Resident Evil 3: Nemesis sometimes feels like the black sheep of the original PlayStation trilogy. It's been very well received in past and contemporary times and was a massive sales success. Still, despite being a great game, I can't help but feel like many of its elements feel strange compared to its immediate predecessors. The path choice system, the copious amounts of RNG, and its development history as a spin-off title add to this feeling. Naturally, the idea of remaking RE3:N, while not entirely necessary, is enticing. How do you adapt its quirks into a modern context while improving upon its admittedly minor flaws? Apparently, according to Capcom, the answer was: you don't. The Resident Evil 3 remake isn't even close to being as bad as some fans make it out to be, but it is a very disappointing game nonetheless. I've never played a game that simultaneously felt so polished and yet so incomplete. While it does manage to improve upon the original game in some ways, by and large, it serves as a massive step back from both the original RE3 and its immediate predecessor, the Resident Evil 2 remake.
From the onset, it's clear that RE3make is different in tone from RE2make, with a breakneck pace that seldom offers the player any respite. There's little room for RE2make's lonely hall wandering or silent tension when the game grabs you by the neck from the first moment of real gameplay and drags you along for seven odd hours. This lends itself to an entirely different tone and while I don't necessarily dislike it, I do think the game could have benefitted from more moments of silent tension, which feel almost absent. On a game design level, RE3make is for the most part fairly faithful to RE3:N, preserving the more action-oriented style of gameplay while remaining directly tied to core survival horror design philosophies. This isn't a downright action horror game, though it does border on it at points. Changes from RE2make such as the knife being invincible, the dodge mechanic, and the lack of ink ribbons on first-time playthroughs make RE3make a fairly unchallenging game even on hardcore difficulty compared to the brutality of RE2make's hardcore mode. Despite this, it's a very polished and fun gameplay experience that while somewhat breezy is still one I enjoyed playing through. The dodge mechanic is one of the few things this game does much better than RE3:N, being infamously finicky in that game and much smoother to execute in this one. It's satisfying to accomplish and it encourages the player to stay away from enemies rather than engaging them directly. The Hunter Betas, in particular, are designed heavily around this system, and either dodging their attacks as Jill or countering them with a punch from Carlos is satisfying even with the threat they represent. I just wish the game was more punishing towards the player - you're given tons of dangerous weapons very early on that can almost trivialize many encounters. The Hunter Gammas are cool, but when they die in two hits to flame rounds the game keeps handing to me, their threat level is greatly reduced. The lack of ink ribbons or any kind of save limiting feature means that there's no consequence other than time to just saving as much as you want, and no strategy. It's still a very polished and enjoyable time, but it lacks the gameplay sophistication that RE2make has.
The elephant in the room here is how RE3make handles accuracy to the source material. You've probably heard a thousand times that this is a severely cut-down remake and you'd be entirely correct. The biggest disappointment here is how Nemesis T-Type, the tyrant that at least narratively stalks you throughout the whole game, is handled. Nemesis in RE3:N is infamously a case of carefully crafted smoke and mirrors. Most encounters with him are mandatory, and outside of a few areas that he "patrols" for the player being based around RNG, he is less dynamic and random than most people remember. However, the reason why Nemesis struck fear into the hearts of players more than RE2's Mr. X was that the mixture of genuine randomness and scripted encounters was done in a manner that felt convincing. It genuinely felt like Nemesis was hunting Jill down and would not stop at any cost like you were getting to play your own Terminator film. This is not the case at all in RE3make, where Nemesis feels more scripted than ever. While I remember having a few random encounters with Nemesis while playing the Raccoon City demo that was released a month before the game's release, in the finished game I never encountered him outside of what felt like explicitly scripted moments. Perhaps I was just genuinely unlucky, but there appear to be very few spots where encountering Nemesis is a chance and not a guarantee. The boss battles with him, especially the rooftop flamethrower fight, are great, making great use of the game's mechanics alongside making him, if for a moment, feel intimidating and threatening. Almost every encounter with him that isn't a boss fight, however, feels like a playable cinematic cutscene from a Naughty Dog game or something. That's a fine thing to have occasionally, but when it consists of the majority of his encounters, this supposed ultimate bioweapon feels far weaker than RE2make's terrifying Mr. X, the exact opposite of what happened with the PSX games. The game also cuts many memorable and iconic locations from the original, such as the cemetery, clock tower, and dead factory (with the grave digger cut too, unfortunately) without replacing them with anything similarly memorable. NEST 2 is cool and all, but come on, it's no dead factory. Remakes will always inevitably cut things, after all, it's a brand new game and not just the original prettied up, but how RE3make flagrantly throws out core aspects of the game it's based on it almost feels disrespectful even if that's not intentional. Most of its setpieces are perfectly fine if not outright good, but none of them reach the same iconic heights as the original.
Scriptwriting is one of this game's bigger strengths, although it is not without flaws. I like how the game takes characters that previously only had minor roles and expands them further into something more developed. Tyrell Patrick had very few scenes in RE3:N, but his expanded role here and his brotherly camaraderie with Carlos are endearing and appreciated. Mikhail Viktor doesn't necessarily have more scenes but his big-hearted personality is much more evident here. Nicholai Ginovaef was handled differently here, forgoing the cold calculated gun-for-hire that Yasuhisa Kawamura originally wrote for someone more affably evil. While I would agree that RE3:N Nicholai is perhaps more intimidating, RE3make Nicholai is a lot of fun as well and I might personally prefer this take on him. He's a snarky, affably evil character who provides a lot of humor to the game's narrative without forgoing his genuine threat as a combatant, snarking at Jill while kicking her into a pit full of zombies and kicking the shit out of Carlos during the game's climax. Carlos Oliveira was also upgraded - while he was always quite endearing and had a fun dynamic with Jill, I think that he's a lot more personable and realistic this time around. He's endearing in a way that feels very human and friendly as opposed to tryhard and embarrassing like in RE3:N, which wasn't a bad approach but was reflective of late-90s video game writing. The only thing I take issue with is how Jill is portrayed. I've seen more reactionary types complain about Jill being too hard on Carlos in this game, but on the contrary, I think Capcom made her way too soft. In RE3:N, she was directly antagonistic towards the UBCS members, not trusting Umbrella due to her experiences and trauma from the Mansion Incident in RE1. While she did end up coming around on Carlos, her burning hatred for the corporation that ruined the lives of her and many others never faltered. While Jill is generally written realistically in RE3make and has her charms, her relationship with Carlos develops far too quickly. Even at their worst, all she's doing is making snarky comments instead of any real distrust. She still works with them without any major issues and any trust issues she has with Carlos or Mikhail are assuaged almost instantly. It feels oddly unrealistic and means her character development from the original game is not nearly as strong as it was in RE3:N.
The game's art direction is decently strong and mostly in line with RE2make, though with noticeably more vibrant colors and deeper black levels than the prior game. The game lacks the more diffused, washed-out 1980s-inspired look of the prior game in favor of something more conventional and that's not necessarily worse though a little less original. The new character designs are more fitting for the more realistic direction this game took, and I'm especially fond of Nemesis' redesign. While the stitched-together, Terminator-esque leather design from RE3:N is iconic, I love how RE3make's Nemesis is wrapped in caution tape and trash bags, emphasizing that this creature is an unfinished prototype, a creature of unfathomable power out to kill you. The hunters have great redesigns, with the betas having a very cool chitinous, insectoid look and the gammas being these massive, terrifying amphibians that are far more intimidating than the original's. I will say, that while the game has great graphics, the design of some of the locations doesn't give a lot of chances for the game to show off unique visuals sometimes, with the sewer location just being a retread of assets already made for RE2make without any new flourishes at all, which gives the impression the game isn't as memorable visually. The lack of certain iconic locations doesn't help.
As with most Capcom games in general, especially modern RE Engine games, RE3make has a very strong graphical presentation, especially after the recent next-generation update. Much of what I said about RE2make similarly applies here due to development overlap and similar though not identical art direction. Dense and highly detailed environments, great use of lighting to set the mood and grow tension, incredibly lifelike human faces with convincing facial animation and expressions, phenomenally dynamic animation work in general, et cetera. Similarly, the next-gen update's addition of ray tracing is still behind what other games offer. Still, it provides a solid boost in visual fidelity over the RE Engine's poor SSR. Capcom finally found an imperfect solution to the engine's typical issues with anti-aliasing as well. While the game's anti-aliasing is still poor, it provides a solution in the form of FidelityFX CAS upscaling, which sharpens the game's TAA in a way that brings out detail while smoothing out aliasing. It isn't perfect, since it results in duller colors if using HDR, but it is still a step in the right direction nonetheless. If there are any problems with the game's graphical presentation, then, it's that there are downgrades from RE2make's excellent presentation. The game still largely looks great, mind you, but some visuals have been pared back possibly for performance. For example, the excellent gore system from RE2make has been downgraded. No longer can bodies be blown apart or eviscerated as they could beforehand, they're fairly static outside of the ever-satisfying splatter of a headshot, and the models themselves appear to be less detailed. They also still animate at 30 FPS at a distance, which looks worse considering there are typically more zombies on screen. This is disappointing considering how impressive it was in the previous game. This is more minor, but the RPD police station looks pared back as well, with windows being flat black glass without transparency or foliage behind them like in RE2make. The usual RE Engine PC performance inconsistencies are still here and seem to be slightly more consistent than RE2make, but that might just be me finally learning how to use G-Sync. Generally, RE3make is a great-looking game, but some strange cutbacks put it a notch below its immediate predecessor.
RE2make's score was slightly polarizing among many fans, as it went with a more ambient musical style that lacked some of the more memorable melodies of the original 1998 score. I liked it, but most people didn't. Seemingly in response to this, the composers for RE3make went for a score that was much more present and in-your-face, so to speak. I don't dislike this change on paper but as far as the more action-packed RE soundtracks go, this is one of the more mediocre ones. Outside of the Nemesis boss fight themes, a great rearrangement of Free From Fear, and some fun callbacks to the original 1999 RE3:N score, this is a largely uninteresting affair. It's not ambient enough to be as realistic and atmospheric as RE2make's score, it's not as forceful and oppressive as RE3:N's score, and it's not as intense and pulse-pounding as RE5's score. It tries to mix all three styles but doesn't do any of them especially well. It's a perfectly fine score that works well enough in-game but fails to make many memorable contrasts. I can remember a decent few memorable musical moments in RE2make, but almost none in RE3make. It's ultimately fine, but feels like a bit of a regression.
Resident Evil 3 remake is a solid game in many departments. It plays great, with fun gameplay mechanics and boss fights that offer a tense, exhilarating experience. The game features many writing upgrades over the original, great graphics with a lot of technical quality, and just generally is a polished, bug-free, and well-made game. Unfortunately, the game doesn't even come close to living up to the lofty expectations of the classic 1999 survival horror game and it suffers from many deep flaws. Nemesis has been kneecapped, feeling less dynamic than the original '90s PSX game, many memorable and iconic locations are cut from the game without any sort of equivalent replacement, a serious lack of difficulty even on hardcore mode, a version of Jill that is less interesting and developed, impressive graphical features of the prior game have been heavily downgraded, and the score is not as oppressive as the original or as atmospheric as it's immediate predecessor. It's still an alright game despite this, I had my fun with it and I can see myself revisiting it at some point, but I struggle to recommend this past RE fans like myself.
From the onset, it's clear that RE3make is different in tone from RE2make, with a breakneck pace that seldom offers the player any respite. There's little room for RE2make's lonely hall wandering or silent tension when the game grabs you by the neck from the first moment of real gameplay and drags you along for seven odd hours. This lends itself to an entirely different tone and while I don't necessarily dislike it, I do think the game could have benefitted from more moments of silent tension, which feel almost absent. On a game design level, RE3make is for the most part fairly faithful to RE3:N, preserving the more action-oriented style of gameplay while remaining directly tied to core survival horror design philosophies. This isn't a downright action horror game, though it does border on it at points. Changes from RE2make such as the knife being invincible, the dodge mechanic, and the lack of ink ribbons on first-time playthroughs make RE3make a fairly unchallenging game even on hardcore difficulty compared to the brutality of RE2make's hardcore mode. Despite this, it's a very polished and fun gameplay experience that while somewhat breezy is still one I enjoyed playing through. The dodge mechanic is one of the few things this game does much better than RE3:N, being infamously finicky in that game and much smoother to execute in this one. It's satisfying to accomplish and it encourages the player to stay away from enemies rather than engaging them directly. The Hunter Betas, in particular, are designed heavily around this system, and either dodging their attacks as Jill or countering them with a punch from Carlos is satisfying even with the threat they represent. I just wish the game was more punishing towards the player - you're given tons of dangerous weapons very early on that can almost trivialize many encounters. The Hunter Gammas are cool, but when they die in two hits to flame rounds the game keeps handing to me, their threat level is greatly reduced. The lack of ink ribbons or any kind of save limiting feature means that there's no consequence other than time to just saving as much as you want, and no strategy. It's still a very polished and enjoyable time, but it lacks the gameplay sophistication that RE2make has.
The elephant in the room here is how RE3make handles accuracy to the source material. You've probably heard a thousand times that this is a severely cut-down remake and you'd be entirely correct. The biggest disappointment here is how Nemesis T-Type, the tyrant that at least narratively stalks you throughout the whole game, is handled. Nemesis in RE3:N is infamously a case of carefully crafted smoke and mirrors. Most encounters with him are mandatory, and outside of a few areas that he "patrols" for the player being based around RNG, he is less dynamic and random than most people remember. However, the reason why Nemesis struck fear into the hearts of players more than RE2's Mr. X was that the mixture of genuine randomness and scripted encounters was done in a manner that felt convincing. It genuinely felt like Nemesis was hunting Jill down and would not stop at any cost like you were getting to play your own Terminator film. This is not the case at all in RE3make, where Nemesis feels more scripted than ever. While I remember having a few random encounters with Nemesis while playing the Raccoon City demo that was released a month before the game's release, in the finished game I never encountered him outside of what felt like explicitly scripted moments. Perhaps I was just genuinely unlucky, but there appear to be very few spots where encountering Nemesis is a chance and not a guarantee. The boss battles with him, especially the rooftop flamethrower fight, are great, making great use of the game's mechanics alongside making him, if for a moment, feel intimidating and threatening. Almost every encounter with him that isn't a boss fight, however, feels like a playable cinematic cutscene from a Naughty Dog game or something. That's a fine thing to have occasionally, but when it consists of the majority of his encounters, this supposed ultimate bioweapon feels far weaker than RE2make's terrifying Mr. X, the exact opposite of what happened with the PSX games. The game also cuts many memorable and iconic locations from the original, such as the cemetery, clock tower, and dead factory (with the grave digger cut too, unfortunately) without replacing them with anything similarly memorable. NEST 2 is cool and all, but come on, it's no dead factory. Remakes will always inevitably cut things, after all, it's a brand new game and not just the original prettied up, but how RE3make flagrantly throws out core aspects of the game it's based on it almost feels disrespectful even if that's not intentional. Most of its setpieces are perfectly fine if not outright good, but none of them reach the same iconic heights as the original.
Scriptwriting is one of this game's bigger strengths, although it is not without flaws. I like how the game takes characters that previously only had minor roles and expands them further into something more developed. Tyrell Patrick had very few scenes in RE3:N, but his expanded role here and his brotherly camaraderie with Carlos are endearing and appreciated. Mikhail Viktor doesn't necessarily have more scenes but his big-hearted personality is much more evident here. Nicholai Ginovaef was handled differently here, forgoing the cold calculated gun-for-hire that Yasuhisa Kawamura originally wrote for someone more affably evil. While I would agree that RE3:N Nicholai is perhaps more intimidating, RE3make Nicholai is a lot of fun as well and I might personally prefer this take on him. He's a snarky, affably evil character who provides a lot of humor to the game's narrative without forgoing his genuine threat as a combatant, snarking at Jill while kicking her into a pit full of zombies and kicking the shit out of Carlos during the game's climax. Carlos Oliveira was also upgraded - while he was always quite endearing and had a fun dynamic with Jill, I think that he's a lot more personable and realistic this time around. He's endearing in a way that feels very human and friendly as opposed to tryhard and embarrassing like in RE3:N, which wasn't a bad approach but was reflective of late-90s video game writing. The only thing I take issue with is how Jill is portrayed. I've seen more reactionary types complain about Jill being too hard on Carlos in this game, but on the contrary, I think Capcom made her way too soft. In RE3:N, she was directly antagonistic towards the UBCS members, not trusting Umbrella due to her experiences and trauma from the Mansion Incident in RE1. While she did end up coming around on Carlos, her burning hatred for the corporation that ruined the lives of her and many others never faltered. While Jill is generally written realistically in RE3make and has her charms, her relationship with Carlos develops far too quickly. Even at their worst, all she's doing is making snarky comments instead of any real distrust. She still works with them without any major issues and any trust issues she has with Carlos or Mikhail are assuaged almost instantly. It feels oddly unrealistic and means her character development from the original game is not nearly as strong as it was in RE3:N.
The game's art direction is decently strong and mostly in line with RE2make, though with noticeably more vibrant colors and deeper black levels than the prior game. The game lacks the more diffused, washed-out 1980s-inspired look of the prior game in favor of something more conventional and that's not necessarily worse though a little less original. The new character designs are more fitting for the more realistic direction this game took, and I'm especially fond of Nemesis' redesign. While the stitched-together, Terminator-esque leather design from RE3:N is iconic, I love how RE3make's Nemesis is wrapped in caution tape and trash bags, emphasizing that this creature is an unfinished prototype, a creature of unfathomable power out to kill you. The hunters have great redesigns, with the betas having a very cool chitinous, insectoid look and the gammas being these massive, terrifying amphibians that are far more intimidating than the original's. I will say, that while the game has great graphics, the design of some of the locations doesn't give a lot of chances for the game to show off unique visuals sometimes, with the sewer location just being a retread of assets already made for RE2make without any new flourishes at all, which gives the impression the game isn't as memorable visually. The lack of certain iconic locations doesn't help.
As with most Capcom games in general, especially modern RE Engine games, RE3make has a very strong graphical presentation, especially after the recent next-generation update. Much of what I said about RE2make similarly applies here due to development overlap and similar though not identical art direction. Dense and highly detailed environments, great use of lighting to set the mood and grow tension, incredibly lifelike human faces with convincing facial animation and expressions, phenomenally dynamic animation work in general, et cetera. Similarly, the next-gen update's addition of ray tracing is still behind what other games offer. Still, it provides a solid boost in visual fidelity over the RE Engine's poor SSR. Capcom finally found an imperfect solution to the engine's typical issues with anti-aliasing as well. While the game's anti-aliasing is still poor, it provides a solution in the form of FidelityFX CAS upscaling, which sharpens the game's TAA in a way that brings out detail while smoothing out aliasing. It isn't perfect, since it results in duller colors if using HDR, but it is still a step in the right direction nonetheless. If there are any problems with the game's graphical presentation, then, it's that there are downgrades from RE2make's excellent presentation. The game still largely looks great, mind you, but some visuals have been pared back possibly for performance. For example, the excellent gore system from RE2make has been downgraded. No longer can bodies be blown apart or eviscerated as they could beforehand, they're fairly static outside of the ever-satisfying splatter of a headshot, and the models themselves appear to be less detailed. They also still animate at 30 FPS at a distance, which looks worse considering there are typically more zombies on screen. This is disappointing considering how impressive it was in the previous game. This is more minor, but the RPD police station looks pared back as well, with windows being flat black glass without transparency or foliage behind them like in RE2make. The usual RE Engine PC performance inconsistencies are still here and seem to be slightly more consistent than RE2make, but that might just be me finally learning how to use G-Sync. Generally, RE3make is a great-looking game, but some strange cutbacks put it a notch below its immediate predecessor.
RE2make's score was slightly polarizing among many fans, as it went with a more ambient musical style that lacked some of the more memorable melodies of the original 1998 score. I liked it, but most people didn't. Seemingly in response to this, the composers for RE3make went for a score that was much more present and in-your-face, so to speak. I don't dislike this change on paper but as far as the more action-packed RE soundtracks go, this is one of the more mediocre ones. Outside of the Nemesis boss fight themes, a great rearrangement of Free From Fear, and some fun callbacks to the original 1999 RE3:N score, this is a largely uninteresting affair. It's not ambient enough to be as realistic and atmospheric as RE2make's score, it's not as forceful and oppressive as RE3:N's score, and it's not as intense and pulse-pounding as RE5's score. It tries to mix all three styles but doesn't do any of them especially well. It's a perfectly fine score that works well enough in-game but fails to make many memorable contrasts. I can remember a decent few memorable musical moments in RE2make, but almost none in RE3make. It's ultimately fine, but feels like a bit of a regression.
Resident Evil 3 remake is a solid game in many departments. It plays great, with fun gameplay mechanics and boss fights that offer a tense, exhilarating experience. The game features many writing upgrades over the original, great graphics with a lot of technical quality, and just generally is a polished, bug-free, and well-made game. Unfortunately, the game doesn't even come close to living up to the lofty expectations of the classic 1999 survival horror game and it suffers from many deep flaws. Nemesis has been kneecapped, feeling less dynamic than the original '90s PSX game, many memorable and iconic locations are cut from the game without any sort of equivalent replacement, a serious lack of difficulty even on hardcore mode, a version of Jill that is less interesting and developed, impressive graphical features of the prior game have been heavily downgraded, and the score is not as oppressive as the original or as atmospheric as it's immediate predecessor. It's still an alright game despite this, I had my fun with it and I can see myself revisiting it at some point, but I struggle to recommend this past RE fans like myself.