Trauma Center series review

Been putting this off for a few weeks (months?) now but I wanted to rant/review each game in the Trauma Center series as a speedrun and as a casual game. While I haven't played all of these game in depth recently, I've at least played them within the past year. After each review I'll rate how difficult each game is as a speedrun and as a casual playthrough on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being the easiest and 5 the most difficult.

Trauma Center: Under the Knife

The first and most difficult game in the series both casually and as a speedrun. I have mixed feelings about this game now because while it was what got me into the series in the first place, much of the gameplay is very difficult and some of the game mechanics are cumbersome. Compared to the other games in the series I'm not sure it has aged well but it was a great game for its time. UtK did a great job at utilizing the the touchscreen but the implementation for some of the tools were rather poor. Some examples include, the magnifying lens always need to have a circle drawn in order to zoom in, the drain needs to be positioned and manually dragged to be used, and the accuracy of suturing was inconsistent (at least for me at times). UtK didn't really have much outside of the story either. You could replay cleared operations in "challenges" but that was about it. It was a straightforward VN medical simulation game with no mulitplayer or online support.

Difficulty:
Speedrun: 5/5
Casual: 5/5

Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Second Opinion is a remake of Under the Knife for the Wii and in many ways is a complete upgrade. Much like UtK, Second Opinion does a great job at utilizing the Wii motion controller and the nunchuck. The Wiimote is arguably easier to use overall compared to the DS touchscreen and the nunchuck provides much easier and faster access to each of the operating tools. Additional operations to play were also added during and after the main story. Additonal difficulties were also added which UtK desperately needed. Normal difficulty closely resembles the difficulty of UtK (which....is still difficult) so having a Easy and Hard mode to play opens up the game to casual and core players alike.

As a speedrun Second Opinion is pretty tough and has a couple of difficulty spikes throughout the run. There are also operations like Deftera and the Bomb (yes, you "operate" on a bomb in this game) which have a decent amount of randomness to them which can greatly affect your run. While most GUILT operations can be pretty tough, the standard operations in the first half of the game are fun to play and are much more manageable thanks to the various difficulty options that weren't present in Under the Knife.

Difficulty:
Speedrun: 3/5
Casual: 3/5

Trauma Center: New Blood

New Blood is the third game in the franchise and is probably my favorite. Some notable features that were added to this game include  Co-Op, online leaderboards, and two characters to choose from. Some of the tools were also changed/improved in this game. Ultrasound shows shadows without having to ping, antibiotic gel covers a much larger area, and sutures are more accurate. Challenge and tutorial operations were also added which provide good practice and a nice break from the main story. As for the two doctors in this game, each of them have their own healing touch which provides different strategies and ways to approach some operations.

Surprisingly New Blood is much more difficult to speedrun than Second Opinion. When I was running this game in 2015, I thought it was easier since a larger amount of the operations don't involve some sentient disease that you need to fight with 4-5 different tools. However, many of the "standard" operations have low mistake thresholds and patients will lose health very quickly if you don't operate quickly and accurately. Many of the operations (especially the ones in the late game) were specifically designed for Co-Op; so there will be a "healthy" challenge playing this game solo. Once again, with the tutorial operations, challenges (both of which I use for practice), and difficulty options, New Blood is a great game to pick up and play casually or as a speedrun.

Difficulty:
Speedrun (solo): 4/5
Speedrun (Co-Op): 3/5
Casual (solo): 3/5
Casual (Co-Op): 2/5

Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2

Under the Knife 2 is the fourth game in the Trauma Center series as well as the last DS game to have come out (at the time of this writing). I haven't played the endgame recently but I remember it was very tough for me. Story wise this game takes place after UtK 1 but before New Blood. I've yet to do a speedrun of this game so I can't really rate its difficulty as a speedrun but casually I'd say it's about 3/5. I'll write more about UtK2 when I play it some more but at the very least, it's a complete upgrade from UtK 1.

Trauma Team

The black sheep of the franchise. Trauma Team has you play as six different doctors (two of which are dialouge/text based). The gameplay widely varies depending on who you play as and I believe there's co-op for some operations as well. This game is pretty fun casually but probably my least favorite as a speedrun only because it's a 4.5 hour run. Difficulty wise it's probably the easiest in the series by comparison to the others (you only have Easy and Normal to start off with). Also this game is technically the only one currently available (at the time of writing) on the Nintendo eShop for the WiiU.