Corpse Party has become a well renowned series in the gaming world for its great horror elements and spooky but exciting gameplay. The series has primarily focused on a group of teens transported into a hellish elementary school—Heavenly Host Elementary—where ghosts of the dead roam the halls and curse those who enter these closed spaces. Several games have focused on the escapades of class 2-9 from Kisaragi Academy but this new Corpse Party title is a whole new ballgame. Set several years after the end of Corpse Party: Blood Drive, we have entered a new nightmare in a hospital setting. Titled Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient has this series begun anew or should the ghosts of the past stay in the past? We find out in our review of Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient! Scroll down to enter a new cursed world filled with zombies, ghosts and some truly horrifying entities.

Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient follows a new main female lead as she tries to escape from this strange hospital she’s awoken in. You’ll need to rely on your wits to move about this new setting and avoid dangerous threats around every corner! Use items to survive various encounters as well as solve puzzles and try to hide or run when the going gets tough! Can you escape this sterilized place or will the entities within make you a new meal…

Ayame Itou has awoken in a strange place with no memories of anything but her name. As she explores her environment Ayame realizes this odd setting is that of a hospital. However, where patients and doctors should be in droves, the hospital is seemingly deserted and lifeless. Ayame will soon learn though that there is life within the halls of the hospital known as Amare Patriarcha Crucis. While that should be good news for Ayame the reality is the life in these halls isn’t normal and might lead to a faith worse than death…

Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient right away will feel familiar to those who played Corpse Party: Blood Drive as these games function quite similarly. However, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient is clearly a more robust game due in large part to the new mechanics within. We’re going to break down Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient beat by beat to talk about what it does well and where it misses the mark. We do recommend though playing the original Corpse Party games—or at the very least Corpse Party: Blood Drive—in order to understand the world lore and some of the extra content in Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient.

Set five years after Corpse Party: Blood Drive, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient quickly establishes some horrors can exist outside an otherworldly elementary school. Players assume the role of Ayame Itou who has awoken on an operating table with amnesia. From here on, Ayame will need to find out why she’s at this strange hospital and also why the place seems devoid of life. While Ayame won’t learn the full truth of the first question right away, she will learn that this hospital isn’t empty but instead filled with ghosts, killers and zombies.

It wouldn’t be a Corpse Party game without exploration/puzzles. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient once more is focused on delivering an action/survival horror title and it works quite well in both regards. You’ll need to explore the creepy and semi-lit halls of Amare Patriarcha Crucis to find ways to circumvent blocked hallways/paths and avoid dangerous threats. Like past titles, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient gives players an unseen health bar—the darkening of past Corpse Party games seems absent in this sequel—that can be lowered by being grabbed by various threats and hurt by baddies. Luckily, you can heal yourself with gauzes and/or hide from enemies using lockers nearby. Often running is the best option in Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient as enemies are slow and pretty brainless. Only when some enemies came at us in numbers did hiding seem like a reasonable option but often running into a nearby locker or room threw off our pursuers and kept us alive.

Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient does well to retain the feel of past entries in the series by having puzzles to solve and even adds some boss-like fights to undertake but this is where Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient falters a bit. In our several hour run of Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, none of the puzzles in chapter one felt…difficult. Most puzzles took some common sense to solve and/or relied on some minimal backtracking to a past room to find a code or item. Even the boss fights were extremely easy with the solution always being bait an enemy to one area and then hit a button or wait to have light hit said threat. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient still feels scary and creepy but challenging…not even a little bit. Past Corpse Party games tested your puzzle skills or at least made you search rooms for hidden items but Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient is pretty straightforward.

One thing that has left unchanged—thankfully—is the amazing OST and voice acting. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient nails the haunting tunes/tones heard in past games and the voice acting—all Japanese mind you—is truly solid. The voice actors breathe life into these characters capturing their fear when necessary and their success/quirky characteristics. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient should be a class for other survival horror games as how to do spooky horror right without being over the top.

Lastly, we saved the weakest element of Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient for last, the visuals. Corpse Party has never been a series known for beautiful visuals outside the very detailed CG sprites and static settings. Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient looks dated just like the past titles but even more so at times due to less CGs being used and even more of a focus on actual in-game visuals. That doesn’t stop the horror feeling of seeing a shambling zombie walking towards you from being less creepy but it does make for some rather meh environments. Though, there are a few times where Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient shined especially in the later parts of chapter 1 but don’t expect anything modern looking overall.

When we originally heard Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient would be a departure from the setting and characters we’ve come to love we were a bit worried. Thankfully, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient shows this new story and new cast are going to be anything but stale. While Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient feels a bit outdated—especially in the visuals—the feeling of horror and unease still exists thanks to the great audio and atmosphere only Corpse Party can do so well. The first chapter—of four planned—won’t take you longer than three hours to beat and even with the EX chapter—which shows an all too familiar face—your overall completion time won’t run more than 4 hours at best. That being said, we hope future chapters will be a bit longer but as of now we are extremely excited to see where Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient will go from here.

Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient is far from over as there will be three more chapters added to make a full game of four parts! We will definitely be covering each chapter as it releases but for now, you shouldn’t wait for those other chapters! Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient is a scary and intense survival horror title with plenty of great elements despite a few missed steps here and there. We know Corpse Party fans will no doubt love this second entry and will be like us waiting patiently for the future chapters to release. Are you excited to play Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient when it releases on the 23rd of October? Comment below to tell us your thoughts! Be sure to keep stuck to us here at Honey’s Anime for more game reviews and future chapter reviews of Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient!