I never knew what true fear felt like until I had to face off against Nelo Angelo #3 on the 'Dante Must Die' difficulty.

I really love this one! Might not be the best entry in the series ''objectively'' but it's still my favorite one of the bunch. The coolest version of Dante, the gothic scenario, the soundtrack and overall atmosphere are what sells it for me. Not to mention all the little connections to resident evil, it's like a more action-y re-imagining of RE2.

Just don't bother playing it on DmD unless you really want all achievements in the HD trilogy. Mundus Phase 1 will make your arm sore. :(

''Staring into the flames... I feel something. It's a mixture of dread and hope.. Maybe everything will be okay. Or maybe it won't.''

This game came out on my birthday (May 9!!) and my goodness, what a gift this was. One of those games that ever since I played the demo it felt like something that was tailor made for me.

I did like 3 playthroughs of this since the weekend as I honestly fell in love with it, I just wanted to experience everything there was of it. This game perfectly captures the PS1 horror experience, calling back to things like Resident Evil 1 (specifically the original) and Silent Hill 1. A mixture of eerieness, moody atmosphere, body horror and it all clashes quite interestingly with the cute cylindrical character designs.

The gameplay and map design are pretty top tier, too. There is backtracking but it's well done and rewarding, it helps that the map is just small enough so it never feels like a waste of time to go back to areas you've been before.

While the controls are quite nice and somewhat ''modern'' compared to some of it's comtemporaries, I would still highly recommend playing this with a gamepad. It's playable with keyboard but it is somewhat awkward (there's no mouse support). It can be quite dynamic since you can avoid combat entirely 75% of time and save a ton of resources by causing enviromental damage towards the enemies or just baiting them into traps. Made me think of Resident Evil 3 in this regard, which I really appreciate.

The story is surprisingly nice, too! The characters are all very charming and I really liked reading all the lore behind the theme park. There are some pretty dark implications about the origin of the virus later in the game, which makes me wonder if there is any potential for a sequel of sorts someday.

If there are any flaws in it... Honestly? I can't think of much. I heard people say it was a bit easy compared to other survival horror games out there but I don't consider that an issue tbh, it feels perfectly designed as it is. And if that is a problem for you then you can just start the game on the hard difficulty (Murder of Crows). My third playthrough was on that difficulty and it is very tough indeed, more in line with what you expect from older games of this genre.

I honestly could go on and on about how much I loved this game but I think i'll leave it at that for now. I wholeheartdly recommend this to anyone from fans of old-school survival horror fans to even potential newcomers. 💜