Off to Medical School!

The latest DLC for Two Point Campus offers up the perfect link between the college themed management sim and its hospital themed predecessor (Two Point Hospital)--medical school!  I purchased the "medical school" DLC and played through the three newest challenges.  There are some things that work and some that don't, but overall, I had fun setting up future fictional doctors and nurses with the training they need to prepare them to deal with ailments like "lightheadedness."

Pros:

+ The way that the traditional training loop works is slightly different--rather than attending lectures students engage in practicum.  Basically, you don't need to build lecture halls but will instead need to build treatment rooms.  Students learn by assisting instructors as they treat patients who arrive at the campus.  There are two types of students in the DLC, medical school and nursing, and they spend their time in the various treatment rooms either for ailments that need a doctor or a nurse.  Everything else is basically the same--when they aren't assisting they will still go to the library to complete assignments or spend their free time doing clubs, relaxing, etc.  It's a very basic change, but it does make it feel slightly different from the core game and the other DLC's.

Molten Rock features tons of room to build, a volcano, and pirates.

+ Three new campuses with various levels of challenge.  There are new rooms (that have basically been recycled from Two Point Hospital) to treat the many different medical challenges--players of Two Point Hospital will recognize the head clinic, the ward, the injection room, and several others.  The main difference is that there are new items for the treatment rooms that are training oriented--for example, you can purchase a training dummy setup for the injection room so that students can practice before poking an actual patient.  These new items help students complete assignments, so you eventually will place them all.

The campuses themselves follow a fairly set pattern of challenges--the first campus is relatively simple and serves as a tutorial for the new features.  The second campus requires players to complete specific objectives to unlock additional plots of land and also throws in two different sets of challenges.  A rival band of pirates (who are also running a hospital) will periodically present emergency patients.  In order to pass the challenge you must successfully treat a certain number of patients--if you fail, the pirates will send a small force of invaders to your campus.  The other major challenge comes from the island itself--Molten Rock features a volcano that also throws out random objectives.  If you satisfy the volcano, it will reward you with a rain storm that seems to improve patient health.  Failure means that the volcano spews blobs of molten lava across your campus--it feels similar to the balls of fire that fall in the wizard themed campuses but the downside is that these blobs are on fire and must be extinguished by a janitor (your janitors need to be trained with "fire resistance" in order to extinguish random blazes).  The real downside is that if these molten blobs fall on your machinery it will be disabled, catch on fire, and requires a janitor to extinguish it before it explodes.  (Pro tip:  hire a lot of janitors and train them in fire resistance)  The final campus of the DLC is the real doozy--it's one of those obnoxious levels where you don't get tuition or money from XP but instead it comes purely from completing specific objectives and treating patients.  It also features surgery...one of the slowest and most annoying medical treatment rooms.  To make matters worse, the campus is also periodically hit with snow storms that afflict students with "brain freeze," a medical condition that must be treated or else they become very unhappy.  I did three star all the new campuses--don't be surprised if it takes awhile.  The final two campuses throw in some challenges but aren't impossible by any means.

Students afflicted with "brain freeze."

Cons:

- Having no set class schedule feels odd since it's a big part of the entire rest of the games.  Planning events for time periods when lots of students are on a break is challenging.  I didn't have a ton of problems with student happiness, but it's more challenging to plan events to have the biggest impact on student happiness.  The last campus was probably the most difficult for happiness and part of that is tied to the fact that snow storms regularly afflict students and their happiness will decline until they're treated.

- Summer break just puts everything on pause--you definitely have to suspend reality here.  Patient health doesn't decline, emergencies suddenly are on pause...basically, the concept of summer break just doesn't work particularly well with the medical scenario.

- If you're hoping for new items and outfits, there's just not much.  Most of the new items are oriented toward the treatment rooms or library.  

Recommendation:

There's not a ton that's "new" in this DLC.  The gameplay loop feels slightly different and there are plenty of emergencies and challenges to keep you on your toes.  If you're a fan of Two Point, well, it's more Two Point and I had fun with it.  If you're hoping for something that's drastically different, "medical school" isn't that.