Review: Two Point Hospital (Nintendo Switch)

I never liked hospitals; I always felt like I can’t breathe in them due to who knows how many germs there are in the air. I’m not sure if I would like to go to hospitals anymore in the Two Point Hospital universe, especially if I were the one managing said hospital. I mean, everything suddenly gets expensive just because the hospital fell into debt building a new bathroom? Unacceptable. But where else could you find professionals trained to fix literal “light-headedness” or to cure “jest-infection” from former circus clowns?

My first impression was that the game’s character design reminded me of Aardman Animations since the claymation-looking style made me think of Wallace and Gromit. The intro showed off some of the crazy conditions that you would need to alleviate as you “BUILD, CURE and IMPROVE!” along with a dose of witty British humor.

But the funny nature didn’t stop at the intro. When you build rooms, hire staff, and place items inside the empty hospital, you are treated to background music from a radio station with bored and snobbish radio personalities interjecting hilarious stories in between a few tracks.

The gameplay is basically like the “Tycoon” games: placing down items, seating, pictures, etc. The more items you place in a room, the higher the prestige becomes, which helps the hospital’s reputation. Also, like the “Tycoon” games, you can adjust the prices of things like treatments or vending machines. Doing so can make people unhappy, however, causing them to refuse to pay and consequently lowering the reputation. If you aren’t familiar with “Tycoon”-like games, I can see it being hard to get into, but it does its best with a tutorial to help new players figure things out.

You can upgrade items, unlock more after accomplishing achievements, and use them to make your customers and staff happy. I liked how one of the items is an arcade machine with the level “Flying Battery Zone” from Sonic and Knuckles since Two Point Hospital’s publisher is SEGA.

As you go through the game, you will encounter geographical challenges for your new hospital, like earthquakes and cold weather. The employees you hire come with individual pros and cons, and you can accept or reject applications from them. It’s also worth mentioning that your patients can die if the treatment they are given fails. When that happens, you could go back to see who gave it to them and view their track record. If an employee seems to have more kills then cures…well, it’s your call whether to give them the boot or not.

Two Point Hospital doesn’t do anything new gameplay-wise, really, and it can be hard to remember what each of the buttons does. Also, I did experience a few errors that caused the game to crash, which I hope can be fixed. But overall, I enjoyed it.

Sometimes you want a game to play while watching TV or just needing to kill time. The $39.99 price I feel is too much, especially with the crashes. But if it goes on sale, give Two Point Hospital a shot.