Well, the PC release sure came out timely haha.

Heart’s Medicine - Doctor’s Oath is finally out for PC! Or should say that it was able to be ported over as those that played the series on PC were told that it wasn’t possible last year (I still held out hopes though).

In Doctor’s Oath, the Little Creek team is still getting used to being at Queensburrow. Not only does Queensburrow have a staff that isn’t too inviting, they have multiple systems in place that the Little Creek team finds weird. Though, the worst has to be that Allison is now interning under a different doctor, Dr. Ermey, during her last rotation. Dr. Ermey doesn’t like Allison and is looking for anything to fail her. He even has Aubrey as his star student (bleh). Of course, this isn’t the only thing Allison has to deal with. A new patient, named Grant, comes in with a mysterious disease and, due to a certain star student, infects a handful of doctors. Now Allison and the rest of the uninfected doctors must find a way to save their fellow colleagues before time runs out. I have to warn you guys, the story for this installment gets very sad.

Doctor’s Oath plays similarly to Gamehouse’s previous games. Each level, patients will enter your department to get treated. You need to assign them to the station they need to be at and then set Allison to treat them in a timely manner so you can get a sweet quick bonus or keep them from leaving in anger. Sometimes, it’s just a simple treatment where Allison just needs to do a check, choose the right choice between multiple choices, the patient needs an item (which can be a single item or one you need to combine), or you need to do a minigame (weirdly enough, there are no gesture treatments). Most of the minigames are new and correspond with which department you’re in. Once they’re all done, all you’ll need to do is check them out. In addition, you’ll have the classic optional find Oliver task as well as a challenge. At the end, you’ll be granted hearts and stars based on your score.

However, there are some significant changes made since Hospital Heat for better or for worse. One addition that I’m not surprised about is the ability to call in patients early. If you complete the level early, as well as having all your stations clean, you’ll get bonus points. However, the main aspect that I hated, and I have seen complaints on for both mobile and PC, is having to do each level multiple times. You can’t get all the stars on your first go if you’re that good anymore. After the first couple of story levels, you’ll be generally getting only one star, maybe two, on your first try. Your score is accumulated with each try and this often requires you to play a level at least three times to get all five stars. This is due to the mobile version introducing an energy system which depleted by 20 every time you played a level.

Though, you do get some help with the addition of boosters. These boosters will boost something specific so you can hopefully get a higher score like being able to walk faster, giving you an additional tray slot, more mini-game/level time, or having Olivers spawn in more. You’ll get boosters every time you level up, from chests, or you can buy more with diamonds.

The chapter maps are also very different than before. Instead of the usual curvy line with the occasional challenge level, the map is dominated with a ton of challenge levels. Around the routes, there are chests that you’ll need to complete a task before opening (like finding Oliver 200 times), card stacks, and a spot that will give you more hearts. There are also character puzzles that you’ll need to get puzzle pieces by completing challenges. Once you get all of them and place them, you’ll get a story scene and diamonds. However, the paths are blocked by star gates. These star gates require you to have so many stars to unlock so you can continue with the story or block challenge levels that lead to a chest, card pack, or hearts. Due to this, you’ll need to often go back and grind out levels (if you didn’t play each level multiple times already) to continue. You’ll need a whopping 720 stars to finish the story. I’m not a fan of this either for obvious reasons. This seems like it was due to the energy system as well.

I did do a test to see if this was really a problem or not. I went totally crazy and 100% the first chapter, which took me about six hours for 190 stars. I then played every level afterwards only once, unless I didn’t complete the challenge, and that lasted me until the lock that would open Chapter 5. In Chapter 4, I came across not having enough stars for even the locks blocking challenge levels and had 386 stars out of the needed 450. Additionally, I kept track of how many stars I achieved only in Chapter 2 and it left me 70 stars short from what was required to move on to Chapter 3.

You can unlock the star locks with diamonds instead, but I don’t recommend doing this on the PC version as you don’t buy diamonds with real money. They’re limited as you only get a diamond when you first get it from challenges, from completing the character puzzles, or the handful of challenge levels that just give you diamonds, otherwise you get some once you level up. Not to mention the diamonds are used to unlock extra scenes in the photo album as you need to buy each individual part (which for some photos are quite pricey).

Anyway, the challenge levels, which most of them will be familiar. There are the basic challenge levels; guinea pig levels that has you finding Oliver, Punky (adds more time), and Olive (gives extra hearts); time trials allows you to call an unlimited number of patients and will either have a challenge that goes with it (like getting a certain score in the first half or checking out a ton of patients) or one that can be on the regular challenge (like patients losing hearts very quickly or finding items); and lastly the minigame challenges that will just have you do one or a couple mini-games.

The upgrades have also changed. Instead of upgrades being available from the start as long as you have enough coins, here it’s based on upgrade cards and require hearts for payment. Apart from a couple of cards being granted at the beginning, you need to open chests or card stacks to get more and some of them are available in other chapters. This is a little bit weird, but some challenges do put you in a previous department and you might have to go back to grind out stars anyway. These upgrades improve the patient’s patience, add in an additional station, gives you an additional tray slot forever, and how fast they and Allison walk, but there are upgrades that improve how many hearts an item/station will give you. Depending on the level and if the challenge requires you to get to a certain point threshold, those heart upgrades can be required to at least get one star your first try without a booster (otherwise, it’ll take two tries) or complete the challenge. Two other upgrade shops were added in though: the mini-game upgrades that’ll give you two extra seconds or double the points for one minigame and the Oliver upgrades that will increase the amount of points and the spawn rates of the special guinea pigs named Punky and Olive. These upgrades get pretty expensive fast which quickly makes the mini-game upgrades useless and the Oliver upgrades only worth it for the Oliver challenges that you can’t complete even with boosters (which might be due to the mobile version letting you double your score by watching ads).

Once you complete the whole game, you’ll unlock Elite Mode. This will start you at the very beginning, but adds in 12 new levels, two new patients, a new guinea pig, 12 new shop items, two new stories, and is slightly harder than Normal Mode. Honestly, I wasn’t really up to restarting by the end of my playthrough, but it’s there if you want to play even more.

While I would recommend this game, I am more neutral towards it in comparison to past installments in the series due to the changes in game mechanics. In Doctor's Oath, the engaging story from past games can still be found here. However, they are heavily locked behind grinding of new "challenge levels".

Given that Doctor's Oath first debut as a free mobile game, it is likely the introduction of the new 5-Stars system in each level was meant to capitalize on that to encourage free players to purchase the game, or unlock story levels with diamonds. You will not get 5 stars in your first playthrough of most, if not all levels, beyond the first few levels in the first chapter. You will need to grind the stages repeatedly to get enough score for the full 5-stars if you are a completionist. Moreover, story stages are locked behind a large number of stars that will definitely require you to play through the challenge stages, and obtain at least a few stars across ALL stages to move onto the next chapter.

You will also find yourself grinding "hearts" which are the currency to purchase upgrades for each ward, and they get increasingly pricy in each subsequent chapter. You will be grinding ALOT for stars and hearts. As of my 11 hours, I've only finished chapter 3 out of 6, most of which were spent on repeating challenge modes and grinding the hell out of certain stages that net the most hearts to upgrade current and previous chapter wards.

Frankly, given that the game had been made buy-to-play on steam, the developers should had changed the current mechanics, keeping a maximum of 3-stars with a reasonable score for each stage, and a fixed amount of hearts and diamonds given that ensure that each ward can be completed by the end of each chapter, with OPTIONAL retries of a stage.

Personally, while I enjoy the extra challenges from the challenge stages, the game is VERY, VERY grind heavy.

Oof where do I begin? I don't want to say I "don't recommend" this game because it has an interesting story so far and the map concept is new. I wish I could do a "mixed" review instead.
When I opened the game and saw the map, I was like "wow this is a lot, but it won't be too bad?" Playing levels over and over again to get a full 5 stars is kind of silly. There was nothing wrong with the previous map format that is used for many of the Gamehouse games! I know the game devs probably just wanted to try something new but it's too much! Honestly, if you're just in the game for the story, don't even worry about all the side stuff and only do them if you need more stars to pass on and unlock the next story stages. However I am a big completionist and haven't even finished the first area and I'm almost 4 hours in... Again, I shouldn't have to play a level 3-5 times to complete it. You don't need to fix something if it's not broken. I know some previous games were getting complaints that the levels were "too easy" but this isn't a good solution to fix that.
Again, I don't hate this game and I don't think it's super terrible. I just have mixed feelings about it. I love these kind of games because they're fun, relaxing, and I like the challenge! This one was just too busy. This new grinding format just reminds me of mobile games.
So if you love Heart's Medicine, go ahead, try it out! But keep all of these things in mind because it is much different than the previous games in the series.

This addition to the Heart's Medicine series is quite a bit different from its predecessors. Many players may not like the new star grinding aspect to the game. I personally do not mind the new system. Since there is more to do and more side goals to accomplish, there is a longer playtime value, which makes me feel as though I'm getting more game for my money. The challenges are not super difficult; I was able to reach 5 stars on most of them in the first section of the map within three tries. There are different upgrades and booster items to unlock which help you accomplish the challenges even faster. I think this is a great game that gives players more flexibility to play the story at their own pace and set personal goals. It is a fresh take on the usual linear Heart's Medicine games. I hope they implement achievements for this game in the future.

Cute and Very Fun Game. :cupup:

As someone who's played all the other Heart's Medicine games, I'd recommend this one. It's longer than the others, and has an unlockable 'Elite' mode that's hard to crack! However, as someone with epilepsy, I will post a warning here about the Psychology Clinic level - the memory minigame has quick flashing colors between each picture which made me feel a little queasy and messed with my eyes - if you're photosensitive, please be careful on this level, or alternatively avoid the game altogether - which is a real shame.

While I do see the reasoning behind a lot of the negative reviews I think this was a very unique take on how to expand your basic time management game beyond the chapters and small bonus games. This approach allows for a lot more game play and (if you're a perfectionist) a very intense challenge. It does get repetitive but not so much that you need to rage quit. I think for the hours of gaming it is well worth the money and was a risky but innovative change to the typical layout of these kinds of games.

love the game plenty of levels to keep you busy for awhile :)

The last part of the Heart's Medicine trilogy. For every game that came, changes has been made to add to the experience of the hospital-themed time management game but has this one succeeded?

Well, I have mixed feelings for once. The story remains the strong point because there are new characters that add to the pivotal development to the intern Allison's path of doctor graduation. That's not to mention some fatal intrigues along the way, which are the main incentive to keep playing and follow the story. For the third time, I was caught off-guard with the twists that would take the story in a different path than unexpected, as much as I predicted most of the outcome before the end.

New puzzles and levels were delivered to add to the new diverse challenges, which are easy to learn but can require some reflexes to maximize the score at shorter time.

Now, to the bad part: Due to Heart's Medicine titles being mainly invested as mobile games, the gameplay core of the mobile has all the more bled over to PC port for the worse. In the previous games, you could clear the stages along with a few challenges on the side to progress the story and unlock the achievements to completion, like I did. On Doctor's Oath, however, you're required to score enough stars in each stage to unlock the chapters, in order to take in more of the story it brings. So you're more forced to grind some levels for that purpose, which you didn't have to do in previous titles of the franchise and that's the frustrating part. Another thing I miss is the achievements, which encouraged me to complete the other aspects of the game and feel the fulfillment of the game's content.

At least the new changes include some unlockable side-stories, including scenes and written letters involving the memorable characters I enjoy and want to take in more of. During my playthrough, the devs have patched the game to lower the requirements of unlocking the stages, including those of the main story, so it's enough to give it a recommendation. As much as Doctor's Oath is weakest meta-wise, the hospital drama story is worth playing for and with the various puzzle challenges it delivers as usual, it is worth finishing the trilogy. Signing out!

Ok so having played the IOS version and bounced off it due to the aggregious energy and pay to play system I am happy to say that the steam version is far more enjoyable. I also want to say that whilst there is a fair amount of grind due to the 5* systems the upgrades are not tied to the stars you get as in previous games but the hearts you get from patients. This means there is finally a reason to replay and you feel as if you are still progressing if you have to replay a level to get the challenge or Oliver. Also I am glad that the extra side stories are not stuck behind the FOMO wall they previously were. There are ups and downs this is a different style of level layout with more overall levels and bonus levels but the heart of the game is still there and those in it for the story don't really need to go far along the side paths to get enough stars to just progress the main plot. The game this time is what you make of it!