when the resi 2 remake was announced back in the day i was very worried over it, we'd just had the release of my least favourite resi game with 7 and i was scared the series would become just another first person horror series and seeing 2 in this form would have been heartbreaking, okay well maybe not that bad but it'd have been a game i'd never have wanted to touch, but when it was actually shown off in gameplay it looked great, sure it wasn't as cool as the original resident evil remake because of its lack of tank controls and fixed cameras, but this felt like the best we could have gotten out of it and it may have been better that way, at least this way it was more an original game than just a remake and when it came out i actually didn't play it for years, my first experiance with this new remake series was the 3 remake which i picked up mostly to try it's multiplayer mode and it actually ended up being one of my favourite games in the series and it was my favourite of these remakes, this one i played a while after when i got it on sale with DMC5 in a local game store bundle and despite playing the 3 remake first this did still really impress me with how different it was and how good it was, it's not as good as the original but it comes pretty close.

i'll start actually with a grievence because it does colour a lot of the game for me, i still love this game almost wholley and i think it's still one of the better games in the series but it is held back i think by one thing, the difficulty, this is the hardest resi, above even the outbreak games i feel, playing on hardcore was probably a mistake on my first run but i really wanted the ink ribbon save system and this was the only way to do it, i do think this should be a toggle rather than being confined to its own hard mode but i don't think playing on standard is an easy experiance either, getting shots to land here is much harder than i think any other resi game because of how the enemies move and the enemy health being randomised is also just more frustrating than anything, sure sometimes it can make it more tense and lead to some scary situations, but i think the standardised health pools of the other games just work better and it makes the game feel more consistant and less annoying at times, my first run i actually ended up in an unwinnable situation at the first birkin fight and had to restart the whole file, changing from claire to leon in the process just to liven up the run back, sure this could be a skill issue and it probably is, but i don't think i'm that awful at the game, i was able to finish both hardcore campaigns and 4th survivor but it did just make the game a little more annoying and a bit much for me at times especially when mr X comes into the picture, though it does also make it a more tense and scary game at heart, so maybe a middle ground with better aim assist would work better, i don't know.

the game's fairly faithful in a lot of ways beyond the base gameplay, the layout of the station and the general structure and story, with just the small things being different, like giving marvin a larger role or kendo being marginally less relevant and places and people being changed or swapped around, like the new orpanage segment or the racoon city trek to the station being done in reverse later in claires campaign, but the larger whole is faithful and the story being retold works, the characters are just as charming and it's maybe a little darker here just because of how much more violent the game is compared to the original and the stuff with the chief also feels maybe toeing the line a little but it has the cheesy moments where you want them and that really helps keep it relatively light, the one liners and the dumb action sequences like with the crocodile and birkin and the hype rocket launcher boss kills, unlike 7 which felt like it wanted to be a little too edgy despite how silly other bits were, here it knows what it is and it doesn't try and shy away from what a resi game really should be, i care a lot about these characters and this series so i find myself always getting emotional at even the worst games in the series and here i did too, the pre-birkin bit with anette and claire had me cheering because her relationship with sherry is so well handled here and i cried a little when my B playthrough was over, even leon's relationship with ada here is super well done and it sets up 4 in cute ways that i really liked, yeah it's a dumb story but it's characters are great and memorable and i'm way more attached than i am for almost any other series and this does them justice so well, also damn they really went and made leon even more of a hot twink, the thirst is real like it was half of what sold me on this game when i did play like god damn this man, it's the main thing i do think the game does far better, claire and ada also have really great redesigns here, though i do wish him and claire had more screentime together, beyond your one initial meeting in the station you just see a few notes and that's it until the end.

the gameplay is also very different too, it's a full on third person shooter now with a non fixed camera and actual aiming and that alone changes it so much that it's almost a new game rather than a remake, which i think works really well in making it easy for me to reccomend to people since that's the best kind of remake to me, i have no interest in playing versions of games that are just x but shinier since usually i prefer how the originals look (same deal here honestly) but here i'm getting an actual worthwhile original experiance with its own mechanics and story differences and large changes like the aformentioned mr x stuff some bosses like the aligator and the birkin fights working differently (and the g virus enemies being more like regular enemies now which was a cool change), some enemies being missing like the spiders and radically different ada and sherry segments that make this so much more worthwhile compared to most remakes, like the later released resident evil 4 remake. there's other smaller systems changes too, puzzles are different and you have the subweapons system from the first remake game here for when you get grabbed, something that really works as a lifesaver here since enemies are far quicker to grab you than any other game in the series but other than these things the core loop is very much the same, the puzzles all have that puzzleboxy design that makes it fun to find items and find where they go and every area is really fun to explore, even when the puzzles aren't deep but you do have more reason to explore here with things like the gunpowder system from 3 being here to let you craft new ammos plus expandable inventry items and gun parts too, i just love this style of big level item collection that classic survival horror did and this shows just how good that exact style can still be even with a new gameplay style added on. one of the other major changes im a little mixed on here is mr x, here he's presant in both campaigns and basically works like a short range version of nemesis from 3, following you around areas and hunting you down, he's difficult to dodge and he slows progress to a standstill, sure the memes are funny and he can make the game super tense, but i'm just not super sure on weather putting him in so early was a move i like, it makes the game experiance very different, though he just made certain bits of my runs more tedious than scary, it's really on you which it is, i think the game is overall better with him since it does lead to some great moments and the shock of seeing him in your first run is an unforgettable moment, but i'm just not so sure i love the implementation at times. it all lead to a very different playstyle for me, less killing enemies and more stunning them to run by, being even more conservative with ammo than usual and almost never letting go of that shotgun incase i needed it, though it does become a lot easier once you realize you can resi 4 knife down zombies here with makes their "play dead" thing stop working and you can get tons more of them dead with much less ammo, i just wish i learned that far sooner.

the game is also (maybe surprisingly for me?) really pretty, see i don't really like the RE engine, i think it can work well for some games like the other remakes but in a lot of cases i think it makes games look kind of bland, devil may cry 5 lacked all the charm of the prior games and felt bland to look at, the first person resis also felt the same, but here it just kind of works, there's so much detail in the environments and so many of them feel so lived in, it felt like how i do playing a lot of pre-rendered or ps2 era horror games, with the areas having so many small personal items that i just want to look at everything and see where it all fits in, it's a difficult feeling to describe, cozy in a way, it has that vibe i get from those nicer pre-rendereds preserved in a more modern way and some of the areas with rain look amazing, there's one bit that always stood out in claires where you have a brief rainy outside bit on your way to the chiefs office and it always stuck with me for how good it looks, the lighting here is amazing at times as well, the darker areas are some of the darkest i've seen and it can be genuinely really hard to see even with high brightness, it's cool and pretty tense to explore sometimes like in the stars hallway, also leon is hot and so is ada actually. there's also the big selling point gore system but i'm, not really a fan of that, not in the way that i don't like it and it's detailed and genuinely impressive but i'm squeamish so i'll just move on, but if you're into that, this alone should be a big selling point because it is very impressive, anyway, the sound is much the same here, the sound design is fantastic, this has some of the best use of directional audio with the zombie moans and mr x's footsteps i've ever seen and playing it with my D.VA headset i have was a really scary experiance like, maybe even some of the best in the series barring dead aim, the actual soundtrack (by shusaku uchiyama of prior resis like 4, the original 2 and remake as well as some other cool capcom things like DMC4, under the skin and PN.03) can be really lacking, not in quality but litterally, it's really not that presant even in save rooms which can lessen the vibe a bit at times and i think the main issue is because it doesn't loop properly or even at all a lot of the time, but when it is here it's always really good but i think compared to the original games perfect score, it's just not as here as i'd like, it's perfect for an ambient score though, creepy and scary and mr x's theme makes me jump anytime i hear it, but i just wish it was, more, than it is, you know maybe a few more remixes of the old music or just some more memorable tracks of its own outside of the amazing ghost survivors tracks the game has for its dlc stages, i think 3 remake handled it's soundtrack far better overall with its nods to older tracks as well as just being more presant overall, though some tracks like RPD and save room do kiiind of retain motifs to its credit and it is clearly going for it's own vibe so this is just me letting how much i love the old game get in the way a little, i'll admit that, but you can buy the old music as dlc too, which, while i appreciate the offer is a little gross, just give me it as an unlockable!

there's also a lot to do here, of course you have the A and B campaigns which change up a lot, your B run will visit different rooms in the station and you'll enter it a different way, different cutscenes and characters will show up and you'll get different weapons, it's a much speedier run because of the changed station layout and some items and puzzles being placed in faster to reach bits and i think i ended up preffering the B run because of this, you also have stuff like the 4th survivor mode, a time trial run through a kaizo version of the station full of the games tougher enemies and a much more limited item pool, it's a real test of skill, you also have the tofu survivor if you can beat this which is the same thing but with tofu, a sentient block of tofu and his different colour varations who have to do this gauntlet with only a knife, i beat it once and i will not be trying it again, this is the realest skill test and it's one slightly above my level, there was also the ghost survivors added as dlc, this was 3 extra mini trials featuring dead characters from the campaign like kendo, the mayors daughter and some umbrella grunt who got killed by birkin and you do little challange runs with extra things added on like poison zombies, ones that can explode, ones that need to be killed by high powered weapons and even some armored ones, these are tough though, even harder than 4th survivor and i could only finish them on the easiest difficulty, but i did finish them, i even finished the unlockable 4th one which was a cute little mini-mercs mode where you play as the cop you find in the gas station as he fends off 70 zombies in the station, it's a fun challange especially on easy mode where it gives you infinite pistol ammo to work with! they make for a fun night anyway, there's some really fun challanges in there like a room where you have to kill a single zombie quietly among lickers, a bus full of zombies or a bridge swarming with zombies and ivy monsters and even a small survival bit where you have to dodge both zombies and mr x while door slowly opens, it's good fun... on easy. worth noting though is that extreme battle mode from many of 2's later ports is not here though, which is a shame, but ghosts survivors makes up for that i think.

this is a remake i absolutely 100% reccomend as long as the possible difficulty doesn't bother you and it'll last you a while too because it's a lot longer than the original was, being about 6 to 7 hours per campaign as opposed to the originals 4 to 5, all the side stuff is there too and it's super cheap for a physical copy , even if you've played the original it's still really worth it, the new things added and both claire and leons campaigns having so much small thigs being different even beyond the huge gameplay overhauls make it a unique experiance still even if you've played every other port of the original to death, though this game doesn't quite have the same cool ports as it, there's the normal ones like xbox and ps4, a censored japanese version as well as an uncensored one and a switch cloud version that no one played, even if you think you did, you didn't, shut up. you almost certainly know this but the remakes never stopped either, 3 remake is my favourite of the followups and is also my favourite modern resi since 6 and the revelations games, 4 remake was a little too similar to the original for my liking but it's dlc was amazing and it was still more resi 4 which would never be a bad thing and the one major original title we did have since then, village and it's dlc (dlc which i admittedly havent tried yet) were pretty good and a huge step up from resi 7, my least favourite resi, but it's kind of been it for original stuff beyond multiplayer games and spinoff things, hopefully they skip a remake next year and give us something a bit more original since capcoms original projects have been very solid the past year with things like exoprimal and dragons dogma 2 and the games directors (kazunori kadoi who has been with the series since the original and worked on many of the best in the series like code V, outbreak and 6, plus some other cool games like megaman legends and zak and wiki. and yasuhiro anpo who has been with the series almost as long with him working on the original also as well as the original 2, 5 and revelations, plus a ton of other cool capcom games like onimusha and it's sequel 3, lost planet and shadow of rome) have worked on all the best recent resis, though it's likely they'll go with the village director for 9 instead, i do think giving these guys a chance on it would be neat, i really hope it's third person.