The Resident Evil series was in trouble around the time of this game’s release. While the first three installments had been massive successes, the subsequent games weren’t so lucky. Resident Evil 3 was followed up by Resident Evil Survivor, a terrible light-gun game which wasn’t actually compatible with a light gun in the American release. Code Veronica was well-received, but didn’t sell well given that it was a Dreamcast exclusive at the time. Resident Evil Gaiden was awful, another light gun game came out to minimal fanfare, and the Gamecube Remake was similar to Code Veronica in its positive reception and low sales. Clearly, something had to be done to rejuvenate the franchise and address the critiques that had stuck to the franchise since the first installment. Firstly, item boxes had to go. Critics always hated the backtracking to put away items, so this game allows you to drop items and manage inventory on the fly. Basic zombies are less common now that people had started getting tired of them. Your carry capacity has also been doubled, as a result of this game’s flashy hook of controlling two characters at once. The first of the two is Rebecca Chambers, a combat medic who will be familiar to those who have played the first game. Her focus is on healing and puzzle solving, when her new partner Billy Coen is more experienced with combat. He has more health and deals more damage, but can’t mix chemicals or herbs, so swapping characters and intelligently splitting supplies is key. Controlling both at the same time is emblematic of how the game’s goal seems to be to combine the survival horror and action oriented tones of the franchise, retaining a Resident Evil identity while streamlining it in key ways.
That was the theory, in any case. Resident Evil 0 is a perfect example of how you can design something that sounds brilliant on paper, but it won’t succeed without understanding the reality of player psychology. Having an inventory system where you can just pick up and drop items to maintain flow sounds great, but would players actually leave stuff behind scattered across the map? Most wouldn’t, and would instead deposit non-critical items in a centralized location for later. Would players split up the team to cover more ground? Probably not, you can still only control one character at a time, and leaving a character alone leaves them open for attack. Billy is also so much stronger than Rebecca that you’ll want to use him for all the combat encounters you can. To encapsulate both these issues at once, it’s commonly recommended to just throw Rebecca’s gun in the trash because she’s weak and you’ll be coming across so many items to ferry from place to place that having an extra slot can save you a lot of time. The measures meant to streamline the experience ended up making it clunkier and slower, and the rest of the game definitely wasn’t good enough to make up for it. The enemies which took the place of zombies are frustrating to deal with, and all the locations after the intro are rehashes of areas seen in previous games. You couldn’t even go into this looking for an interesting story, seeing as it’s a prequel set immediately prior to the events of the first game. Each time the game tried to add a twist, it just made the game less satisfying. It’s a shame that this was the last classic-style Resident Evil, because it’s not a high note to go out on. It’s best to imagine that Resident Evil 0 came out before the remake of the first game, so it can be enjoyed as an interesting but flawed iteration that set up the true swan song of the genre.
That was the theory, in any case. Resident Evil 0 is a perfect example of how you can design something that sounds brilliant on paper, but it won’t succeed without understanding the reality of player psychology. Having an inventory system where you can just pick up and drop items to maintain flow sounds great, but would players actually leave stuff behind scattered across the map? Most wouldn’t, and would instead deposit non-critical items in a centralized location for later. Would players split up the team to cover more ground? Probably not, you can still only control one character at a time, and leaving a character alone leaves them open for attack. Billy is also so much stronger than Rebecca that you’ll want to use him for all the combat encounters you can. To encapsulate both these issues at once, it’s commonly recommended to just throw Rebecca’s gun in the trash because she’s weak and you’ll be coming across so many items to ferry from place to place that having an extra slot can save you a lot of time. The measures meant to streamline the experience ended up making it clunkier and slower, and the rest of the game definitely wasn’t good enough to make up for it. The enemies which took the place of zombies are frustrating to deal with, and all the locations after the intro are rehashes of areas seen in previous games. You couldn’t even go into this looking for an interesting story, seeing as it’s a prequel set immediately prior to the events of the first game. Each time the game tried to add a twist, it just made the game less satisfying. It’s a shame that this was the last classic-style Resident Evil, because it’s not a high note to go out on. It’s best to imagine that Resident Evil 0 came out before the remake of the first game, so it can be enjoyed as an interesting but flawed iteration that set up the true swan song of the genre.