4.5/5 ★ – Yeij's review of Resident Evil 2.

having only played the resident evil 1 remake since I've heard it's extremely faithful making me not interested in playing the original RE1, i think RE2 (1998) is good. I've enjoyed RE2 so much that I feel that it sometimes even reaches the levels of RE1 Remake but really only sometimes because it stumbles on itself at moments. the level design itself isn't bad, it's good but nowhere near as pristine as RE Remake. it definitely has loops around to other areas but some rooms could soft-lock you into reloading an earlier save because you didn't have enough ammo. the fact that there were one or 2 rooms filled to the brim with zombies forcing me to almost use all my ammo felt so depressing and, admittingly, sometimes frustrating. the survival horror element is definitely felt with having to save ammo and manage other resources which is a reason why i loved resident evil 1, i felt like i was fighting to survive having to manage my bullets and healing supplies. In RE2 though, i really only felt that true survival horror dread when I started a game on the hard mode difficulty after playing Leon A and Claire B (so about after at least 8 hours of gameplay). on hard each shot definitely counts and mistakes are waaay more punishing, which is perfect for this game (normal did feel pretty easy though). like pretty much almost every game from the 90s, hard means hard. normal difficulty was a walk in the park compared to hard, and damn I'm shaking at the thought of going back in to start Leon B so that I could complete every campaign. which is something that i like a lot about RE2, it's replayable as hell. the campaign is incredibly short if you only play one character, it took me about 4.5 hours to explore everything on a first playthrough and 4 hours on a second playthrough. Compare that to Resident Evil 1 Remake, my first playthrough on Jill took me 13 hours to complete. Since each campaign is different in some ways with a few enemy spawns, some item locations, and new cinematics but also short playtimes, it isn't that bad to go back and replay the game. it's actually pretty fun, which is proven by how RE2 is pretty much the only thing I've been playing for a week. I even dropped the RE2 remake to finish this game (RE2 Remake is very good as well, I'll give that game its own review when I'm done with it). Story-wise, it's still very much the same B-movie, campy, Sam Raimi vibes story with a plot about uncovering Umbrella's new bioweapon while escaping an overrun city. there's not much to say, dialogue is expectedly not great and sometimes cheesy but the character dynamics/relationships are pretty great. the music really nails the atmosphere at times, but the save room music just doesnt give me that same feeling RE1 Remake gave me. god, RE1 Remake's save room music is so good with its melancholy mood that tells me I'm safe but still reminds me that I'll eventually go back outside into danger. tl;dr - RE2 is a good sequel, building upon a few things in minor ways (e.g more replayability) but also not really building or improving on some things as well. Personally, I really like RE1 Remake way more and it's hard to articulate why but the best way I can describe why is that RE2's atmosphere doesn't feel as mysterious, the level design isn't as fantastic, and RE2 doesn't have as many or interesting puzzles. still, it's a good game with a decent amount of replayability, does a fairly decent balance of action and horror, and it introduced Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield to the series. recommended to survival horror fans and to those who are interested in seeing how different the original is to the remake.