I described The Coma Recut as an at times clunky throwback to Clock Tower. The Coma 2 improved all the clunky bits and polished the game formula. It's still a 2D survival horror game, but instead of one school you now explore different areas of town. You can't fight enemies, but you get more opportunities to distract them or slow them down. You also have different light sources that make them feasible to use. While there still is a permanent sense of danger, it's less claustrophobic as you are able and expected to cover a lot more ground. Every area now has optional objectives that influence later progression. You still have to mainly rely on your sense of hearing to avoid the big bad, but it's being supported by some new enemy types. Visual assets are still neatly hand-drawn and feel alive. The music is everything between eery and calming, although it won't stick in your head after putting it down. The story is a direct continuation from a certain end of The Coma Recut with a former side character picking up the role of protagonist. Both old and new characters make an appearance. All in all it's a pretty good story, although it gets a bit zany at times. Like in the first game there are multiple endings and you'll play through the game at least twice. The only cons I can come up with are the single fairly easy difficulty setting and the monetisation/DLC packaging. In my first playthrough I only died twice, and eight different protagonist skins (most of them lorebreaking) at two bucks a pop seems a bit overkill. A good indie survival horror game overall, and a fantastic improvement on the first entry.
The Coma Recut is a definitive edition of The Coma: Cutting Class, which was a mobile release. Even in the Recut edition the game was not able to entirely shake its mobile roots, so the gameplay is fairly simple and at times clunky. It's a 2D survival horror game. The graphics are drawn by hand and feel surprisingly vibrant because of it. The sound is fine, pretty minimalistic but not offensively bad. The gameplay loop consists of avoiding or escaping the enemy while trying to make your way through a nightmare version of a school. In true survival horror fashion there are puzzles involved and combat is outright not an option. The game forces you to rely on your hearing to notice when the enemy is approaching, and then avoid her. Unfortunately there is some backtracking involved which pads out the game time. The enemy challenge grows over time though, forcing you to adapt your strategy somewhat. The story is pretty good. It serves as an introduction into a greater universe that the devs continued to flesh out in a later title. There are several different endings, but they rely on you making decisions regarding optional objectives in the mid part of the game. This means that in order to see every ending you need to tread through the lengthy end-game section several times. If you liked the first Clock Tower, this is a K-Horror version of it with a more fleshed out story. Nice for about five hours of horror experience, but it slightly overstays its welcome with the ending hunting. The devs did develop their formula in the Coma 2 and there is a Back To School edition which includes both entries, get that one if you are interested.
