Not a bad game by any means. Has a great concept and enjoyable gameplay loop but overstays its welcome and eventually becomes very monotonous with almost nothing to motivate players to push past that. The slow pace reminded me a bit of sunless sea / sunless sky - both of which can be very monotonous due to slow player movement and no fast travel. In these games, however, the sense of monotony arguably adds to the overall affect and is worth pushing past regardless due to stellar writing and storytelling that lasts from start to finish. Still appreciate a lot about this game but would recommend waiting to try it out until it gets a hefty discount.

Really satisfying gameplay - surprisingly kept me entertained through all five endings and never devolved into a slog. However, story suffers greatly from over-ambition and its gargantuan scale, which causes a lot of story moments, concepts, and characters to be rushed in and out the door without the attention needed for them to be truly impactful. This causes certain moments clearly intended to be impactful and thought provoking to fall flat on their face in a way that is at times kind of hard to watch. The bathos of these moments is particularly intense because there’s a lot of talent at work here and a huge amount of potential inherent in the themes and concepts present in the game. This certainly isn’t a bad game but playing it immediately after Nier Replicant, which for me has probably the most gracefully rendered and emotionally impactful story I’ve ever seen in a game, left me quite disappointed. Comparing these two games is helpful in illustrating my main gripe with Automata’s story. Nier / Nier Replicant has a a simple story with simple themes that have been explored in countless pieces of media but it engages with these themes with style, grace, and empathy that’s genuinely unmatched. Automata has a rather complicated story and deals with a lot of pretty complex themes and the game ultimately breaks under the weight of everything it tries to tackle - leaving players with a story that is at times insightful and emotionally impactful but that contains a lot of moments that feel rather trite and at times frankly nonsensical.

Overall Nier Automata is immaculately scored, voice acted, designed, animated, and considered from a gameplay perspective but the emotional impact of its story just isn’t quite there - it never lives up to the potential inherent in its concept and themes, which is a massive shame.

Fantastic story with very cohesive themes and symbolism that feels genuinely subversive in its commentary on violence and how its presented in most games. Overall an oppressively fatalistic game but has some truly touching moments of hope and optimism sprinkled in, which end up being very effective given how dark the rest of the game is.

Brought down a bit by enjoyable but pretty simplistic musou gameplay that can get a bit tedious after a while. A lot of people say that the musou gameplay in Drakengard is bad on purpose which 1. is just wrong - its definitely not bad just tedious after a while and 2. i refuse to believe that Drakengard’s various gameplay flaws were meant to be “bad on purpose". This game is definitely disturbing and disquieting and unconventional on purpose - which I guess some people could be referring to when they say "bad" - but the idea that Yoko Taro would intentionally sabotage the gameplay in Drakengard to make a point is kind of ridiculous to me. For any piece of media with profit motivation - which this game does have being published by Square Enix - its incredibly rare and difficult for a creator to essentially make it "bad on purpose". There are too many people to push back against it and the higher ups would have to be remarkably incompetent to not notice this sort of thing going on and course correct. The only piece of mass-market media where i actually believe this claim of "bad on purpose" is Freddy Got Fingered and that was like a once in a generation fluke for a studio to somehow let that kind of thing happen.

Anyway really unique and genuinely subversive game with clearly a lot of artistic passion behind it. Highly recommend given just how one of a kind it is.

Got about 2/3rds of the way through before dropping it. There's nothing terribly wrong with this game but its incredibly bland. Stages are painfully easy and often pretty tedious. Furthermore, they're implemented into the game in a very simple way - just going down a list of them - so there are no further mechanics to redeem the core gameplay. Characters also lack any of the charm they had in P5 or even the other spinoffs like Strikers, Q2, or the dancing game, which while not as engaging as P5 in terms of writing were still enjoyable stories for fans of the P5 cast.

Wouldn't really recommend this to anyone - not even P5 fans. If you're a massive fan and feel the need to play it just for the sake of it definitely wait for a sale. You're not going to be missing much by putting this game off for the year or so it'll take for it to get a discount.

UPDATE: P5T now has a small discount on PSN, but I’d still recommend waiting a bit longer until you can get it for even less. Wouldn’t buy this for more than 20 USD.

Really sad to have shelved this one but circumstance has forced me to. Was about halfway through this game and enjoying it a lot when I got the worst flu I’ve ever had and would have ended up in the hospital for dehydration were it not for my partner’s physician dad giving me prescription anti emetics he had lying around the house. Tried playing more of this game when I was laid up in bed which was a huge mistake. Literally can’t even think about this game without feeling nauseous now. Huge shame because I was enjoying it quite a bit.

I went into this game knowing it was going to be bad but felt the need to finish off the Dead Space series after enjoying the first two games.

This is a pretty infamous game - even 10+ years after its release. When the Dead Space remake was released last year one of the most frequent reactions from fans was excitement for the rebirth of a great franchise that EA killed with their meddling. I don’t know enough about the economics of the game industry to say whether or not Dead Space would have survived if Visceral had been able to make the Dead Space 3 they wanted to make, but claims about EA ruining this game definitely ring true after playing it.

This is one of the clearest examples of publisher meddling I’ve yet seen with this game completely abandoning much of what made its predecessors good in order to chase trends, court as broad an audience as possible, and find ways to alter mechanics to compliment the addition of microtransactions. For starters, DS3 is a mediocre and mechanically simplistic 3rd person cover shooter from a gameplay standpoint. I’ve seen some people accuse EA and visceral of trying too hard to turn DS into uncharted or gears of war, but if you ask me I wish they had tried harder. Copying the combat from gears of war or even uncharted 1:1 would have made this a significantly more enjoyable game if you can believe it.
DS3 also eliminates pretty much all elements of horror present in the previous games leaving it no scarier than a game like Gears of War. I can imagine these changes probably seemed like a good idea from EA’s perspective. 3rd person cover shooters were very popular at the time and survival horror generally wasn’t (at least not for AAA games). An EA exec also stated before the game released that they believed the first two DS games were too scary to have mass appeal. This attempt to make the game less frightening was also a justification given for introducing co-op to DS3. Pretty much all mechanics surrounding weapons and upgrading were also altered to accommodate microtransactions. Everything functions on a resource crafting system now, and if you don’t have enough resources to build the gun you want, you can of course spend $4.99 to get more. Thankfully the balancing of the game wasn’t tweaked to force the player to buy additional resources - you’ll have more than enough from just playing the game regularly. DS3 also introduces optional loot dungeons as a way to get more resources, which hilariously try their best to convince you they’re actually side quests. These are probably the worst part of the game from a gameplay perspective. They’re bizarrely lengthy and are comprised of generic rooms that are repeated and rearranged ad nauseam. They actually reminded me a lot of the much maligned dungeons in Dragon Age II - another game that EA is frequently accused of ruining by trying to give it broader appeal.

The generic optional dungeons wouldn’t be an issue if the combat that took place within them was actually good, but it unfortunately isn’t. Combat encounters in DS3 are incredibly repetitive and mindless. If you have a decent enough weapon you can just hunker down in a corner and blast away until you clear the room. None of the enemies require that you adopt different strategies or use different weapons, and you don’t even need to aim for enemies limbs anymore - a few good shots to the chest will kill just about any basic enemy. The design of enemy encounters actually encourages players to adopt this sort of strategy. There are a lot of enemies in this game, and they’re all very fast. Even the most basic Slasher will close in on your from across the room in about a second. Because of this, using high dps automatic weapons and spraying wildly at enemies is by far the best and arguably only truly effective combat strategy. I figured this out pretty quickly and judging from what people have said about the game online the same is true for a lot of players. Once you build a half decent automatic rifle with a force gun attachment there’s absolutely no reason to experiment with or try out different weapons. It would be one thing if this objectively optimal weapon design was something most people would only be able to figure out by reading a guide or after a lot of experimentation but the automatic rifle / force gun combination is so obviously overpowered - even just on paper - that most players will end up organically adopting it as their main weapon by the 4th chapter.

The monotony and simplicity of combat was what really killed this game for me. I realized pretty shortly into the game that combat wasn’t going to change or evolve going forward, and after that point I found it incredibly difficult to keep playing. The combat in Dead Space 2 managed to be action packed, strategic, and well balanced, so this shift in combat design for Dead Space 3 is a bit baffling to me. Combat was already very accessible and player friendly in DS2, so why the significant changes? The only reason I can think of is that perhaps the devs were trying to tweak the combat to be more suited for co-op and the use of craft-able weapons but just didn’t do a very good job.

Environments are more of a mixed bag. There are some genuinely cool settings like the alien city and the inside of a giant frozen necromorph, but the rest are very bland and repetitive. The other two major settings are a frozen planet and a ship graveyard in space. Both of these settings could have been very cool but the actual levels are made up of repeating rooms and hallways that are nearly impossible to tell apart. One of the things I praised about the first two DS games was their surprisingly easy to navigate levels. Part of this is due to rooms and hallways being visually distinct and easy to remember. You really don’t need to use the waypoint in either of those games if you don’t want to. The same can’t be said for DS3. It’s incredibly easy to get lost due to the repetitive environments and you’ll be constantly pinging your waypoint while you play.

Story and writing is also a mixed bag. The most satisfying part of the story is the reveal of how the markers work and what purpose they serve. This actually worked really well and felt consistent with the other games. Everything else is pretty bad though. This is one of those pieces of media where almost everything the characters do and say is remarkably, unbelievably stupid. If you turn your brain off it’s mostly fine, but if you spend even a couple seconds trying to interrogate character motivations the entire thing devolves into absolute nonsense. DS3 also introduces a few new characters, the implementation of which is bizarre to say the least. The main villain of the game looks hilariously similar to Elton John, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to understand this design choice. Almost everyone who talks about this game online mentions this, so there’s no way in my mind that the devs didn’t notice the similarity. Another new character - Norton - is cartoonishly annoying and irredeemable, and it clashes significantly with the overall serious tone of the writing in the game. This is one of those rare instances where the writing of a character actively feels condescending towards the audience. He acts like an annoying 12 year old and it sort of feels like he was written this way to make the game more relatable for 12-14 year old boys. Given the hilariously cringe “your mom is going to hate this” ad for Dead Space 2, there’s no doubt in my mind that 13 year old boys were a core demographic this game was trying to appeal to and that EA’s marketing team was pushing for things to be included in the game that would be appealing to them. On a similar note Ellie’s outfit has been changed to a comically low cut t-shirt to compliment the character model’s now massive breasts. Imagining the asshole who pushed for this to make DS3 more appealing to mainstream gamers legitimately fills me with an unhealthy amount of anger. I genuinely have no problem with non-erotic games trying to be titillating IF it’s done well and fits the tone of the game. Neither is the case here. Genuinely baffled by the idea that anyone over the age of 14 could find something as stupid and obvious as Ellie’s new model - essentially just a CGI Hooter’s waitress - legitimately titillating.

Definitely don’t play this. If you’re curious how the story of dead space ends you’re better off reading a wiki or watching a recap video. There is some fun to be had laughing at how strange and ill conceived a lot of the design decisions are, but this enjoyment is drastically outweighed by just how much of a slog this game is to play. Truly had to force myself to finish this one, which is saying a lot given my patience for mediocre games.

Doesn’t have the same originality and cohesion in regards to visual design as the first game - two things I praised in my review of DS1 - but absolutely blows its predecessor out of the water when it comes to gameplay, which is a lot more tense and strategic this time around. Resource balancing is dialed in perfectly in this game, which was a problem in the original where you were given way too much health and ammo. Enemies are also a lot more intimidating and will frequently swarm the player with those weird velociraptor necromorphs being a standout. Theyre only utilized in a handful of maze-like like enemy arenas where they stalk the player before rushing them at lightning speed. These are really fun and tense encounters and are representative of the style of combat in this game as a whole.

While this game doesn’t have the same originality and cohesion of visual design as DS1 it makes up for it with a lot more variety when it comes to settings. Some of these Re really creative and absolutely gorgeous with the Unitology center and the place you visit in Chapter 10 (won’t spoil it) being standouts.


The introduction of quite a few new weapons and alt fire modes also allows for more load out strategizing this time around. One of my biggest complaints with the original dead space was how it felt like you had to stick with whatever weapons you initially chose to buy. DS2 fixes that issue by introducing an upgrade respec option for weapons, which allows the player to try out whatever weapons they want without any negative consequences.

Writing style in this game is actually pretty different from that of DS1. DS1 went very light on character interactions and instead focused mostly on environmental storytelling and world building via notes and audio logs. DS2 is much more focused on Isaac and his relationships. I was mostly charmed by Isaac, despite him not getting much actual character development. Story is serviceable overall with the mystery surrounding the markers doing a good job at driving player engagement with the world.

Overall a very fun time. Definitely less creative than the first game, and I don’t have the same level of affection for it as I do for DS1, but I can’t deny how much of a blast DS2 is to actually play

Having a hard time deciding on a good rating for this game because on the one hand I don’t think the gameplay mechanics are particularly impressive, but on the other hand this is one of the most polished and thoughtfully crafted 7th gen games I’ve played and I have a lot of respect for a dev team putting that amount of thought and work into their game.

You’ve probably already heard enough about the UI but it really is fantastic with the way-finding especially being a very important element of its success. Dead Space came out during the quest marker and quest arrow scourge of the 7th and 8th generations and implementing a way-finding system that allowed you to ask for directions only when you wanted was an amazing decision. The levels also seem designed around this lack of a quest marker because they’re all very intuitive to navigate and explore.

The graphics in this game are also unbelievably good for a title that came out in 2008. It looks amazing about 98% of the time with brightly lit areas generally being the only parts where the graphics feel aged. On the topic of visuals this is also a game with a really unique and distinctive visual style that permeates absolutely every element of the game - the architecture, the weapons, the necromorphs, UI, the outfits, etc. I can remember when this game came out and Isaac’s armor along with the plasma cutter became iconic and beloved pieces of visual design almost immediately and were still remembered fondly by a lot of gamers even before the 2023 remake.

All of this effort and creativity and really smart design work makes me want to love this game more than I actually do. It’s all so heartening to see in a AAA game and I have a tremendous amount of respect for it.

That said, this game is let down by its combat mechanics. They’re not bad by any means but they’re pretty shallow and mindless and there’s very little sense of increasing challenge or adaptation as the player progresses through the game. Don’t get me wrong, blasting necromorphs is fun - I generally had a good time doing it for most of the game, but it’s mindless fun. There aren’t many strategies for tackling the necromorphs and the design of combat areas is very simple and barely changes throughout the game, which makes combat pretty boring and easy by the end.

The strongest part of Dead Space’s gameplay is honestly the moments of rising tension between fights which this game does really well up until the very last couple of chapters. I don’t want to describe how the game does this because I’ll risk lessening its effect for first time players but it’s well done and feels very meticulously crafted to create as much unease in the player as possible.

Overall enjoyed my time with this game and wish I liked the combat more because there’s so much about this game to love.

Far more polished than the original but lacks the chaotic and thrilling gameplay that made the original so special.

Level design in this game is very different from that of the original. The evil within 1 is a very linear and fast paced game. The entire game is a non stop thrill ride through expertly scripted and designed encounters and set pieces. The evil within 2 on the other hand is much more open and slower paced - trading the linear thrill ride for several open levels that can be explored or largely avoided at your leisure. Because of this, avoiding encounters via stealth is much more possible in this game than it was in the first. This sounds like a positive since it allows for more viable playstyles but it ends up getting rid of one of the best qualities of the first game. The evil within 1 is a surprisingly challenging game and one where combat is often unavoidable. Because of this you had to learn how to take full advantage of every element of Sebastian’s toolkit. In the evil within 2 it’s very easy to use stealth for the majority of the game, which ends up being not nearly as engaging as the gameplay of TEW1. Resources are also far more plentiful in this game making it possible for players to only use 1 or two weapons when they do decide to fight. Granted, the combat mechanics in this game are just as deep as they were in the first game, and there certainly are interesting playstyles to adopt in TEW2, but the game doesn’t require you to utilize them to survive, which lessens the tension and leads to an overall less interesting gameplay experience.

This is a bit of a unique problem since it feels very specific to the survival horror genre. In immserive sims for instance, I dont mind players having the option to adopt overpowered and somewhat boring playstyles since those games are all about player freedom and experimentation. In the survival horror genre, which is primarily about creating tension for the player, the option to utilize somewhat boring and overpowered mechanics breaks that tension. On standard difficulty, the player has to actively opt into a play style thats conducive to creating tension, which I think is a problem for this kind of game.

Visual design is quite different from the first game but just as excellent. The abandoned suburban landscape often accented by bright lights and an otherworldly blue hue reminded me a lot of Gregory Crewdson’s photography. Given the presence of photography in the narrative of the game I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was a conscious influence on the visuals of the game.

Story and writing are fleshed out and more character centered in this game which is done surprisingly well. Maybe it’s just me preferring the gameplay of the first but I kind of missed the bewildering plot of the first game where Sebastian was just some random detective thrust into an unimaginably strange situation and mostly reacted to the world around him with some expertly voice acted “what the fuck”s. The story and writing in TEW2 is good, however, and I did find myself invested in the characters and outcome up until the very end.

Overall this is a really solid survival horror experience and one that I think most fans of the genre will enjoy. There’s a good story, surprisingly deep and creative combat, and a lot of tense moments. However, it’s far less focused and unique than the first game, which I found myself enjoying much more on a moment to moment basis.

Really solid game that’s kind of hard to get into at first due to several mechanics being poorly explained and the game not doing a very good job at guiding you towards the best way to engage with it. Knowing this is a Shinji Mikami game going in I was either expecting it to be an action horror game in the vein of re4 or a classic survival horror experience in the vein of OG resident evil and the remake of RE2. This game doesn’t fit neatly into either of these categories which was confusing at first and led to some early game frustration. If you stick with it and approach the game and its systems on its own terms and without using other games as a reference point it’s a very fun time with a surprisingly deep and flexible combat system.

This is a somewhat difficult but also very rewarding game to master. There are a lot of things in this game that are very disempowering - Sebastian's incredibly low initial stamina, ammo scarcity, how strong enemies hit, etc. In a lot of horror games this sort of disempowerment would necessitate that the player avoid combat whenever possible, but the Evil Within actually encourages you and often requires you to fight. This works because if you get good enough with Sebastian's load-out and are smart with your upgrades you can become very powerful and rise above these handicaps. This makes progression in this game - both in terms of upgrading as well as just getting better at the games systems - incredibly satisfying

An interesting thing to note about this game - and something i feel a bit conflicted about is that it leans very heavily into horror tropes and established imagery for its character designs and settings. This is something that has been proudly stated by the development team who thought horror imagery that people were at least a bit used to would be scarier and more memorable. One of the clearest examples of this is the mascot monster for this game - the keeper - being very similar to Pyramid Head. I think different people will probably have different reactions to this part of the game. I feel rather ambivalent about it. Would have probably preferred more original settings and monsters but this game does a fantastic job with the tropes and imagery it borrows from other horror media.

This game, however, has a really unique visual aesthetic that - like the game itself - is a bit off putting at first due to how unwelcoming it is. Don’t know exactly how to describe the visual style but best comparison I can give is the opening sequence of Mulholland Drive. Light is blindingly bright, which is contrasted with pitch darkness surrounding it. Visuals also have an unnatural and disorienting feel to them because of this, which is compounded by various visual effects and camera angles the game employs. The game's story is nonsense but that’s actually a positive in this case because it allows for unrestrained freedom when it comes to visual design which is an area where this game excels.

There are also several little easter eggs and references for Resident Evil fans that were fun to see. There's a shot for shot remake of the initial zombie reveal from the first Resident Evil / the REmake at the beginning of the game that I enjoyed a lot.

Really enjoyed this one and feel that it’s a super unique and interesting game despite being uninviting and having some jank at points.

Unsure how to mark this because I called it quits after about three attempts at fighting Mr. Dream / Mike Tyson because I could tell the time investment required to beat him wasn’t going to be worth it for me. Thinking back to the hardest bosses I’ve ever fought in games a few come to mind - the robot guy from cuphead, father gascoigne in bloodborne (mostly due to him being the first souls boss I ever tried to fight), shadow link from Zelda 2, and a couple from the original Castlevania and the original Ninja Gaiden. In all of these cases I could tell right away that I’d be able to beat them after at most a couple hours of attempts. Mr Dream is the first boss I’ve ever encountered in a game where I immediately got the feeling that I’d have to spend tens of hours practicing my Punch Out technique before I could even get to the point where beating him would be possible after a couple hours of attempts. My grasp on the mechanics simply wasn’t strong enough for beating him to be even remotely possible. Hardest boss I’ve ever encountered in a game by far and wanted to write this review to preserve that fact.

Will finish at a later date when the original isn’t so fresh in my mind. Not particularly optimistic after about 5 hours into an initial play through. A bit annoyed at this game in principle for feeling wholly unnecessary re: remaking something that didn’t need to be remade and not doing anything drastically different to justify the remake. Of any of the RE games pre RE7 this one probably needed to be remade the least from an artistic standpoint - original isn’t dated (people call the controls dated but they’re key to what makes the game work IMO) and there’s very little to improve upon. However, the original RE4 is a legendary title and sold really well so remaking it is of course a great idea financially. Just makes me a little bummed since Code Veronica and RE0 got skipped over and would have greatly benefited from RE2R style remakes. All the changes I’ve encountered so far are seemingly minor but upset the near perfect balance of the original and end up being unfortunately for the worse. Was having a fun time with the game and imagine I’ll enjoy completing it at a later date - game doesn’t seem bad by any means - but can’t justify continuing to play it having completed the original less than a month ago when this doesn’t seem to be bringing anything new to the table of quality and doesn’t seem to be doing anything substantially different in a way I find interesting. I can already tell I won’t like this as much as the original and playing it so soon after will likely make me hyperfocused on its shortcomings. Looking forward to the inevitable RE5 remake - a deeply flawed game that could actually benefit from being redone - because I’m very curious to see if capcom can fix its deeply entrenched issues.

This game is an absolute mess but an incredibly charming, glorious mess in all its self-indulgence, bombast, and wild over-ambition. I pretty much always love media that meets these criteria even if that makes it by definition a failure - favorites of mine for those curious are the films Mother and Under the Silverlake (dying to see the original 3 hour cut that got booed at Cannes).

This is a game with a lot of really great ideas and one of the most stylish and creative combat systems I’ve ever seen in a shooter but it’s also a game that’s incredibly frustrating and dull at times - especially as the game weakly stumbles across the finish line with Ada’s campaign. There are so many bullshit and incongruous design choices in this game that it almost seems like it’s trying annoy and confuse the player. The constant QTEs, the linear cover shooting arenas that are totally at odds with the games combat mechanics, the AI partners that can seemingly defeat bosses all by themselves, and that fucking hidden ladder in Leon’s story. All of it makes playing this game a frustrating slog about 50% of the time.

As for the story: RE6 has the most ambitious story in any Resident Evil game and goes full on Fast and Furious in terms of absolutely outrageous action set pieces, indestructible main characters, and unabashed sentimentality. I will fight anyone who compares this to Michael Bay due to the fact that his films are deeply misanthropic, which is the opposite of what this game is. RE6 is relentlessly life affirming and brazenly, at times embarrassingly sentimental. Resident Evil stories have always been dumb fun and I can’t think of a better, more heartening tone for the biggest and dumbest Resident Evil story to take. It’s one of the main reasons I find this game so charming despite being more often than not frustrated and bored while playing.

This is a legitimately mediocre, at times bad game but one where I find its problems so charming and lovable that I’m honestly glad it’s such a mess. Every time I got dragged into another tedious and pace breaking QTE where a character survives multiple unsurvivable injuries in quick succession I felt annoyed but I also had a big dumb smile on my face. I have a great deal of affection for this game but also definitely never want to play it again.

Actually enjoyed this way more than I thought I would having been aware of this games less than stellar reputation going in.

People sometimes refer to the original RE3 as an awkward cross between classic RE gameplay and action RE gameplay, which I definitely disagree with. RE3 (1999) despite having slightly more abundant resources than previous games along with the dodge mechanic always felt like OG Resident Evil and created the same tension and need for strategizing that the other classic games did. The same can’t be said for RE3R and the awkward in-between descriptor does fit it pretty well IMO. Combat mechanics and the scale of encounters are very similar to RE2R but now with very linear levels and significantly more action oriented resource balancing - you will be truly flush with ammo and healing items for your whole playthrough on standard. It seems truly impossible to run out even if you decide to fight every enemy the game throws at you. This is a far cry from classic RE games and even from RE2R, which has at times very strict resource balancing (I actually fully ran out of resources and had to reload because of the jail segment on my second scenario playthrough as Leon - something that’s come close to happening but has never actually happened to me in any other RE title.) All of these design choices make RE3R feel more like the post-game 4th Survivor mode in RE2R (a linear enemy gauntlet) than a modern take on classic RE gameplay.

That said I did enjoy my time with this game - it just definitely wasn’t what I (and apparently most fans) wanted from an RE3 remake. Some of the positives - this game like RE2R fleshes out the story with lots more character dialogue and adopts a similar James Cameron-esque action movie tone. This all works pretty well. I enjoyed Jill and Carlos’s relationship and the way they were characterized. Was also just glad to see Jill Valentine get more characterization and dialogue than in the original game since she’s probably my favorite RE protagonist. Side note this is for the dumbest reason ever: her outfit in the REmake with its beret and goofy shoulder pads was so charming to me that she instantly became my favorite RE protagonist. Very glad they put that outfit in this game and I switched over to it as soon as possible. On a somewhat related note I’m glad they changed Jill’s default outfit in this game to something less ridiculous. It fits the more serious tone of the game well, and the original one always struck me as a kind of annoying attempt at giving gamers that good ol’ low poly PS1 T&A, which I always find distracting and condescending to the audience when it doesn’t fit the tone of the game - which I didn’t think it did in the original.

I was a little disappointed by the lack of any post-game bonus modes, which is a staple of the Resident Evil series and something I always appreciate. The only game I can think of that doesn’t have any sort of bonus mode is the RE (2002). Most versions of the 1996 original didn’t have any bonus modes although the sega saturn release did have a post-game battle mode. The original RE3 was actually the origin of the beloved mercenaries mode, so it was disappointing to not see anything like that here. There technically is the bundled in online game Resident Evil Resistance, but I don’t really consider this to be the same thing as a bonus mode since it’s a totally separate piece of software from the main game. The devs apparently included this in lieu of bonus modes due to RE3R having less content than most RE games (take that justification with a grain of salt given the presence of micro-transactions in Resistance), but I definitely would have preferred a mercenaries or survivors mode instead.

Well anyway: I enjoyed this game far more than I expected. Was a short and fun romp that’s held up by the excellent combat mechanics of RE2R but now utilized in an action setting which is overall successful. I of course wish the devs had gone the pure survival horror route with this game, but what we got isn’t half bad.

Don’t like it quite as much as the original but still a fantastic remake. Gameplay manages to feel just like classic RE despite all the changes, which is pretty impressive. This is mostly due to resource and enemy balancing which is spot on. Was a bit worried about the removal of ink ribbons on standard difficulty but this didn’t seem to make much of a difference in terms of tension or strategic gameplay.

Storytelling gets an upgrade in a lot of ways which makes this feel less like a schlocky b movie and more like a James Cameron film. I still enjoyed the story and appreciated the game going for a different tone but I imagine this might be a turn off to some.

Overall enjoyed it a lot and think it’s really cool capcom was able to largely replicate the gameplay experience of the original despite changing so much.