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

Resident Evil is really shaping up to be one of my favorite game series at the moment. RE2 Remake is near-perfect in the way it retains everything one would love about the core of Resident Evil (campiness included), while implementing incredibly dynamic and organic feeling gameplay and details, and quality-of-life features with more familiar 3rd person gameplay/controls to appeal to a more mainstream or newcomer audience, softening the initial difficulty blow and learning curve, but without losing much of its mechanic-driven difficulty and emphasis on inventory management and investment, although I still highly recommend playing on Hardcore, as the game’s meticulously orchestrated systems really come together in Hardcore’s harsher conditions. Honestly the way it’s meant to be played. RE2 Remake’s setting and atmosphere is top-notch, and a large chunk of the game’s location being in a museum renovated into a police department is really cool, taking advantage of a lot of opportunities and feels completely natural in the way it interconnects with itself, every section of the game having such distinct atmospheres and personalities that blend into each other and makes for amazing pacing, even when simply backtracking, which can drastically change depending on your playstyle, and while I definitely miss the classic door loading screens between rooms, the moment-to-moment horror that can occur upon simply opening up a door in real time is unprecedented, or having enemies surprisingly go beyond the rooms they were previously confined to is great, presenting it’s unapologetic “be prepared for anything” gameplay in a whole new way. This is also a uniquely gorgeous game, both in it’s mood-setting post-processing and level of detail in its smooth animations. The more grotesque presentation here is at its peak when it’s dynamically used as the permanent aftermath of your previous confrontations that are cathartically left in areas you’ve conquered, and if backtracking is getting boring to you at a certain point, Mr. X arrives to give you heart palpitation as you backtrack through some areas, no matter how you dealt with them. I’d say the low points are the drawn out moments of temporarily character swapping with companions, a particular trial-and-error boss fight, and quite a few awkward save-points before highly linear and scripted pieces that require tediously treading over the same mundane motions again and again upon death, but these barely made a dent in my overall enjoyment, and I can confidently say this is one of the great remakes of this generation.