Galacticare

As much as I tried to love this game, I can't. The game is hilarious. The process is smooth, and the levels (at least the first three) are easy to dominate without feeling *too* easy. You get into the groove fast. And it's really fun. And then the game save corruptions begin. I have done all that I can, scrubbed my entire computer, used both the steam AND the xbox version. I cannot stop the save from getting corrupted, and thus cannot process in the game at all. Sometimes it corrupts on the first level, sometimes your hours and hours into it. But I have never been able to get past the third level.

Finished my second hospital and now every option to play ends with a "Corrupted Save" and won't let me play. Can't restart, game just won't run past the start game menu. Past two hours, so no refund for me.

I've played this game obsessively, and I have a fair amount to say. I will keep the short review here at the top. It is as follows: This game is very fun and has a good brand of humor. If you like the first mission, you'll enjoy the rest of the game. It has glitches and bugs, but only really shows them after extended play and don't majorly impact the experience much. If you can tolerate that, this game's great, would highly recommend. For the longer form review, I have attempted to 100% this game in challenge mode, and had to give up on it because of the lengthy list of bugs and other issues I've run into the game for longer play. The base game story had barely any issues, it was well made and funny, with a heartwarming... Mostly heartwarming story and had a good feel to it, even if it was a tad on the easy side after level two. The main trouble begins with sandbox missions or missions with large patient counts. To state the numerous glitches I've endured would take a length of time and text, so I will summarize by saying that I've had the research system (vital for making your life easier) bug out on me every other mission, I've had text glitch in the compendium and ruin the very fun stories by repeating entries or making it unclear if the messages are as intended, or simply glitched out. I've had objects I was attempting to place vanish from existence, still extant in that I could see the various patients and doctors use them but I could no longer move them. I'm unsure if something has broken as computers have advanced and left this game a little in the dust, but it's been a frustrating experience trying to wrangle the game into the 'perfect' state for me to actually complete all of the objectives I want to. The game suffers from performance issues with enough patients, even with a fairly sturdy rig. This can be mitigated with the research system, if you manage to get it to work, but otherwise performance issues were not a major concern. I say this because it took me managing to put 500 patients per 5 minute cycle through my hospital before the performance actually tanked, and then it became almost unplayable. The difference will happen immediately, and can usually be avoided. Aside from that, I have very few complaints. Despite the usual hurdles of these games and ensuring people move to where you need them, it's actually fairly easy to maneuver patients and doctors around even if assigning them and keeping track of who goes where can be a bit maddening. I have no complaints about the gameplay itself, watching things fill up and watching patients get treated is a very zen experience, helped by the muted but still very good soundtrack. The only discomfort I have is that, in sandbox, many of the special events tend to lock themselves in a repeat loop of a very small number, meaning it's going to get very boring very quickly when you hit all of your 'available' missions. I also have not played the DLC. I can't comment on it whatsoever.

I just bought this game and it glitched three times in the 50 minutes I was playing. Don't waste your money.

Encountered a game-breaking bug in Chapter 6 (49/50 clonal cysts, no way to get the last one). No fix available on the discussion forums. No way to reload progress and try again without restarting the entire level, due to the game's lack of checkpoints or prior saves. I was having fun before that happened, but do not recommend.

Lost my entire save due to a bug. Subsequent option to roll back also failed. Only other option was to start over. When they have you 'submit a bug report', it's not automated, you actually have to save the file and upload it to their website??? WTF, it's 2026, not 2006... I'd wait to get this game until they get their code ironed out. It's fun when it's playable.

Startopia, welcome home.

I was worried about buying [i]Galacticare[/i] because I had read some reviews about crashes and bugs, but I’m happy to say that for me the game played all the way through to end credits. That was >100 hours of goodness for <$20 US after sale discount. The game did crash once (early in that period) and did require me to restart the final hospital (late in that period), and it had a few smaller bugs along the way, but none of the problems were gamebreakers or showstoppers. I created manual backups almost daily while playing but never had to use them. That ~100 hours of happiness gave me ~40% of the achievements, but many of the remaining achievements aren’t available without the expansion/DLC. I liked [i]Galacticare[/i] so much that now I’m going to buy that “Voice Beyond” to play some more! (I wouldn’t recommend chasing the 5-star achievements unless you are really a perfectionist and completionist. In story mode, the effort between 4 stars and 5 stars felt huge – only 3 of my 11 hospitals got to 5 stars. I can’t imagine how hard are the “challenge mode” 5-star achievements!) Fans of [i]Two Point Hospital[/i] will probably also enjoy [i]Galacticare[/i]. :)

It was working perfectly for the first few story levels and I was just getting the hand of it. Pretty fun and unique actually curing the different alien species and different unique problems. But I cannot work chapter 6: many me. First it wouldnt even load and it kept crashing. Then when i finally got it to load I couldnt see the cursor anywhere on the screen and none of the controls were working. I physically could do nothing except watch the screen slowly moving around the field. Such a dissapointment because I did want to play this game.