Resident Evil 2, vanilla! But not vanilla since this is the dreamcast version + a special AI upres mod that looks genuinely great. It also got me to install Playnite, a program that lets me merge all of my launcher games into one very nice looking layout and I can launch emulated games straight through it! Take that, steam..
Anyway, onto the game itself. I do wish I had written this a bit earlier, so I remembered things a bit more crisply but I just loved how invested I got into the game. I don't often go back to the PS1~ era or before of gaming, but after an initial pause after starting, I basically completed all of Claire A in two big chunks and I had an excellent time. The camera angles are very strange but SOMETIMES used to great effect with the monsters, and there's a lot of tension knowing there's a monster SOMEWHERE around but the F*%#ING camera won't let you see it.. I played on the Easy setting so I was never really threatened too terribly but frankly it was stressful enough.
To compare it straight to the Remake, it is definitely less scary and more goofy. The voice acting is bleh, the story beats and characters get significantly less, you barely know the side characters past Sherry/Leon (we'll get to Ada later) but I still liked it. There's more enemy types and locations but it is very similar. Also those missing enemy types are basically just evil animals (spiders/bats) and weird naked zombies... Would've been interesting to see their inclusion in RE2Re but it is okay.
But the music/sound effects are just the bomb.
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RE2! The original, Leon B. I did ClaireA/LeonB again because I've just always heard that they fit best with the story going forward. Perhaps I should've done the opposite here but overall I liked it more than the Leon B in RE2Remake. I can definitely see why old fans were a bit disappointed in the A/B in the remake because quite a bit is different in this B version, you basically spend the 2nd half of each game in completely different places. It was very cool to see the story beats from A actually play out in B (I can't get through this area because as Claire I needed the detonator... I'll keep an eye out for the detonator... oh wait Claire just radioed and said she blew up the wall so I can go through. Of course!! That's me in the previous run!).
Ada got done DIRTY in this game. A lady in a dress who is a crack shot who is just looking for her boyfriend... genuinely stupid cover story. Way better in Remake. Also their 'romance' is pretty forced and the voice acting is atrocious. Still fun though! Silly True End is still Silly.
Anyway, onto the game itself. I do wish I had written this a bit earlier, so I remembered things a bit more crisply but I just loved how invested I got into the game. I don't often go back to the PS1~ era or before of gaming, but after an initial pause after starting, I basically completed all of Claire A in two big chunks and I had an excellent time. The camera angles are very strange but SOMETIMES used to great effect with the monsters, and there's a lot of tension knowing there's a monster SOMEWHERE around but the F*%#ING camera won't let you see it.. I played on the Easy setting so I was never really threatened too terribly but frankly it was stressful enough.
To compare it straight to the Remake, it is definitely less scary and more goofy. The voice acting is bleh, the story beats and characters get significantly less, you barely know the side characters past Sherry/Leon (we'll get to Ada later) but I still liked it. There's more enemy types and locations but it is very similar. Also those missing enemy types are basically just evil animals (spiders/bats) and weird naked zombies... Would've been interesting to see their inclusion in RE2Re but it is okay.
But the music/sound effects are just the bomb.
RE2! The original, Leon B. I did ClaireA/LeonB again because I've just always heard that they fit best with the story going forward. Perhaps I should've done the opposite here but overall I liked it more than the Leon B in RE2Remake. I can definitely see why old fans were a bit disappointed in the A/B in the remake because quite a bit is different in this B version, you basically spend the 2nd half of each game in completely different places. It was very cool to see the story beats from A actually play out in B (I can't get through this area because as Claire I needed the detonator... I'll keep an eye out for the detonator... oh wait Claire just radioed and said she blew up the wall so I can go through. Of course!! That's me in the previous run!).
Ada got done DIRTY in this game. A lady in a dress who is a crack shot who is just looking for her boyfriend... genuinely stupid cover story. Way better in Remake. Also their 'romance' is pretty forced and the voice acting is atrocious. Still fun though! Silly True End is still Silly.
2 Comments
I wrote this review about two years ago now so the details are a bit fuzzy - in RE2R it felt like a better cover because she implied to Leon that she knew more or less all about what was going on, and to a rookie like Leon "FBI agent investigating the bad guys" makes way more sense in that context. In RE2 OG she may have played more the ditz to fit that but it felt a bit silly, perhaps due to the poor writing and voice acting.
It's wonderfully, terribly charming (hence the 5 stars!) but I do think the more grounded feel of RE2R made a bit more "sense". Just my 2 cents.
It's wonderfully, terribly charming (hence the 5 stars!) but I do think the more grounded feel of RE2R made a bit more "sense". Just my 2 cents.
MrHoodie
2 years ago