Well, it's been a few weeks since I finished playing the first Resident Evil and I'm now done with the Resident Evil 2. Once again, a very good game that's stood the test of time remarkably well.
Yes, the visuals are certainly not up to par with modern games but, like the original game, it has a certain charm to it that I think still honestly looks really great to this day. These chunky polygons and swimmy textures have so much personality to them, and the body horror and transformations that the G-Virus lends itself to later in the game are almost enhanced by the murky quality to everything onscreen.
At a glance it may not seem like a dramatic change, but this game as a whole felt substantially... more than the prior game. Seemingly minor changes like zombie dismemberment and the fact the player-character will turn their head to look at nearby enemies go a long way towards making the whole thing feel ever so slightly more immersive.
The voice acting, too, is a step up from the original game. While the poor line reads and script of the original had a certain campy charm to them, there is a significant step up in quality and production value to this game that I was surprised by. It's still occasionally hokey and melodramatic, but the serious moments are actually able to land more effectively because they're not constantly being undercut by "Jill sandwiches" or what-have-you.
After playing the first game, once as Jill and once as Chris, I was somewhat prepared to do the same thing again, but this second game actually requires more than that. You choose an initial character for your "A" campaign and, once you've completed that, you play through the other character's corresponding "B" campaign showing what they got up to during the same period of time. While this might seem like a way of ensuring both playthroughs are actually canon compared to the first one's sort-of-wishy-washy no-one-playthrough-is-fully-canon approach, the decision here actually leads to four playthroughs being necessary to see everything that's on offer.
I played as Leon for my A campaign (and thus Claire for my B), but the story I saw during my subsequent Claire A/Leon B campaign was slightly different so doing everything two more times was, ultimately, necessary. On one hand it's a bit annoying as their A/B split could have let them do their multiple-protagonist thing without mucking up the timeline with another split canon situation, but on the other hand those second run-throughs were fascinating because the changes, while relatively minor, all made (enough) sense given the different situations the characters were in and it was very fun to see which things were fixed and which weren't.
For some more general thoughts on this game, I really wasn't sure what to expect. While I knew a fair amount about the original game's mansion and general vibe, my knowledge of this game was based almost entirely on clips and information I'd gleaned about that recent remake. There are pretty major differences, however, and most plot points and developments were completely new to me so I really enjoyed experiencing all of this with relatively fresh eyes. I know even less about RE3, so I'm very curious to see whatever the heck that game is.
Also, I played through this game with a guide from GameFAQs and I actually kind of appreciate that the guide I found (and stuck with) wasn't perfect. I got the impression that the one I'd chosen occasionally failed to mention items and gave me advice that was occasionally bad, and this sort of flawed walkthrough experience is about as "authentic PS1" as I think you could probably get nowadays, if you ask me.
I included screenshots of my endscreens below, with my Leon A/Claire B times above my Claire A/Leon B ones. Over the course of four playthroughs I got considerably better at understanding the layout of that (frankly labyrinthine and nonsensical) police station, and between the Leon A I started with and the Leon B I ended with, I was able to shave off slightly over two hours off my playtime.
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