your side', and the narrator calling angie a 'loved one'. i don't expect them to make out with each other, but i'm shocked they didn't call each other boyfriend or girlfriend, or (partner at least) so it's more formal.
lastly while the art is more polished and reminiscent of persona, i miss the old art style so much and i loved angie's look from the first game a lot better than this one (and second opinion to be honest).
has some more interesting operations such as brain surgery (well... more like brain aneurysms and not really cutting into the brain but still) and doing surgery in the dark. we even get the irrelevant mission but it's not bomb diffusing this time, thank god. it's just breaking locks and it's not as complicated as the bomb was. the only struggle i had was with the last stage. the grievances i have for this series are more plot related. it makes no sense for there to be a time skip and have the 17 year old stay 17 even though she should be in college. we also get a promising male character, only for him to be pushed to the sidelines until it's revealed that the HOA (its a coincidental abbreviation i swear its hands of asclepius) and acropolis pharmaceuticals are actually EVIL organizations. not a shocker, because it was foreshadowed in the opening and they've already acted suspicious to begin with.
even though delphi comes back, it mainly focuses on those two organizations. i wish delphi was slightly more threatening in this game compared to the organizations though, especially since the villain guy who is an ancestor of our last delphi leader, managed to make clones of his own henchmen. surely he could've made something more threatening if the story writers allowed him to.
at least the neo guilt was pretty interesting, both design and concept wise.
actually, a lot of these plot twists weren't shocking whatsoever. while i could understand the flubs for the surgery in the car, they randomly decide that there's not much supplies because of caduceus losing team members and the stockers 'forgetting' to get supplies. which probably shouldn't happen in a place where life-saving surgeries happen... at least nobody died?
there is also a romantic subplot between derek and angie which gets awkward. derek, who seemed to barely have any interest in women suddenly gets flustered over any new woman that shows up. then angie yells at him and drama between them ensues. their co-workers try to bring them together too and it makes me think about how this probably wouldn't be allowed in real life. workplaces say co-workers shouldn't date (they do anyways) but i feel like a doctor dating his own nurse may have some pretty dangerous consequences. though they seem like a pretty decent couple near the end but that's only because angie finally sees him as a human being and not a verbal punching bag. but hey, at least it's better than the options he seemed to have which was: a woman part of a shady organization, a girl who is many years younger than him, and his mentor/parent co-worker from the first game that's like 10+ years older than him.
the funny thing is that despite the romantic subplot being so pushed, there's only implications that they're together with co-worker gossip, angie saying 'the girl by your side', and the narrator calling angie a 'loved one'. i don't expect them to make out with each other, but i'm shocked they didn't call each other boyfriend or girlfriend, or (partner at least) so it's more formal.
lastly while the art is more polished and reminiscent of persona, i miss the old art style so much and i loved angie's look from the first game a lot better than this one (and second opinion to be honest).
while it has its charm using the ds' touch screen abilities to its potential by making a surgery game, it's extremely hard and at times gets aggravating.
i know difficult games are a thing that many of us love, but its bad when you go on youtube for help because the stages fuck you over continuously and people are talking about how they quit the game because it was too hard. some of those people have resorted to using action replay, which i also ended up doing because of the original game's difficulty. some of the levels feel impossible for human beings to do unless they have extremely fast reflexes or strong wrists. like, i can not inject 5 aneurysms at once when i'm at the age where my wrists are far more frail. i'm not risking carpal tunnel to beat a difficult stage.
you'd think that with action replay this will be 'enjoyable'. no, you for some reason, this game makes you DIFFUSE A BOMB when you're a doctor, which takes many losses to actually understand how to diffuse it (yes, even with ign's walkthrough). you also can't use action replay for this stage either, it's literally 'do things as fast as humanly possible or everyone dies'. what's even worse is that the lady that helps you diffuse it has experience diffusing bombs. so why throw this all on the rookie? why does she have to force you to do it? (for gameplay reasons, but i digress)
which brings us to the plot. you play as derek styles, a 26 year old 'rookie' doctor who gets a barrage of insults even if you do the surgery right when he's improving his skill and you're beating every stage with no problem. however, this finally stops when its revealed he gets a 'healing touch' that slows down time to save patients. only then do his co-workers actually start being nice to him... for some reason.
like yes, he has done numerous surgeries beforehand. but it was only when his ability showed up that his coworkers suddenly saw him in a positive light. someone on here basically mentioned that derek suddenly upgrading from a rookie surgeon to working at caduceus was unrealistic and i have to agree. actually, why did the doctors suddenly force him from minor arm surgery to doing surgeries that can actually threaten peoples lives if not done proper. WTF?
then theres the reveal of GUILT, the man-made viruses and one of the more fascinating parts of the plot. for the most part, they're pretty easy to take down. but the one with the triangles is the worst one out of all of them. it took me forever to figure out how to kill those.
perhaps atlus wanted to make this game painfully tricky to emphasize to the normal every day crowd on just how hard surgeons have it. though i highly doubt this was the case with the inaccuracies of the career itself in the game with derek. i wanted to like this game, especially with the creative surgery concept. i really did. especially since i love how ds games experimented with the touch screen capabilities. the music in the game is amazing and i love the 2000s campy anime art this game has. maybe sometimes these surgeries can be fun, but for the most part they're too tricky. the game is really hard to enjoy or recommend.
i was actually introduced to this game with the wii version my mom had gotten the family when i was really young, though i mainly watched my brothers play it and don't know the difficulty. hopefully it's a lot better than the original ds version.
i know difficult games are a thing that many of us love, but its bad when you go on youtube for help because the stages fuck you over continuously and people are talking about how they quit the game because it was too hard. some of those people have resorted to using action replay, which i also ended up doing because of the original game's difficulty. some of the levels feel impossible for human beings to do unless they have extremely fast reflexes or strong wrists. like, i can not inject 5 aneurysms at once when i'm at the age where my wrists are far more frail. i'm not risking carpal tunnel to beat a difficult stage.
you'd think that with action replay this will be 'enjoyable'. no, you for some reason, this game makes you DIFFUSE A BOMB when you're a doctor, which takes many losses to actually understand how to diffuse it (yes, even with ign's walkthrough). you also can't use action replay for this stage either, it's literally 'do things as fast as humanly possible or everyone dies'. what's even worse is that the lady that helps you diffuse it has experience diffusing bombs. so why throw this all on the rookie? why does she have to force you to do it? (for gameplay reasons, but i digress)
which brings us to the plot. you play as derek styles, a 26 year old 'rookie' doctor who gets a barrage of insults even if you do the surgery right when he's improving his skill and you're beating every stage with no problem. however, this finally stops when its revealed he gets a 'healing touch' that slows down time to save patients. only then do his co-workers actually start being nice to him... for some reason.
like yes, he has done numerous surgeries beforehand. but it was only when his ability showed up that his coworkers suddenly saw him in a positive light. someone on here basically mentioned that derek suddenly upgrading from a rookie surgeon to working at caduceus was unrealistic and i have to agree. actually, why did the doctors suddenly force him from minor arm surgery to doing surgeries that can actually threaten peoples lives if not done proper. WTF?
then theres the reveal of GUILT, the man-made viruses and one of the more fascinating parts of the plot. for the most part, they're pretty easy to take down. but the one with the triangles is the worst one out of all of them. it took me forever to figure out how to kill those.
perhaps atlus wanted to make this game painfully tricky to emphasize to the normal every day crowd on just how hard surgeons have it. though i highly doubt this was the case with the inaccuracies of the career itself in the game with derek. i wanted to like this game, especially with the creative surgery concept. i really did. especially since i love how ds games experimented with the touch screen capabilities. the music in the game is amazing and i love the 2000s campy anime art this game has. maybe sometimes these surgeries can be fun, but for the most part they're too tricky. the game is really hard to enjoy or recommend.
i was actually introduced to this game with the wii version my mom had gotten the family when i was really young, though i mainly watched my brothers play it and don't know the difficulty. hopefully it's a lot better than the original ds version.
can't believe it took me 20 years to take notice of the pinnacle of gaming
(i did play cooking mama cook off as a kid, but i really didn't embrace this series since i played the ds version)
(i did play cooking mama cook off as a kid, but i really didn't embrace this series since i played the ds version)