After a very successful Early Access period and full release on Steam, shortly followed by a Nintendo Switch and PS4 port earlier this year, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters by Devespresso Games has finally made its way onto the Xbox platform. Serving as a sequel to The Coma: Recut, Vicious Sisters shares a similar art-style and gameplay mechanics. Although it picks up shortly after where the first game left off, The Coma 2 requires no knowledge of the previous game, making it a very enjoyable experience for new players.
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is available on PC (Steam/GOG), PS4, Nintendo Switch, and now Xbox One for varying prices. The game is about 7-8 hours long for first-timers/completionists, but can also be completed in as little as 2 hours if you know where to go.
Story
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters continues the story of The Coma: Recut, but follows a brand new protagonist. Players take control of Mina Park, a student at Sehwa High School and best friend to the previous protagonist, Youngho. After being shoved into ‘The Coma’, a shadow realm where just about everything can kill you; Mina must figure out why she is there, and try to escape while traversing her hostile environment. Along the way, she will make various discoveries about friends, classmates, and herself.
Review Copy Provided by Devespresso Games
Gameplay
The Coma 2 is a “semi-open world” 2D side scroller featuring many survival-horror elements with run and hide mechanics. The player is constantly being pursued by a relentless killer, so exploration (while not required) is largely rewarded with knowledge of hiding spots and recovery item locations. Players can also find special items through exploration that can prevent them from taking permanent damage throughout the course of the game.
The game played exactly the same on Xbox, as it did on PC. I would say that the biggest difference is the control scheme, but that is only true if you choose to play with mouse and keyboard on PC, as the game also features partial controller support.
Visuals
The game looks just as good as it did on the PC. There were no obvious visual upgrades or downgrades, and it ran just as smoothly. Not surprising as the game isn’t graphically taxing, and the Xbox One is a very powerful console. I also still can’t get over how much I love the unique art-style featuring hand-drawn visuals illustrated by Minho Kim.
Audio
The soundtrack of The Coma 2 is dark and eerie and sets up the atmosphere masterfully. The uneasy music is also paired with little sound-bites (footsteps, moans, whispers, etc.) that can be heard throughout the environment and truly makes for a scary experience. I highly recommend playing the game with headphones on for the full experience.
Replayability
There really isn’t a whole lot when it comes to replayability. Two playthroughs are all that it takes to get both endings that the game has to offer, and maybe one more to get all of the collectibles and achievements if you manage to still be missing some after your first two runs.
What It Could Have Done Better
Similar to my run on the PC, the game never really gave me any problems and I feel it was a fairly clean port. Although, this time around I did experience some minor bugs that were not present on my first run. For example, I was running from one of the monsters in the train station and chose to hide in an elevator. I had successfully made it to the elevator and completed the QTE for hiding, but the monster was still able to find and hit me inside the elevator where I was stuck, and eventually died.
I also discovered some minor spelling/grammatical errors towards the beginning of the game in some of the dialogue. While not game-breaking, these errors tend to stand out more if your game doesn’t feature audible dialogue, and players are forced to read the text. Xbox notifications would also pop up right in front of any text that I was trying to read, putting my playthrough to a complete stop until the banner disappeared. While these settings can be altered on the Xbox itself, it would be nice to see the notification pop-ups moved to another part of the screen, so I don’t have to completely turn off notifications or put my run on pause every time I get an achievement.
Verdict
The Xbox One port of The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is right on par with its PC counterpart. It is truly a fun, yet terrifying experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to get their survival-horror fix. Players can pick up the game bundled with all of the character skins for $18.99 on the Microsoft store.
The Coma 2 is also available for $14.99 on PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch with the skins sold separately.
