Trauma Center: Under the Knife

• This is not a real ending screen, just the epic conclusion to the main game, because I did not get what I consider the real ending. Will leave a review here because everyone else considers what I did to be “beating the final boss,” but as far as I’m concerned this is still filed under “illegitimate completion”
• The remaining unfinished parts of the game are Chapter 6 (the epilogue) and Challenge Mode (the X missions). Both of those areas have the same requirement, which is to work through each of the 7 types of GUILT. Literally they do the exact same thing. Ch.6 is harder than doing it in the main game, and X Missions is harder than Ch6
• That is way too annoying for me to do 2 more times, boomer reflexes, etc etc. I do really like this game. But I don’t like it that much.

END EXCUSES. END COPIUM. GAME REVIEW BELOW.

• Not only did I love this game, I also really like the format. The concept of “actual gameplay-game but driven by a Visual Novel” is awesome.
• You can tell Atlus did not have a giant budget for this, (because they did not know they had a huge hit on their hands) by the way it’s balanced. My goal through the main game was to never use Healing Touch, because I figured out it makes things way too easy. But if you commit to this, there are certain things in the late game where you really need the Healing Touch, but using it always gates you out of getting the S rank in every mission. So if the game is saying “The right way to play this is not to use it at all” then why not design every mission around that? Or, if the right way to play the game IS TO use Healing Touch when you need it, why have it gate you out of the top rank?
• I understand that technically, on paper, there exist youtube videos of people S-ranking everything without ever using the Healing Touch but those are crazy exceptions and not done on regular DS hardware.
• Anyway, I thought the main story was great, and so were the puzzles, which all fit right in to the narrative
• The music and characters work hand in glove too; I like the little voice lines you get from whoever happens to be assisting you while you’re doing a mission. When you hear the dramatic music as well as the voice clips come in over them, you can imagine watching all this on a real medical drama
• Some DS games do have affordances for left-handed people, and some of these are better done than others, but this is not one of the good ones. Playing as a lefty is way harder because you cannot see the Vitals in the upper-left corner, so you’re always either wasting time by moving your hand then finding your place again, or just guessing, which wastes time on the game clock.