I never had the chance to play the earliest Resident Evil games. They were a little before my time. The first title in the series I ever played was Resident Evil 4, so the eventual remasters of every game prior to this gave me the perfect excuse to go back and plugs those gaps.
Originally released in 1998 on the Playstation 1, this 2019 remaster of Resident Evil 2 maintains the formula for what made Resident Evil such a big hit with it's fanbase. It's fair to say that the series has changed and evolved a lot through the years, but people are fiercely loyal to the roots of Resident Evil.
Taking place just months after the Resident Evil 1 outbreak that started it all, Resident Evil 2 takes place in Raccoon City - Completely overrun by the zombie apocalypse.
The main characters are Leon Kennedy, a rookie police officer on his first day in the job and Claire Redfield, a college student just caught up in the incident, and whilst both have slightly different plots and back story, the overall goal is to trace the origins of the outbreak under the belief that Umbrella Corporation are responsible for releasing the virus. This instalment marks the playable debuts of both Leon and Claire.
The gameplay mixes combat, survival horror and puzzle-based level progression. The entire game is played across 4 different environments, each of them with their own series of puzzles you'll need to connect together to access different rooms, reach vital items to enable further progress and ultimately piece it all together in order to advance to the next major part of the game. When I said above that people are fiercely loyal to the roots of Resident Evil, the heavy puzzle-based focus is exactly what I was referring to.
I really enjoyed the strategic level of thought required from this sort of gameplay experience. Discovering items lying around and working out where they need to be used and how they link together with different parts of the level was an experience I got deeply engrossed in. You'll need to scour the entire environment in detail, always pulling on mental notes of where a key may go or where you find a combination for a safe. Some items combine together to make a different item, some items that you may need immediately can only be accessed by retrieving another item first - For example, a key for a locked room - and some items may not necessarily be needed to progress the plot but do contain a path to some nice secrets, such as a new weapon or a hip pouch to increase inventory space.
There is some heavy some backtracking involved, but it's really well constructed with clever thought processes behind it to piece it all together and make it work. A lot of people are critical of some of the later Resident Evil games that shift their focus to all action shooters, and I can completely understand why after playing this. You still get the perfect blend of zombies to navigate past on your way to your various objectives, and may find yourself in perilous situations where you're either low on ammo, health or both, which is the deft reminder that you're still playing a survival horror game at heart. Your escapades will also be interrupted at regular intervals by Mr. X - An unkillable and relentless Tyrant zombie - He's cool, especially when he gatecrashes the party for the first time, but becomes a bit of annoyance once his novelty wears off.
The graphics are excellently sharp, it nails the perfect blend of gameplay mechanics and the story had me hooked throughout. It's a great instalment to the series and I'm glad the game was still as good back then as it is today, as someone who jumped on the bandwagon later and has had to find reasons to go back and explore it's past.
In terms of the trophy list, there are a total of 42 trophies, including the Platinum Trophy, and you'll know this game inside out by the time you unlock them all.
This is because of the fact the trophy list will require you to beat the game multiple times over on your way towards the Platinum.
You have the option to play through the game in 4 different ways. Leon and Claire both have an "A" and "B" variant of their stories. There are subtle, but noticeable, differences between all 4 variants, but the majority of the game is still the same. Their stories naturally crossover anyway, and the differences mentioned will include things like the placement of key items and the weapons both characters have access to. Leon and Claire also have an entire different segment of the story personalised to their own relationships with additional characters they both meet along the way.
To just break this down in thorough detail, there are 2 silver trophies awarded for beating Leon's story in any capacity and Claire's story in any capacity. This was an ideal starting point to simply enjoy the game for the first time completely blind to the plot. Despite it's challenges lying in wait, there is a lot of free fodder in this list along the way, with trophies awarded for some extremely simple and automatic tasks as you progress through the story. By the time I'd finished focusing on these 2 trophies, I already had 23 trophies in the entire list - Which equates to just over halfway.
You can choose from 3 different difficulty settings. These include Assisted, Standard and Hardcore. Assisted difficulty is great for 2 further playthroughs of the game - Another silver trophy is awarded for beating the game without opening the item box, and another silver trophy is awarded for completing the game without using a recovery item. Assisted difficulty gives you aids such as automatic firing lock-on, health regeneration and weaker enemies that consume less ammunition before death. These 2 trophies could be earned in tandem on the same playthrough, but I ran through them separately.
It was then time to turn up the heat just a touch, with yet another 2 further playthroughs of the game. Completing Leon's story on Standard or Hardcore with an S rank, as well as the same requirements for Claire's awards 2 gold trophies. Obtaining an S rank is classic Resident Evil, though the requirements are much more straight-forward than usual here, with time being the only determining factor of overall ranking at the end of the game.
You also have the flexibility of beating the game on Standard difficulty too, which is what I favoured for these 2 playthroughs. Standard difficulty is a little more lenient on completion time and you'll need to beat each story in under 3 and a half hours to make the S rank requirements. This makes it very akin to a speed run, and this is a fairly tight time requirement. There are a few crucial bits of detail to know for these trophies. Watching cutscenes and examining your mini-map will keep the clock running, so it's really important to skip cutscenes and rely more on muscle memory from previous playthroughs which means you won't be wasting too much time consulting your mini-map.
The most crucial thing to know is that, every time you die, hitting continue will take you back to your last save point, but the progress you've just lost will still count on the timer. If you hit quit to main menu instead, and manually reload your save from the main screen, the timer will reset back to where you last saved. This is an imperative tactic to know to be comfortable with these time requirements. The game isn't that long, but 3 and a half hours is still short enough to keep you on your toes, so you can't afford to lose progress that still clocks up against you when you die.
Truth be told though, all of the above is just a warm up for the true main event of this trophy list - Hardcore Mode. Every run through of the game prior to now effectively exists to allow you enough opportunity to equip yourself well enough to take on this challenge. You need to know the majority of the game like the back of your hand. Any hesitation, forgetfulness or lack of efficiency is truly punished.
The "Hardcore Rookie" and "Hardcore College Student" trophies, awarded for Completing Claire and Leon's stories on "Hardcore" game mode is where the majority of this game's difficulty rating comes from. I'm going to talk about both of these trophies in tandem due to their almost parallel similarity in terms of strategy, approach and tactics.
Hardcore mode limits the player in various ways. Firstly, you have to collect ink ribbons in order to save your game, meaning you can't just liberally use the typewriter whenever you want to in order to save your progress. It adds an extra layer of strategy to how you approach the game. Do you save knowing you'd lose 45 minutes of progress just before that section where you might have to fight a couple of lickers, or do you gamble it and kick on knowing you may need that ink ribbon later? It's a genuine dilemma and it's always important to have checkpoint targets in your head based on how well you know the game and what's due to come next. The decisions may not be as big as say, Dead Space 2 Hardcore - Where you only get 3 saves, but it will make you think carefully enough about your save game strategy. I did lose progress on a couple of occasions taking gambles and it's a tough one to accept, so make sure you know when to use them.
Secondly, the limited inventory space also gives further strategical consideration to Hardcore mode. On other difficulties, there are 7 pouches to collect that expand your inventory size to a healthy level. Hardcore contains just 3, which makes inventory management way more crucial here. It's great picking up attachments for guns until you realise that the shotgun now takes up 2 inventory slots, rather than 1, giving you less room for equally critical items like healing remedies and ammunition. I was constantly visiting storage cases to stock up on items I'd found to use later and chop and change what I was carrying at all times. It's also worth noting you have to carry around items tied to progressing puzzles, and these are permanently required to take up space in your inventory until you no longer need them. The game does a good job of marking items that are no longer needed once they've been fully used for story progression, but they're still a burden.
Obtaining the big hitting weapons like the Lightning Hawk and Grenade Launcher , as well as Stockpiling ammunition for them specifically to use in boss fights was the main tactic that got me through to the end. I knew that, in between these boss fights, the main areas full of regular zombies were easy to control with my handgun alone, which meant I could save my ammo for when it mattered most - Taking down the bosses. Within this, I cannot overstate the importance of the unlimited ammunition Samurai's Edge - A pistol you earn for beating the game with an S Rank. Some people will believe this goes against the essence of Hardcore mode, but having access to a gun you can use consequence-free that preserves ammo is a gamechanger, and if it's allowing me to use it, it's fair game as far as I'm concerned.
All of the above ultimately works by developing an extensive knowledge of the game through previous playthroughs of the game. Knowing the layout of each area, understanding where to go to acquire certain items and knowing all the game's secrets. It really does make a huge difference when the game is fresh in your mind and you can tackle Hardcore mode with the speed and efficiency required to beat it.
There is genuine peril. It's tense and nerve-wracking. It makes the game feel like a true survival horror experience. Running from Mr X whilst your health is hanging on by a thread. Losing your perceptions as a consequence and trying to re-establish your next route to safety because you're facing the prospect of losing 45 minutes of gameplay. Making it to the safe room where you now decide it's a good time to spend an ink ribbon on a save. Knowing trophies are hanging in the balance. It injects that terrifying rush of adrenaline.
I would say Claire's story is slightly easier than Leon's, mainly just down to virtue of the fact I'd gotten a little extra experience of tackling Hardcore mode through Leon's story, but I do also think Claire has a better arsenal to deal with the G boss fights - especially the Grenade Launcher and it's acid rounds. The Stage 3 G in Leon's story had me stuck for hours and was the biggest pain point across both Hardcore runs.
The rest of the list does include a couple of things to look out for. There are a small handful of hidden trophies for defeating the various stages of G within certain parameters. They will naturally become missable, as they're technically story-related, but you're required to play through this game so many times, you shouldn't really miss them if you look up their requirements.
There are also a couple of collectible related trophies for reading all files scattered across the game, which are generally difficult to miss, but there are also 15 Mr. Raccoon figurines to identify and shoot, which are much more difficult to spot and will more than likely require a visual guide to find.
Finally, there's a single trophy for completing the 4th Survivor alternate game mode scenario - Where you have to backtrack through parts of the map from the sewer to an extraction point outside the police department as Hunk - An Umbrella Security Service Operator - who has been left behind in the outbreak. It's not really noteworthy, but there is a piece of DLC that focuses on individual survivors and their scenarios within Raccoon City to which this could be a taster of, though I am hoping they're a bit more engaging than this was.
Even though Resident Evil 2 sits just above average on the difficulty scale, this is mainly down to it's Hardcore mode challenge. I played through this game 6 times in total. My longest playthrough took just over 12 hours, and the shortest was just over 4, but trophy lists that demand you play through the story this many times are making brave decisions over the longevity of their games. Some people may believe that this is overkill, and I don't necessarily disagree with that. I didn't feel like this was as grindy as it should have been, and I feel like the experience stayed relatively fresh, though I did spread these playthroughs out over long-ish breaks away from the game.
The key to the Platinum trophy is making everything you remember about the game stick. Hardcore mode will still test you and you should expect no less, but if you give yourself every chance to succeed, then you more than likely will.
Notable Trophies -
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| Hardcore Rookie - Complete Leon's story on "Hardcore" game mode. Hardcore College Student - Complete Claire's story on "Hardcore" game mode. |
Hardest Trophy -
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