Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

I wanted to like this game. As I've mentioned previously I deeply enjoyed playing through the first two games so, after spending some time away from Resident Evil, I was looking forward to this. For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, though, it didn't click with me the way I feel it should've.

 

I played this as a PSOne Classic on my PS3

I suppose I should just start with what I didn't like so this writeup doesn't need to end on a low note. The dodges, while a good idea in theory, were difficult to consistently pull off (figuring out where in the enemy's animation you need to start the dodge isn't super clear) and even if you do get Jill to "dodge", you have no idea which direction she'll juke to so it's pretty likely that she might just throw herself in front of the attack anyway. In general the combat never felt "good" to me, which was a bit of a shock given I'd already acclimated myself to the earlier games. While it's largely similar to those, this game demands faster responses and more precision from you even though the game doesn't always feel like it's able to to support some of those asks.

This puzzle took me a very long time to solve.

That dodge, or rather the combat in general, was often very frustrating. Maybe it's just because there were so many dang Nemesis encounters, but I found I was dying during boss fights pretty consistently and the bosses I did beat typically just felt like bullet sponges. I understand that Nemesis is supposed to be difficult and that you're typically better off just running from him but there are (two? maybe more?) mandatory fights so if you're under prepared for either of those you're kinda just forced to play an unbalanced bossfight.

There's an enhanced crafting system with gunpowder types being combined in different orders and amounts to create different outputs, with the quantity of those outputs increasing the more you crafted a certain item, but I honestly just found that whole system pretty intuitive and would usually just keep making more of my bread and butter pistol-ammo and shotgun-ammo so this basically meant some of my resources (temporarily) were kinda just junk waiting to be processed. 

The live actions (or quicktime events, or whatever you'd like to call them) are a neat idea even considering the fact I only played through this once, but part of the reason I didn't run through a second time was because I'd basically been told that there aren't substantial enough differences to make it necessary (whereas I kind of enjoyed the RE2 approach of telling two variations on roughly the same story with some very noticeable deviations).

The randomization that's in this is also a bit of a mixed bag. Enemy locations and spawns are somewhat randomized and I think that's a pretty great idea but it feels uneven. It's exciting to get jumped by a dog when you're only expecting your run-of-the-mill zombie, but getting jumped by two hunters in a hallway when that room might just be empty in another attempt is a bit less fun. Item placement is similarly jumbled (though it seems like the total amount of ammo, and gunpowder, and first aid, and whatever) should all balance out even if you pick things up at different times. 

  

I was replaying sequences so often that I started listening to music to keep myself entertained. 

The way the music crescendoed here was great.

If enemy spawns worked more like that; the same total number of dogs or hunters or what-have-you but multiple configurations of those spawns, I think I'd like this a bit more. Still, even the rougher and unexpected fights gave me a good jolt so I don't completely hate it. All of this keeps you from getting too comfortable and familiar with what should be a (spooky) survival horror experience.

The story is pretty barebones (I feel it doesn't add significantly to what the first two established, beyond the final minute or so) but Jill and Carlos have a fun dynamic and I thought this was a decent way to at least evoke the spirit of those earlier "multiple protagonists in the same place" games.

I haven't mentioned it yet but, even though I didn't always love how they executed his appearances, Nemesis is a great addition to the series. An enemy that follows you between rooms is revolutionary and his absurd amount of health really hammers home the fact that you (probably) shouldn't fight him.

This game IS scary.

So all in all I didn't hate it but I also didn't love it. I'd been chipping away at this game for well over a month before I finished it because I gave up in frustration relatively frequently.

The next game on my "Resident Evil/Silent Hill" crash course is Code Veronica, though I'll be taking a bit of a break to play through those Dead Space games. I've previously played and love the original game but haven't touched the sequels and the excitement around this remake, as well as The Callisto Protocol, have put me back in a Dead Space-y mood.

I've included my completion screen below. I was foolishly being (what I felt was) stingy with my ink ribbons because a part of me still somewhat cared about my score but it seems like that was just a lot of wasted effort.