Two Point Campus review for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC

I don?t know how Two Point Studios do it. While nearly everyone else struggles to make menu-heavy management sims work on consoles, the developer knocked it out of the park with Two Point Hospital. And now, to prove that wasn?t a fluke, they?ve done it again with Two Point Campus. Given how easy they make it look, you?d think anyone could do it, but the reality, obviously, is much different.

The strange thing is, it?s not like Two Point Campus offers anything out of the ordinary for a management sim. It gives you a budget, it gives you objectives, and then leaves you to it to make it all work. You have to build things ? classrooms, dorms, bathrooms and whatnot ? and you have to hire your teachers and support staff. The ultimate goal is making money. None of these things are outside the realm of what you?d see in other management sims.

And yet, somehow, Two Point Campus is better than nearly everything else out there, apart from maybe its predecessor.

Part of this, I think, comes from the presentation. Like Two Point Hospital before it, Two Point Campus is a gorgeous, brightly coloured world, and it never feels like you?re playing a PC port that?s been crammed onto the Switch (unlike, say, Tropic 6 or Jurassic World Evolution). Being able to see everything here makes a huge difference, unsurprisingly. Further, the game never takes itself too seriously; between the silly classrooms you need to build and the bizarre radio patter that occasionally pops up, the game does a good job of making you grin.

It probably helps even more than Two Point Campus is ridiculously accessible. The setting is a lot more familiar and more universal, for example, than a dinosaur theme park, so it?s easy to think about what you?d want to see in your own school. More than that, though, the game strikes a perfect balance between asking you to do new things and giving you the tools to do them. It gets more and more challenging the more the game asks of you, but at the same time, it never feels like it asks too much of you. The difficulty curve is basically perfect.

That?s no surprise, though: Two Point Campus is basically a perfect management sim. It?s filled with content (with more likely on the way, if Two Point Hospital is any guide) and it?s absurdly accessible, and it?s worth picking up no matter your usual interest in the genre.

SEGA provided us with a Two Point Campus Switch code for review purposes.