Honestly, I'm kind of split. I greatly prefer the third person gameplay, bigger maps, and more varied mutant enemies (as opposed to the lame and boring molded). It's weird but RE7 always felt like a spin off/Rob Zombie remake lol. Don't get me wrong, it was a great experience but the areas were waaay too small and it relied too much on scripted encounters. IMO that hurt replayability. I will say though that as a complete experience with all the DLCs, it was phenomenal. The return of Jack as the swamp man boss to wrap up Zoey's story and the boss fight against mutant Lucas as Chris were great and added more unique mutant bosses which I felt were lacking in the main game.
Another thing I'll give RE7 was how good it was at characterization. I actually felt tons of sympathy for Jack, Zoey, Marg, and Clancy and hated Lucas more than I've ever hated any RE antagonist. I also both hated and sympathized with Eveline (jesus @ the "Why does everyone hate me?" line after you give her the cure). Joe is also one of the best RE characters after his short outing. Dude oozed personality and was a bonafide badass. The entire storyline was well done too. Great pacing and great twist at the end.
RE2 IMO doesn't do as great in either category. Birkin is a classic enemy, but I didn't really feel sympathy for him since he brought his situation on himself by [SPOILER - highlight to read]: creating G, trying to stonewall Umbrella, and attempting to sell G to the military. I also didn't really hate him since he got the short end of the stick more than any other cast character. Annette was also just the stereotypical pragmatic scientist. Leon was SPOT ON. Ada also had some of the best delivered lines and they did a good job of keeping her mysterious persona intact. Claire is alright so far, but I'm barely out of the RPD on her B playthrough so we'll see if she gets more personality (she and Rebecca are tied for my favorite female RE cast members so I hope so). [SPOILER - highlight to read]: Irons is actually a great villain although I wish we got to give him a more satisfying ending. For the most part though, everyone is just playing stereotypes. The story is typical too (bio weapon manufacturer loses control of experiments and they wreak havoc in a populated area), although classic RE and one of the best representations of a stereotypical situation.
So gameplay wise, RE2 is light years ahead of RE7 IMO but story/character wise RE7 takes an easy win. Hopefully RE8 takes cues from both.
Hmm....I'm not sure I would agree about RE2 being better gameplay wise. The game is still heavily scripted and the Tyrant is just a copy of all the Jack situations. The Tyrant literally blows through a wall like Jack when you are in the house.
I also prefer the boss battles in RE7. There isn't a situation in RE2 that likes the boss battle in the garage.
After finishing my Leon standard run, started Claire at first but then changed my mind and decided to redo Leon real quick to get some collectables and achievements I was missing the first run, and now on Claire A where she first meets Sherry. Will do Leon B and Claire B run afterward which I understand has some differences, though not much.
Getting an S rank in any playthrough on Standard or higher will unlock you infinite ammo for the samurai edge; the ranking is pretty much just based on time, so I'll try to do that during my Leon and Claire B runs. Shooting all the Mr Raccoon collectables also gets you a knife that doesn't break but eh, both should be useful for Hardcore I guess.
I'm still of the opinion that this game makes a very good argument for being the best RE game. It suffers due to being a remake so it can't change the plot too much, but still, it's excellent imo.
It is excellent. I don't think its better than RE4 or RE7 though.
I think RE4 is the total package. I was intrigued with the story, the gameplay was top notch and the devs were constantly putting you into unique situations. And...it has some of the best boss fights in the series and some of the most unique enemies/monsters in any video game. I was terrified being chased by the chainsaw dude and his huge posse.
RE2 remake suffers a bit because of the age of the original.
I finally beat both scenarios. Playing hardcore for the first runthrough dragged things out a bit more for me (about 17 hours across both stories). It was almost perfect so I wont go into everything I loved about it, but the major points. Otherwise, I have a three (and a half) gripes.
TL;DR:
Pros: Perfect game design, great replayability
Cons: A and B scenario are too similar, a bunch of complaints concerning difficulty
Phenomenal game design (both mechanical and environmental). I loved the return to the sprawling interconnected levels of old school games. It led to more thoughtful backtracking and more use of puzzles. They way they melded it with the RE4-6 movement/camera but also handicapped the shooting accuracy by adding an element of RNG to both the bullet deviation and the amount of damage any individual zombie could take kept every encounter interesting (and helped adhere to survival horror conventions which should give reasons to deter players from direct combat or atleast approach more thoughtfully). I also liked all the variation in enemies (every area added a new unique enemy that had to be tackled in different ways; [SPOILER - highlight to read]: blind lickers you had to stealth around, G-adults you had to approach like a Birkin fight and shoot the eyes, Ivy's you had to take out the bulbs to handicap and use the flamethrower to permanently kill, the Tyrant you just had to work around).
I also love the replayability (tons of unlockables like the infinite minigun, infinite rocket laucher, infinite samurai edge, unbreakable knife, multiple outfits for both Claire and Leon, Hunks scenario, Tofu mode). They'll also be adding a bunch of free DLC (the first batch is is story DLC and coming Feb 15, and the second back will be a randomized rogue like mode with multiple playable characters). I also eventually want to try a knife only mode (people have already done full knife only modes on hardcore, so it's possible). Also FYI, the unbreakable knife does not bring down your endgame score if you're going for S+ playthroughs later. Every other infinite weapon brings the score down to an S max, but the knife is OK.
Now for the complaints. First off (and this is the big one), B scenario was a glorified rearrange mode. Both runs are 80% the same with a few differences in terms of areas and bosses (both Leon and Claire get one special extra boss the other doesn't get, and one extra 20-25 minute section each). Otherwise, they still both go through the RPD, [SPOILER - highlight to read]: the sewers, and the Umbrella lab all with the exact same layout and puzzles (a few puzzles have different answers, but they're still tackled the exact same way). For that reason, once you figure out everything in your A scenario run, you're basically set for B scenario. To give you context, my A scenario run was 9 and a half hours. My B scenario run ended up about 6 hours since I knew exactly how everything worked. The fact that everything was so similar made it less seeing the story from a different perspective and more just an alternate reality altogether with your initial A character pissing off somewhere until the end of the game (I already solved this puzzle with Leon so why do I have to find all the same pieces again? I already took care of this boss as Leon, so why am I fighting this same guy in this same situation? Stuff like that).
Now for the complaints about the (lack of) difficulty. Mr. X was the second best realized invincible stalker enemy I've ever seen in a game but it's a large gap from the first. They should have made him more of a threat. He acted like an easier to manage version of the Xeno in Alien Isolation. Both are attracted to an area by gunfire/commotion or scripted sequences that make them pop up and both are meant to make you more thoughtful about how you traverse an area. I say he's second best because he's more limited, less lethal, and has AI that's easy to exploit. IMO he should be able to enter any room in the RPD. The fact that he can't enter save rooms or other certain rooms like the STARS office and the clocktower gave him too much of a handicap. Either he should be able to enter any room or he should be marginally faster than the player so you cant just use a rotation to lose him and actually have to use safe rooms or stealth. The Xeno in AI was relentless (it was multiple times faster than the player, a one hit kill every time it caught you, and there was no safe area from it if it was loose in the station) but manageable as long as you were smart about how you tackled it (using diversions like flares and noisemakers, sneaking around, attracting it to kill other enemies for you and disappearing as it did). I would have liked it if he was more of a threat but the game also gave you more options to deal with him like diversions or hiding places. I do understand that there is no real stealth gameplay in this and it's asking a bit much to add this entire facet to the game though. The point I'm trying to get across is that I wish there was a bit more complexity to dealing with the tyrant. Once you understand how to cheese him (and you figure this one minutes after meeting him), he's just a nuisance.
Third, IMO hardcore difficulty was way too easy. I do try to conserve in survival horror games, but this one gave me waaaay too much ammo. I was able to get through the RPD and [SPOILER - highlight to read]: the sewers with nothing but the handgun and knives on both A and B scenario, which means that I was able to hoard an insane pool of magnum rounds, shotgun shells, explosive launcher rounds, flamethrower ammo, machine gun rounds (btw every one of these do the same amount of damage as a handgun bullet which is insane when you consider the RPM), grenades, and flashbang grenades (I also ended with 150+ handgun bullets scenario A and 100+ scenario B). Every boss went down in 1-3 tries (Scenario A: two went down first try, one went down second try, and one went down third try; Scenario B: four went down first try, one went down second try). By the end of both scenarios, I also had a good 10 full heal items and around 11-15 ink ribbons stored that I never even got to use. Consider all this with the fact that I went hardcore on my first playthrough. I honestly think I could have killed almost every killable enemy in the game if I really wanted to. Ammo and health availability should have been half of what I got at most. The easiest fix to this is that the "zapping system" from OG RE2 should have returned too (if I pick up an item in A scenario, it shouldn't be there in B scenario). IMO this would have made me much more thoughtful about hoarding my resources in one scenario since I would have just screwed myself in the second half of the game.
My "half" complaint isn't universal so it's maybe just me, but the puzzles were all waaaay too simple. I was hoping from some head scratchers like Silent Hill in hard puzzle mode. I suppose this isn't too legit a complaint though, since difficulty wise they were all in line with previous REs. The puzzles basically serve to just complement level design in that they close off or make certain new areas of the map accessible (and they sometimes reward you with items too). They were great for that. IMO this is the right way to do backtracking in a video game.
Still, overall it was a great experience. It almost dethroned RE4 for me, but it instead ended in second place. Pushing RE1make to third place is nothing to scoff at though. RE4 is my favorite game of all time, but it was a poor RE. IMO this game is the quintessential RE experience and all I've wanted from the franchise since RE4s release. I have dreamed about getting an entry like this for most of my life, so it's nice to see it realized. It's also the first true survival horror experience we've had in a decade and a half. It's fitting that the series that created the genre is the same one to revitalize it. I hope future RE's build on this game. I also hope this results in the return of dormant survival horror franchises like Silent Hill (my favorite game franchise of all time), Dino Crisis, Fatal Frame, Siren, Alone in the Dark, Clocktower, and Parasite Eve. Also it hopefully kickstarts a greenlit and improved Evil Within 3.
EDIT: It's worth noting that none of my complaints concerning difficulty might be totally valid since difficulty is subjective. Plenty of people have had a hell of a time with hardcore mode, so maybe I'm just too much of a conservation nut. I had the same problem with all the old school REs and Silent Hills too, regardless of difficulty. I always finished with shit tons of left over health and ammo. The only objective complaint above is the one concerning the similarities between A and B scenario.
__________________
PWNT
Last edited by Arachnid1 on Jan 31st, 2019 at 07:19 AM
Yeah, the OG game handled it better. If they do multiple scenarios in the future, I hope its better implemented. Personally though, I wouldn't mind just sticking to one character and one longer scenario.
I didn't play 7, so I can't judge. I do think it's better than 4 though. Now, with that said, some of the reasons I have would be because RE2 is a much newer game and can simply do more, but I've still enjoyed RE2 a lot more so far than I ever did 4.
I've never been a massive fan of 4 anyway, but I still think the argument can at least be made that 2 is potentially better.
KMC Community Forums
Jan 27th, 2019 05:36 PM
