Review: Two Point Museum - Rides & Relics DLC
Museums are fun!
THE GAME
Two Point Museum is a casual museum management simulation game developed by Two Point Studios and published by SEGA. Continuing the Two Point series, after managing hospitals and universities, now we'll be taking care of museums. Make everything run perfectly, from ticketing and cleaning to exhibiting and decorating items on display. Create an interesting environment for visitors, who will rate you based on the overall experience of your museum. In addition, send your staff on expeditions that can yield new and higher-quality items, all to make your museum more attractive. With the Rides & Relics DLC, in addition to a new campaign, a new museum location and expedition, and many new items, you can transform your museum into a large amusement park, complete with the creation of a themed roller coaster. If you didn't think museums could be fun, now you have no excuse.
MY IMPRESSIONS
As expected from a Two Point game, Two Point Museum brings a new segment to manage: museums, obviously. And something you can always expect is that the Two Point series has a solid foundation of mechanics, but always manages to make each of its games a unique experience. Managing a hospital in Two Point Hospital is completely different from managing a university in Two Point Campus. Naturally, in Two Point Museum you will have a completely different experience from the other two games mentioned. As stated, the basis of a Two Point game is there. You have your employees, each with their functions that can also be customized for specific jobs. As for the buildings, you have your main building and you will have to install some basic rooms, such as the employee break room and bathroom, as well as some more advanced rooms, such as the employee training room. The visitors' needs bars, such as hunger, thirst and bathroom for example, must always be monitored in order to meet the demands of the clients. What sets this game apart from its predecessors is that much of the museum construction takes place in the open areas of the building, unlike other games where most of the "action" happened inside rooms. Since it's a museum, the exhibits are displayed in large open spaces. You still have objectives to complete, as in previous games, to earn stars in that location. You'll be able to manage several museums, one at a time, completing objectives within your own timeframe. You can acquire Kudosh, the game's currency, which unlocks more objects and decorations for your museum. This forms the basis of what a Two Point game typically offers.
A museum is only interesting if it has pieces to display, right? So, you'll have to acquire more pieces for your museum, but in a very adventurous way. Expeditions serve to send your employees to different locations and, after a while, if they are successful, they bring rewards, including new pieces to display. Each expedition has its own peculiarities, which can cause your employee to get hurt or create some kind of disadvantage during the expedition. There is also the chance of unique events happening, and you will need to make a choice that will have consequences. Repeated pieces may appear, but pay attention to their quality level, as this opens up a new range of improvements for that piece, and you can replace it with another identical piece of lower quality. The game is in Brazilian Portuguese, making it easier to understand all these mechanics mentioned. Simply displaying the pieces is not enough for the success of your museum. You must place objects and decorations that make the pieces more attractive, as well as objects that also increase the level of knowledge about the piece. All these factors increase visitor satisfaction. Planning the museum is the fun part of Two Point Museum, because everything is very simple and satisfying to do, such as positioning the pieces thinking about an arrangement that really looks like a museum, for example. The already iconic art of the Two Point series remains incredible, very lively and with very expressive characters. Two Point Museum maintains the good humor characteristic of the series, whether in its employees and visitors or in the pieces found for exhibition. The themes of the exhibitions are very varied and equally fun, allowing the creation of completely monothematic museums or large museums with sections for each theme.
In the Rides & Relics DLC, Two Point Museum takes an unexpected step for a museum management game by implementing an amusement park theme. This DLC includes roller coasters, Ferris wheels, and all sorts of things you'd find in an amusement park. How does this relate to museums? Well, not really. While very cool, the DLC's additions stray from the game's main theme, even though it uses the foundation of Two Point Museum, but does so in its own way. Can you integrate the two? Yes, you can have an amusement park and a museum at the same time on the same map, but, for me, it's difficult for the two to work well together. The addition of mascots makes sense, even if you use this mechanic in a museum without an amusement park, which, in this case, does work well with the museum theme. Again, the idea of an amusement park, in isolation, is very cool, but keep in mind that there may be moments when you even forget that it's a game about museums and not amusement parks. Two Point Museum is so fun in its management style that it's quite difficult not to spend hours and hours playing without realizing how much time has passed.
ACHIEVEMENTS
It's important to highlight that to complete 100% of the achievements in Two Point Museum, you need to own all the DLCs, as each one adds new features and, consequently, these new features have associated achievements. The variety of achievements in Two Point Museum will require players who want them all to explore all the mechanics to the fullest, from completing entire chapters, arranging a certain type or quantity of pieces, leveling up your museum, and so on. In short, it's almost certain that at some point you'll end up getting a good portion of them just by playing normally, because they aren't very complicated achievements to unlock. With the Rides & Relics DLC, we have the addition of achievements related to the amusement park theme, whether with themed pieces or with roller coasters and mascots. Despite the limitation of requiring the player to own all DLCs to achieve 100% completion, a decision that always divides opinions, the achievements in Two Point Museum are generally easy to obtain, and in a game where you don't even notice the time passing while having fun, you should be able to complete them all without much effort.
CONCLUSION
Two Point Museum is addictive. Once the game teaches you the basics and lets go of your grip, the sky's the limit. Even on the second map I played, it took me a while to really start it, as I was structuring every corner of the museum, already thinking about how I would arrange the elements in the building. Without a doubt, it's my favorite of the three in the Two Point series. The Rides & Relics DLC, while at first it doesn't seem to make sense with the museum theme, manages to bring something new without diminishing the brilliance of what Two Point Museum essentially is. It's refreshing to see a DLC that deviates from the norm, because it makes the player feel that the DLC has a purpose instead of being more of the same, even if it might not please everyone because it deviates too much from the main theme of the game. Rides & Relics makes me wonder if this isn't a timid nod to a future Two Point themed around an amusement park, which, for me, would have the potential to be the masterpiece of the Two Point series. I'm already eager to see what else this development team has up its sleeve, both for games and DLCs.
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