Neo Harbor Rescue Squad merges frantic “customer” management with exciting mini-games reminiscent of Trauma Hospital. There’s a dolphin and an entire visual novel aspect involved, too, so this game just rocks. It is really difficult to give this thing an apples-to-apples comparison in the world of games because it’s a bit unique and well, this thing just slaps.
Wild and Zany at its Best
We’re talking ’90s Animaniacs vibes here, the Batman the Animated Series level if avoiding cringe while being out there. The game’s premise is you’re a paramedic assigned to various tasks throughout the city, where you go on location and are given a slate of characters to attend to on multiple screens.
You’ll need to triage the patients and figure out who to attend to in which order quickly, then begin providing treatments keeping everyone stabilized and hopefully cured. Each treatment is a mini-game, best played with a controller.
Between gameplay segments you’re thrust into a visual novel of your character in a world where one of your coworkers is a dolphin.
It Works
The nice thing about the gameplay is that everything is these pleasing bite-size chunks of the game delivered with a really great rhythm. You’ll read the visual novel aspect for a minute, make your choices, then arrive on the scene to move between triaging and curing, which is another tasty bit of gameplay.
You then roll right back into the visual novel, with the story moving forward and the cycle repeating. Unlike Phoenix Wright which is heavy on the visual novel and heavy on each of the gameplay segments, Neo Harbor Rescue Squad condenses the cycle into much shorter chunks. This makes both long and short sessions comfortable.
Minigames, the triage sections, the dolphin and the story along with the ’00s-era DS like vibes and art style mix together all very well. There’s very little to gripe about as I played through the game as it gives you exactly what it offers without, again, making any of it cringe.
Conclusion
Neo Harbor Rescue Squad is definitely worth a pickup if you liked Trauma Hospital on the DS or any of the sort of cure patient flash games, Cooking Mama, Gordan Ramsey’s mobile game, etc. It’s such a nice, comforting casual game with an entertaining story and fun gameplay.
This is a definitely recommend from us.
