Part 1: Episode 01: Resurgam

I didn't even know this until I recorded, but the title screen switches between several different backgrounds if you leave it. This one's my favourite.

Video


This video covers:

Prologue - Sleeping in Bloom
Gabriel Cunningham 1 - Overcast
Tomoe Tachibana 1 - Chieftain's Daughter
Tomoe Tachibana 2 - Insecure Smiles

Notes:



Joshua suffers from peptic ulcers, essentially a sore in the lining of some part of the gastrointestinal system. Most of these actually occur in the small intestine and are caused by bacterial infection.



This is the screen that appears after every operation in Trauma Team to give you a breakdown of score. Your end-of-stage score is based on three things. The first of these is time. Completing the operation more quickly will get you more points, as far as I can tell. Atlus did not see it fit to actually tell you how many points you get for time, and they removed the timer that would let you benchmark yourself while playing. Thanks, Atlus.

The second factor is special bonuses. These are the most fun of the three, as they give you extra objectives to fulfill in addition to completing the operation. On this front, Atlus made a huge improvement by actually listing the bonuses, even if you failed them. However, they once again decided not to tell the player what these bonuses are actually worth. You also can't see them without completing the operation first.

The third factor is your stage score, determined by the counts of Cool, Good, and Bad on the bottom. Certain tasks in each staged are ranked according to this metric, with Cool being the best and Bad being the worst. Often, getting the maximum rank of XS means getting every single Cool in the operation. Unlike in the Center games, the number of ranked activities is set for each operation, so you can't farm more points.

All of this combines into your final stage rank, from C to S to XS. Higher difficulties make the requirements for special bonuses stiffer, and that XS can only be attained on the unlockable Specialist difficulty. I can guarantee that I'll be getting at least one XS this time around, but I certainly won't be getting all of them. You can probably find CS runs on Youtube if you absolutely must see them.

Overall, you can see that Trauma Team is a mixed bag for those of us who play for score. I think they moved in the right direction, though. Hopefully the next game will finally find the proper balance.

Next time: We get our start diagnosing patients.