Probably gonna be one of my favorite games ever. It took everything I had trouble with in Resident Evil 1 and I think fixed most of it while keeping what I liked intact.
It still has the core of wandering some big puzzle box and finding parts to unlock different things to find more parts and keep going that I liked about the first one. This one doesn't limit your saves though so I was like a guy in the desert who finds water and just abusing it so much. In fact I know I saved more than I needed to because my second run had about half as many saves. Anyway, yeah the whole museum turned police station excuse for their being puzzles everywhere was kinda dumb but I don't really care as long as I get to do puzzles. The only time it stuck as bad for me was the part of the game that was weakest: the sewer.
I dunno who enjoys sewer levels or sections. It's just dark and bad. They offered some variety in old side-scrolling games with limited colors but now it just feels like padding the length. ESPECIALLY because the company that works the sewers is quirky and has specific chess piece plugs in a specific combo to open the big "make progress this way door". Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed finding the parts and solving the puzzle. It just felt borderline out of place and like they needed something there rather than it making sense. It's almost to the point of like Professor Layton where every random asshole on the street has a puzzle for you lmao.
The rest of the game after that was fine. I still don't know if these games need boss fights though. I do enjoy that it feels more like surviving against a thing for long enough rather than just taking down a health bar. There's a couple times in this though where you are shooting glowing weak spots. Eh. It's whatever. As I just mentioned though, it's peak when there's this unstoppable force you are more trying to get away from than beat and it's done perfectly in this game with the Tyrant guy. I see some people say Mr X? I like that. So Mr X is this big imposing guy who will smack the shit out of you and you can hear him coming and it's all very intense and superb atmosphere. Loved that element. Also going back to boss stuff in general I loved the (traditional?) dropping of a rocket launcher to kill the big bad thing at the end. Excellent.
Characters in this game were more interesting too I think. That could be on me though at least in part since I only played as Jill in RE1 and not Chris. I partly blame the poor writing and voice acting stuff in that game though. THIS GAME though both the player characters were really interesting. Leon the rookie cop who gets more than he bargained for on his first day (week?, whatever) who I guess just has balls because he just gets stronger resolve as things go on wanting to get justice and figure out what the hell is going on. Then there's Claire, Chris' younger sister, who I thought was immediately interesting when you first see her. Her story and reason for going deeper into this hell were convincing to me despite some logic jumps. Looking for her brother at first and then helping the little girl was solid. She's pretty badass.
My gripe with the two character thing is not something that's easily fixed. If I could have my wish I would make it so things are actually different for the second playthrough. Hell the game notes that you're on a second run specifically. Things like the secret passage already being opened by your first character or a room being blocked off because of the first characters actions. Hell even having it so in your first run some things are already moved around or whatever because of the second character would be something. It just bugs me when you have two characters basically doing the same thing separately the entire game but then they meet up at the end. Like if they compared stories at all it would be like "wait I had to open that crazy medallion door too." like how would that work? I did appreciate small things like some rooms being specific to one character or another and a certain prominent character already being a zombie when you find them in the second run. Just thinking about how much they could do to make it feel more unique for the second run while being ultimately the same game just kinda makes me yearn.
In the end, a superb game that I liked so much I did play it twice despite my yearning for more differences like I mentioned. I liked it enough to play in the sewers twice! Hell I had such a good time I tried doing The 4th Survivor mode, a mode I quickly realized was not the kind of thing I fell in love with this game for as it's more like a way longer version of the FNG challenge in CoD 4. Overall an incredible game I think I could recommend to anyone, even people that don't play many games. It's excellent from start to finish. A shame that this isn't how the series kept going but I'm curious to see what comes next!
It still has the core of wandering some big puzzle box and finding parts to unlock different things to find more parts and keep going that I liked about the first one. This one doesn't limit your saves though so I was like a guy in the desert who finds water and just abusing it so much. In fact I know I saved more than I needed to because my second run had about half as many saves. Anyway, yeah the whole museum turned police station excuse for their being puzzles everywhere was kinda dumb but I don't really care as long as I get to do puzzles. The only time it stuck as bad for me was the part of the game that was weakest: the sewer.
I dunno who enjoys sewer levels or sections. It's just dark and bad. They offered some variety in old side-scrolling games with limited colors but now it just feels like padding the length. ESPECIALLY because the company that works the sewers is quirky and has specific chess piece plugs in a specific combo to open the big "make progress this way door". Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed finding the parts and solving the puzzle. It just felt borderline out of place and like they needed something there rather than it making sense. It's almost to the point of like Professor Layton where every random asshole on the street has a puzzle for you lmao.
The rest of the game after that was fine. I still don't know if these games need boss fights though. I do enjoy that it feels more like surviving against a thing for long enough rather than just taking down a health bar. There's a couple times in this though where you are shooting glowing weak spots. Eh. It's whatever. As I just mentioned though, it's peak when there's this unstoppable force you are more trying to get away from than beat and it's done perfectly in this game with the Tyrant guy. I see some people say Mr X? I like that. So Mr X is this big imposing guy who will smack the shit out of you and you can hear him coming and it's all very intense and superb atmosphere. Loved that element. Also going back to boss stuff in general I loved the (traditional?) dropping of a rocket launcher to kill the big bad thing at the end. Excellent.
Characters in this game were more interesting too I think. That could be on me though at least in part since I only played as Jill in RE1 and not Chris. I partly blame the poor writing and voice acting stuff in that game though. THIS GAME though both the player characters were really interesting. Leon the rookie cop who gets more than he bargained for on his first day (week?, whatever) who I guess just has balls because he just gets stronger resolve as things go on wanting to get justice and figure out what the hell is going on. Then there's Claire, Chris' younger sister, who I thought was immediately interesting when you first see her. Her story and reason for going deeper into this hell were convincing to me despite some logic jumps. Looking for her brother at first and then helping the little girl was solid. She's pretty badass.
My gripe with the two character thing is not something that's easily fixed. If I could have my wish I would make it so things are actually different for the second playthrough. Hell the game notes that you're on a second run specifically. Things like the secret passage already being opened by your first character or a room being blocked off because of the first characters actions. Hell even having it so in your first run some things are already moved around or whatever because of the second character would be something. It just bugs me when you have two characters basically doing the same thing separately the entire game but then they meet up at the end. Like if they compared stories at all it would be like "wait I had to open that crazy medallion door too." like how would that work? I did appreciate small things like some rooms being specific to one character or another and a certain prominent character already being a zombie when you find them in the second run. Just thinking about how much they could do to make it feel more unique for the second run while being ultimately the same game just kinda makes me yearn.
In the end, a superb game that I liked so much I did play it twice despite my yearning for more differences like I mentioned. I liked it enough to play in the sewers twice! Hell I had such a good time I tried doing The 4th Survivor mode, a mode I quickly realized was not the kind of thing I fell in love with this game for as it's more like a way longer version of the FNG challenge in CoD 4. Overall an incredible game I think I could recommend to anyone, even people that don't play many games. It's excellent from start to finish. A shame that this isn't how the series kept going but I'm curious to see what comes next!