It's the sequel to Resident Evil, that much is obvious since it retains a lot of its virtues and flaws.
The most apparent thing is how the team is more ambitious with the presentation, an orchestral soundtrack, higher polygon count on 3D models, and level of detail and care in every pre-rendered background is apparent to the point where they employ it to add hidden item spots in some of them, requiring you to see them more as places you're in. The exploration is better than before.
The gameplay looks similar but it has key differences, for one being below fine health affects your movement speed, down to moving at half the speed on danger health, this makes it so it's clear when you've been damaged and punishes bad performance by lowering your chances of surviving, at the start I rejected this system since it seemed to overly punish you for mistakes but I've grown to appreciate the way it adds to the tension. Enemies also act different, in RE when they changed animation there was a large period of time where their hitboxes were off and you couldn't damage them, in here that "invulnerability" time has been reduced, making the fights feel more fair and dynamic, but it also makes them easier.
Unlike RE this game takes a more linear approach quicker, where in RE you left the mansion around the last third of the game here it's around half, making exploration almost unimportant and traversing these environments barely exiting since you're going from a linear point to another more often.
The story is somewhat better, with more characters and drama but at the cost of heavily increasing the number of unskipable story segments that really hurt second playthroughs, which are the main point of this sequel, with the zapping system; that adds an interested layer to some of your choices in the game but that it's hard to notice most of the times.
A quick note on the Hunk and Tofu modes: They're a decent way of reusing the map but are too reliant on trial and error in a way that's just bothersome.
The most apparent thing is how the team is more ambitious with the presentation, an orchestral soundtrack, higher polygon count on 3D models, and level of detail and care in every pre-rendered background is apparent to the point where they employ it to add hidden item spots in some of them, requiring you to see them more as places you're in. The exploration is better than before.
The gameplay looks similar but it has key differences, for one being below fine health affects your movement speed, down to moving at half the speed on danger health, this makes it so it's clear when you've been damaged and punishes bad performance by lowering your chances of surviving, at the start I rejected this system since it seemed to overly punish you for mistakes but I've grown to appreciate the way it adds to the tension. Enemies also act different, in RE when they changed animation there was a large period of time where their hitboxes were off and you couldn't damage them, in here that "invulnerability" time has been reduced, making the fights feel more fair and dynamic, but it also makes them easier.
Unlike RE this game takes a more linear approach quicker, where in RE you left the mansion around the last third of the game here it's around half, making exploration almost unimportant and traversing these environments barely exiting since you're going from a linear point to another more often.
The story is somewhat better, with more characters and drama but at the cost of heavily increasing the number of unskipable story segments that really hurt second playthroughs, which are the main point of this sequel, with the zapping system; that adds an interested layer to some of your choices in the game but that it's hard to notice most of the times.
A quick note on the Hunk and Tofu modes: They're a decent way of reusing the map but are too reliant on trial and error in a way that's just bothersome.