I like to think I'm fairly open-minded, but I knew Resident Evil 3 had a rough reputation.
Sandwiched between the excellent Resident Evil 2, and Resident Evil 4 - Which is largely regarded by most as the absolute oracle of the series - It was always going to be a tall order to maintain the lofty standards the franchise has reached over the years.
Originally released in 1999 on the Playstation 1, Resident Evil 3 (sometimes codenamed : Nemesis) follows Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira as they attempt to escape from Raccoon City during the T-Virus outbreak.
Jill is a former S.T.A.R.S police officer who soon runs into Carlos, a Mercenary working to evacuate those fortunate enough to still be alive. I enjoyed the tandem approach of Resident Evil 2 with Leon and Claire, and it also translates well here too. Jill is persistently being hunted by Nemesis, a biological weapon produced and programmed to track down and eliminate S.T.A.R.S survivors which adds a terrifying new dynamic to the game. Nemesis is persistent and habitually pops up to keep you on your toes, adding to the survival horror element. Mr. X in Resident Evil 2 felt like an annoying sub-character who served mainly to roadblock your progress towards another objective. There's no mistake that Nemesis is a much bigger problem and his relentless pursuit of Jill quickly becomes the focal point of the story.
So why does it get a bad rap? It may be important to note that this is a watered down version compared to the original. Apparently, the original Resident Evil 3 contained much more content and level design that has been stripped out of this remake. I never played the original, so it would be remiss of me to comment on whether the removal of this content is ultimately to the detriment of the game, but it is something raised as a general consensus, so it's worth noting.
On it's own merits, I think the game is just fine. It's not an improvement on Resident Evil 2, but I like the Nemesis angle. The concept of being hunted down religiously, and never knowing when he may pop up next is an excellent survival horror mechanic. It's still fully scripted, so the novelty is limited to your first playthrough, but the first time is still an edgy experience that keeps you on the edge of the seat.
The game uses the same graphics engine as Resident Evil 2, and character models and environments look sharp and crisp. It also still carries over that mixed vibe of adventure game puzzling and frenetic combat that worked so well previously.
I do think the story is a little bit too short and it doesn't contain the same level of bonus content that Resident Evil 2 contains. It does come with unlockable difficulty levels that alter the game parameters, as well as a challenge section for you to earn points and use these to shop for items - but that's about it. The puzzle elements of the game are also shallow and lacking. This could all be a by-product of the sacrificial content, which would be a great shame, because I think the puzzle-based progression was a strong suit of Resident Evil 2 and should have been built on accordingly. It's still present, but only just about, and takes a big back seat comparatively to it's predecessor.
It's fine for what it is, but also definitely feels somewhat lacking, and I think you can tell there may have been a bit more to this game once upon a time when you begin to notice it's weaknesses and lack of true depth.
In terms of trophies, this is a medium-sized list, clocking in at a total of 33 trophies, including the Platinum trophy, and draws alot of comparison from Resident Evil 2.
The first thing that's important to note is the structure of the story. Resident Evil 2 made you choose between Leon and Claire and both characters stories contained subtle differences. It also created alot of duplication within the trophy list, requiring you to beat the game multiple times under different parameters with both characters. It made the trophy list feel a little bit exhaustive in the end.
Resident Evil 3 takes a different tact by making the story a linear experience and alternating gameplay segments between both Jill and Carlos. This is going to reduce our necessity to play through the game as many times as Resident Evil 2 required for it's Platinum trophy.
Firstly, a normal playthrough of the game, but learning from the experience of Resident Evil 2 to pick out and focus on some of the specific trophies that require you to beat the game under certain conditions, which can easily be done on some of the lower difficulty levels.
The primary focus on my initial playthrough was to complete the game without using the item box, which is fairly easy to achieve on standard difficulty level. The game contains assisted, standard and hardcore difficulty levels from the outset, but does also contain a further 2 hidden levels locked behind pre-requisite requirements which we'll talk about later, as these are also well represented within this trophy list.
Completing the game without using the item box on standard difficulty will earn you 12 progression-based trophies for reaching certain plot points and finally beating the game under these conditions, which is just over a third of the list. This initial playthrough of the game took me just under 8 hours, accounting for additional exploration. I also managed to naturally unlock a further 9 miscellaneous trophies related to non-progression based feats, so my first casual playthrough of the game ended up in an accumulation of around two thirds of the whole list.
Dropping straight back into a second playthrough of the game to complete 2 primary goals. Firstly, earning the trophy awarded for completing the game using 1 or fewer recovery items. This is easily achieved on assisted difficulty, which gives you automatic health regeneration whenever you take damage, so you'll naturally never have to use a health item anyway and, just as it did for Resident Evil 2, tandems perfectly for the purpose of achieving this trophy.
Secondly, gathering the remaining collectibles. This includes 56 lore files, 20 Charlie Dolls and 20 padlocks, safes, lockers and pickable lockboxes (I had already earned this particular trophy on my initial playthrough). Collectible progress carries across and doesn't need you to find them in a single playthrough, and cleaning these up on assisted difficulty allows you to explore at the leisure of not being under too much pressure. There's nothing out of the ordinary here and these collectibles are easy to find.
To this point, everything is plain sailing. The playthrough specific challenges thus far are made much easier by the freedom of choice you have on being able to select the difficulty setting of your preference, and the remainder of the list does potentially change this, however, it purely depends on the route you decide to take from here.
When mapping out the rest of the Platinum trophy, it quickly becomes clear that the game wants you to do what Resident Evil 2 wanted you to do - Play it to within an inch of it's life. I was forced into this for Resident Evil 2 and there wasn't a workaround present, but a shortcut exists here that the game offers up to you on a plate.
At this stage, I was faced with some fairly standardised Resident Evil trophies to see out the rest of the list. Beating the game acquiring an S Rank. Beating the game within a specific time parameter - 2 hours in this instance - and beating the game on it's most challenging difficulty level. To be specific, there were 6 trophies remaining and they all focus around beating the game in a certain fashion.
I referenced 2 hidden difficulty levels above. Nightmare difficulty is only unlocked once you beat the game on Hardcore difficulty, and further to this, Inferno difficulty is only unlocked once you beat the game on Nightmare difficulty. This would involve another 2 playthroughs, purely on this basis alone, and I hadn't even worked out how I was going to fit in a speedrun to unlock the trophy for beating the game in less than 2 hours. I started to explore other options that potentially allowed me to avoid playing this game more times than I really needed to.
The "Jill Valentine" trophy, awarded for Completing the game with an S Rank on Inferno, is the peak of this trophy list in terms of overall challenge, but I'd discovered a method that would allow me to unlock all of these remaining trophies at once, and knew this would be exactly what I was after.
In preparation of tackling the game on Inferno difficulty, the general recommendation is to purchase the infinite rocket launcher from the shop. This requires circa 64,000 points, and is the most expensive item available for purchase. The challenges linked to points are awarded for certain in-game feats, and you would need to grind through various playthroughs of the game to accumulate enough points to purchase the rocket launcher for use on your Inferno run. There are certain parts of the game you can farm weapon-specific kill challenges, but with the absence of any sort of chapter select feature, you'd need to reach these points in a fresh game, and I wasn't feeling that approach either.
The solution? For £3.99, you can purchase a DLC pack that unlocks fast track access to both Nightmare and Inferno difficulty levels, as well as instant access to every item from the shop, including the infinite rocket launcher. No need for any additional playthroughs of the game to unlock higher difficulties or grind for shop points to acquire weaponry that significantly nullifies the challenges of these difficulty levels. Some people won't agree with the validity of this shortcut, but if the game is offering paid for benefits that allow you to bypass unnecessary grinding, then I'll almost certainly explore this option.
Regarding the challenge around the trophy itself, Inferno mode increases enemy health, reduces the amount of damage you can take before death and alters the availability of typewriters and storage boxes throughout the game. The trophy will also require you to complete the game to an S rank standard. This requires a clear time of less than 2 hours and 5 or less manual saves. The infinite rocket launcher completely trivialises this challenge - To the point where I can't honestly comment on the difficulties experienced around Inferno.
It will kill most enemies within a couple of shots, has a quick rate of fire, doesn't need to be reloaded (since it's infinite) and doesn't impact movement speed. Most importantly, there aren't any consequences to the player by using it in close proximity. You can fire it off at your feet and won't suffer any damage consequences, which makes it incredibly forgiving and the biggest reason as to why this becomes so trivial as a result. It even makes light work of Nemesis during the various boss fight stages, though I did struggle with the final boss battle a little. His final form has some punishing one-hit kill attacks on Inferno that I struggled to read and dodge, which did take some time to overcome. It was only a case of learning the attack patterns and gradually getting used to dodge timings, but I spent more time on this final boss battle than I had leading up to point.
I did also die a couple of times cheaply through getting grabbed and not being able to respond to the input prompts quick enough to free myself from an instant animation death. This would also cause a loss of a small chunk of progress, due to the limitation of having to restrict your hard saves. Inferno difficulty switches off the autosave feature, and death will always set you back to your last hard save, so it's important to pick your manual save areas strategically. I found that using a save prior to each Nemesis boss encounter was a relatively solid approach.
However, I still managed to clock this trophy with 1 hour and 23 minutes on my save file and only had to manually save at 3 recommended points throughout the game. This unlocked other trophies linked to completing the game with an S rank, completing the game on Hardcore and Nightmare difficulties as per difficulty stacking rules and completing the game in under 2 hours, with the Platinum trophy on top in one fell swoop. A much more time efficient and easier way of unlocking this list than going through the possibility of 4/5 further playthroughs of the game.
I don't think Resident Evil 3 is a bad game, but did it make me want to play it to that extent? No. It isn't a very long story, but it is repetitive and much more linear in nature compared to Resident Evil 2, and I don't think it warrants this time dedication. Your game has to be something special if your list demands me to play through it that many times, so the option to fast track the finish was very much a welcome opportunity, and one I ultimately couldn't refuse.
Without fast-tracking options considered, this would be a slightly higher difficulty score overall. You'd need to beat the game 4/5 times and either tackle the games hardest challenge without making use of the shop collectibles, or grind over 64,000 challenge points to unlock them, both of which would be a hefty time sink. This did still require 3 playthroughs, even with the purchased bundle that unlocked all content to reduce the overall time commitment. Inferno is made a cakewalk by the infinite rocket launcher and it's overpowered features, though I did have struggles with the final form of Nemesis. This was mainly down to judgement of dodge patterns and no margin of error due to his one-hit kill nature on that difficulty setting though.
I'm unsure of how much more difficult this Platinum trophy could get. Inferno will remain an unknown entity due to the methods I chose to go after this list, but it is a unique difficulty level to Resident Evil 3 and it's rare to see any Resident Evil game that contains 5 levels of difficulty. Minimising the time requirement is a big factor in assessing difficulty, and even navigating the challenges tied to not using storage boxes and healing items was simplified by the ability to play these on any desired difficulty level. The easiest Resident Evil Platinum to date, albeit with a slight asterisk.
Notable Trophies -
 |
| Jill Valentine - Complete the game with an S rank on "Inferno". |
Hardest Trophy
No comments:
Post a Comment