Upon the launch of Two Point Campus, many fans were excited for a new management building simulator built upon the highly acclaimed Two Point Hospital. The formula worked well in the hospital environment it was set in, but transposing that into a university setting would have to change up the recipe.
While it delivered in many aspects, such as the art style, music, and basic layout for the management sim, there are still some aspects that could have been done better or changed to fit this exciting new world. Luckily, there are ways to improve it, many of which are simple and can easily be fixed or changed.
10 Needless And Missing Areas
One major thing fans have been either disappointed about or frustrated with are areas that are duplicated, or would make sense but are noticeably absent. Two Point Studios have tried to make the university setting function, while including everything a university has, but also failed to add some crucial things.
There are duplicate areas, like the student union and lounge, and missing areas like a canteen. Student unions in real life are fundamentally different from lounges, but here are identical. Canteens being absent, despite them being in Hospital and and are ubiquitous in universities, is an oversight easily fixed.
9 Adding More Functional Decorations
Decorations in the game are incredible, as many make your campus look spectacular. Some decorations even have attributes that increase attractiveness, healthiness, relationships, and more. The only problem is that there is a minimal supply of the decorations that increase attributes, and decorations you think would have stats applied to them in fact don't.
This means that players will keep gravitating to the same decorations, because there is no reason to use others if they don't do anything to improve stats. Since space is so limited, it's even more of a reason not to use them. To fix this, it would be best if there was more necessity to use decorations in general, rather than a select few.
8 Categorizations
Categories in Two Point Campus are a bit strange because of the decorations inside them seemingly being miscategorized. For example, you can find a truck inside the Food and Drink category with no entertainment value, or a category specifically for academic purposes with only one decoration and no value.
These could be placeholders for DLC, or some items just don't have attributes. The problem is that there is no point in using them, and waiting for DLC to make them relevant seems to make people angry. The solution is to add more content to the base game before expecting people to pay more to fix the basics.
7 Loans
One of the biggest points of contention has to be the loan system, that the game tries to persuade you is a lot bigger of a deal than it is. Loans are get-out-of-jail-free cards to make the game easy whenever you don't make enough money from your first year of students, and a way to balance how the game makes you spend more money than you have.
More often than not, it's only something used early on to make things seem more complicated. Putting more repercussions on taking out a loan, like interest on fees or missing deadlines would make this system great, but it would be even better to fix how money works and what the game requires you to purchase to continue playing.
6 Student AI
Go into any discussion thread online, and one of the biggest complaints you'll see is how AI functions on the campus. The AI often won't take care of themselves, won't go to classes on time, and will purposefully ignore making themselves happier — all in a quest to do whatever immediate thing they want to do first.
This includes students, teachers, assistants, and janitors on the campus, not just a particular group. The best way to fix this would be to make a priority system; the student doesn't need to go to the bench to talk to their friend right now, they have to use the bathroom, and they stink, which is affecting their health.
5 Too Many Rooms
A prominent issue is how many rooms you constantly make whenever playing. Any time you upgrade a course or just progress to the following year, the game will ask you to make more lecture rooms, more spy rooms, whatever it may be. On top of that, students and staff will request rooms for lounging or studying, taking up even more space.
The most requested and sought out way to resolve this would be to let players upgrade classrooms to fit more students. At most, a lecture room can accommodate eight students, and you can upgrade the lectern to teach better, but you can't upgrade the seats. As such, space will always be a problem, constantly filling up your campus and forcing players to make rooms as small as possible.
4 Managing Rooms And People
In Two Point Hospital, there was the ability to manage places and people, like the food variety in the canteen or training people to do better at their jobs. None of this is available in Two Point Campus, and training is useless unless you want to max out a staff's attributes and abilities.
The most you can manage are restrooms. And, you can hire more competent people to do better jobs and fire the less talented people. There is no need to train if the game occasionally gives you highly qualified people for a fraction of the cost. To fix this, make training less expensive, or make only basic staff appear in the hiring menu. Also, make rooms more manageable when it comes to who can go in and out for whatever reason.
3 Continuous Play
There was always something happening on screen for you to manage and continue actively playing in Two Point Hospital. However, in Two Point Campus you sit back and click, while occasionally checking out who wants what in the menu. There is no reason to continue playing the game whenever there is nothing to do.
The best example of filling this time is in Prison Architect, a fantastic management game that has irregularities in its game that can happen at any moment. An inmate could act up, fires and flooding could destroy parts of the prison, and you could overpower the electrical grid, causing everything to shut down — there is always something that demands your attention. The way to fix this in Two Point Campus is to bring in problem students, or even make natural events appear more with more ferocity.
2 Add A Tutorial
Every good management game needs a tutorial to teach players the basics of the new environment they'll be playing in. There are plenty of menus, gameplay basics to memorize, and secrets to uncover when allowed to mess around. This game does not have a practical tutorial at all.
There is a tutorial, but they've placed it in the game's main campaign, which is not good enough to be a realistic tutorial for players. They're supposed to be short and concise, teaching the player a lot while not boring them. To fix this, it's as simple as making a tutorial that goes over everything, while maybe letting the players implement stuff for themselves.
1 Unlocking Sandbox
The main campaign of Two Point Campus is supposed to act as a fun tutorial for people to enjoy before they're allowed to go into sandbox and do whatever they want. How it's executed in Two Point Campus is a massive detriment to new and old players of the series. To go into sandbox, you must complete the first four levels of the campaign, which can take several hours.
It is a slog for many to get through, and acts as a reason for people to stop playing the game and try to refund it. And, it essentially fails in acting as a tutorial, since many of the basics of the game are only taught after you unlock sandbox. To fix this, add a tutorial to the game, or unlock sandbox from the beginning and let players figure things out for themselves.