I have a lot to say about the Resident Evil 2 remake so a few prefaces are in order. First off, this is going to be like the Metroid Review in that it will come off as a lot more negative than intended. Second, I can not divorce this from Resident Evil 1 regardless of whether that's fair to it or not. I often criticize reviews of the Elder Scrolls games for judging them on previous games with little regard to the games own intent. I am a hypocrite, I will be doing something like that here. Thirdly, I have not played the original and thus do know what applies to the original and what doesn't, so I will be looking at it as if there was no original and just the remake.
Resident Evil 2 Remake has a lot of minor to major issues that often lay in the subjective category that lead to an incredibly disappointing and annoying experience to someone who loves nearly every part of 1. It fails to capture what made it special and comes across as a poor man's imitation, and that's ignoring the myriad of problems it introduces by merit of its own design and attempts to evolve and (especially in cases of the remake) modernize the design style. Underneath everything there is the skeleton of something great, and thanks to a few broken bones it does come up to the surface but it's never far from injury. It's very clear an insane amount of love, care and skill went into it and it's just a shame it didn't pan out as much of a masterpiece as it could have.
Map
I think here is a fitting place to start seeing it is an issue that encompasses everything. Even if you do a challenge run to ignore mechanics and skip all the cutscenes you will still be at the mercy of the map.
To bullet point my big issues with the map; large sections of linearity, there are objectively best routes, it's not very dynamic, and it's very circular.
Large sections of linearity. An example of this is the connection between the parking garage and the sewer. There are multiples of these 2010s style call of duty corridors and they fucking suck. They are used to connect areas in a way that allows background loading which is nice but it in turn breaks the games flow massively. I really would've just preferred the doors of 1. But the biggest crime of the linear sections is that they make backtracking painful in a game that wants you to do quite a bit of backtracking. There were many times where I got something that I could use in another area and I just wouldn't bother because the trek is too much. The worst of it is the film which really could've been fixed by just having another development place somewhere in the other half of the map.
There are objectively best routes. This is partly due to the lack of dynamism which I'll talk about next. In general if you are somewhere, there is an optimal route to take and little reason to take another route. This is boring as it takes away a lot of the challenge of planning where to go and how to get there. In 1, one way may be faster while another might be safer. Every time you go anywhere you are doing these risk/reward calculations in your head. It makes every journey and adventure even if you've done it before because factors always change, both in map dynamics and personal situation. In 2 none of that's a thing because the fastest way is the best. There will be exactly one metric fuckton of zombies per square inch of area so taking anything other than the fastest route is nearly always worse off. Because of this you never have to think about how to get somewhere, the answers already there and it's always the same.
Not very dynamic. By this I mean nothing really changes. A large part of this is due to the zombie overload mentioned earlier. In 1 the mansion would dynamically change due to constantly moving enemies, and because they were rare and dangerous enough to always be a threat it meant you had to constantly readjust yourself the map. Areas previously thought to be safe are now not and places thought to be dangerous now are safe. Is a brilliant way to add a lot more depth to the map without needing to change the layout. Resident Evil 2 does little of that, and when it tries it doesn't work. The Zombie overload means that no area can be considered safe so the entire place is mentally considered dangerous. Zombies can not be added to change an area because they're already there, sure they might put more in the area but that doesn't change anything because it was already dangerous in the first place. All they can really do is throw lickers in there (which I think is only done in two areas if i recall correctly) which just comes off as lazy to see that many enemies in one area, and it doesn't change anything because lickers are as easy to avoid as the regular zombies. Mr. X can dynamism as you don't know where he is going to be and he will chase you, except you just juke him round a table and carry on your merry way. He fails to actually change anything you're doing or anywhere you're going, rather he's just there to make sure you don't pause along the way. We will get into Mr. X later but for now the point is that he doesn't dynamically change the map nor how you approach it.
It's very circular. This contributes to having objectively best routes because it will be the shortcut to the closest part in the circuit to where you need to go to follow the loop. But the real crime is that it makes it really easy to internally map even without trying, leading to very few ‘oh shit I know I am’ moments that 1 had. 1 manages to have them not only in the connection of the subareas (such as spitting you out in the kitchen) but also manages to do it within the mansion itself. 2 only achieved this when going from the parking lot back to the mansion, but that was also partly because it narratively spent a lot of time talking about the only way being out through the underground passage, so it's unexpected (and a kick in the dick) to have a regular normal route back. Within the police station, sewers and labs there is never that ‘oh shit’ moment owing to the ‘circular with shortcuts’ nature making it always really easy to tell where you are at all times. An example is in the labs with the plant where right away there is a locked door by the safe room, so when you go down and follow the part, even without counting the corner angles and elevation you can feel yourself go in a circle, so finding that locked door is obvious to where it will lead. It doesn't feel like I discovered something or explored somewhere, it feels more like walking around a McDonalds that I haven't been into before.
There are other things with the map.
The actual in-game map doesn't seem to be topologically consistent between levels in some areas. Either that or I’m retarded. Its fine in the lab or in the station, but its a bit fucked in the sewers. It's hard to tell which staircase is which between the levels. It would be nice if you could layer them and have two or three levels shown at once.
Puzzles
I really don't have a lot to say about the puzzles, and that is probably an issue in itself. There was nothing particularly hard here which is fine, 1 wasn't exactly a brain buster either, but I'd at least like to be treated with at least a little respect.
For example the first big thing in the game is to collect the medallions, and to do that you have a notebook with the literal answer like it's a Skyrim door puzzle. Actually there's not even a puzzle there, you just told me the answer. And that's how most puzzles seem to work. This photo shows you exactly what to do, this note shows you the exact combination. Hell, even in your inventory it will show you if you can combine something or not. At that point why not just do it for me. Even what I'd consider the biggest puzzle of the game, making the herbicide, was completed first time in under a minute. I’m not smart, I’d go as far as to say I’m a bit of a fucking idiot, so if I’m blasting through this shit there’s a bit of a problem.
In my review on 1 I mentioned that the zombies and traversal was a bit of a puzzle in of itself in ammo use and positioning. Here it just isn't, it's an action game, and so long as you're not really bad at video games as a whole you'll never have any resource management puzzles either.
Inventory management is also never a problem so there's not any puzzle of challenge in that either. You get so much you can just carry everything. It's not very long until you get your first pouch and it just snowballs from there. By then you might as well be the item box. This also has major ramifications for moment to moment gameplay
Gameplay
There is a lot here and I don't really know the best way to structure this so here topics; saving, the perspective shift, zombies, Mr. X, weapons and item management.
Saving. This is the very first thing I noticed, the first black mark and the biggest black mark. Ink ribbons are removed on all difficulties but hardcore, which changes things other than ink ribbons to the extent that it becomes a miserable experience regardless. There two things to tackle there, why hardcore sucks, and why ink ribbons are good. Ink ribbons are good. I hated ink ribbons in 1, but I loved that I hated them. They are the biggest contribution to stress and tenseness. It makes every single action you do massive mentally because you will go back a decent way, and you also always have to consider if you've done enough to justify saving. It's this constant mental game that helps keep you on edge and keeps the enemies and death scarier. By removing ink ribbons all of this is removed. Every time I pass a typewriter I save because why wouldn't I? I Finished the game in half the time as 1 yet saved twice as much. Sometime id save, fuck about with the item box, then save again because it wastes nothing. When I realize I forgot an item I often just reloaded a save because I will always be at the last item box I was at. If I took too much damage in an area I'd just reload the last save (or in some cases like the sewer the autosave) and do it again. This is not helpful in creating a tense, scary, and exciting atmosphere. But its added in hardcore mode, but hardcore mode sucks by increasing the zombies speed, strength and aggression which on paper is fine until you consider that it already suffers from a zombie overload issues and just adding more to that makes it a miserable experience to actually play. Next I am going to talk about the massive issues I have with the zombies, and in hardcores case just imagine every issue or complaint there magnified. There is an easy solution to all of this. Just give me ink ribbons without the giga-zombies. Why can't I take one without the other?
The reason the perspective shift is going here is that it doesn't change a lot despite being the obvious biggest difference. However its existence facilitated changes in the design of combat encounters in ways I do not like. Primarily it encourages skill based performance based on interchangeable skills that shouldnt be relevant. The difference between the actions taken mechanically by you in Resident Evil 2 and Apex Legends is solely that i don't aim for the legs. Being good at shooters really simplifies the game because I don't miss my shots and the game is balanced both atmospherically and in gameplay around missing your shots (ammo is something we will talk about later). And on top of that encounters lack tension because I can really easily bap them even if they are in an awkward position which leads me to clear rooms like I clear bomb sites in Counter Strike. Let's give examples. The dogs in 1 are my kryptonite. In 2 they are a complete non-issue because it's so easy to dome them. It actually goes far in the opposite direction. It is satisfying to nail one in the head that’s jumping or sprinting with a nice flick. It's a lot of fun, but it's not what I want in a Resident Evil game. I do not want to be thinking of Quake. On top of just destroying some casual encounters it demolishes the feeling of a lot of boss fights too. It used to be all about positioning and ammo management, but now it comes to how good you can mechanically aim. The Birkins fights are a good example of this because it encourages hitting weak points. In the first encounter I just bought a handgun so the fight consisted of running round in a circle for 5 minutes doing 360 flick shots. I don't think I got hit once. Yawn was running in a circle going bap bap bap too so that's not the issue, it's doing the 360 flicks which are too video gamey. I remember in most boss fights in 1 i was internally (and sometime externally) going fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck throughout the whole thing but here I’m going hell yea nice shot me. Fatal Frame is another survival horror game that includes skill based shooting , but it does it well. The camera (gun) controls are done in a way that is completely unique to itself so there is very little hold-over skill from other games. This makes every encounter tense and difficult regardless of other game experience, and keeps the atmosphere and your mind very clear within its own confinement.
The other thing about the camera I don't understand is why there isn't a traditional option. The Framework is already there, surely it can't be that hard. Even as an optional mode it'd be cool. But then again they restricted ink ribbons to giga-zombies so we already know all the braincells weren't on deck during development.
Zombies. Zombie overload. Left 4 Dead kneecapping edition. My main issues are there are too many of them, they are too tanky, they are inconsistent.
There’s just too fucking many of them which causes a lot of the encounters to completely lose tension and feel completely monotonous. I don't need to say much more on this point.
They're too tanky. I get the point isn't to kill them and to make them flinch so you can dodge past, but even in that they are too tanky to cause a flinch. This further adds to the feeling of monotony with them because its point at the knees, one, two three, run. 3 bullets to cause a filch is a lot. It doesn't matter because you get that much ammo though. The solution to this in my opinion is to half the zombies health on all fronts, to flinch, to kill, to de-leg, but also half the available ammo in the game. Its not not a smooth experience to go oh fuck a zombie on the other side of the room, better start shooting it now.
The inconsistency is the biggest crime of all regarding them. Keeping in line with the flinching, it takes 3 in the leg as previously said, except when it doesn't. On a few occasions it took upwards of 7. All hits, all in the same spot. So when I start shooting knowing I can get 3 in before it reaches me and it tanks 5 and gets me, I'm not scared, I'm pissed. And then on top of that when it kills me despite surviving attacks from the same type of zombie at the same health, I'm incredibly pissed and I also think I'm going insane. It fucked with me so bad I looked it up and no I’m not crazy, there’s dynamic difficulty. Never ever have dynamic difficulty in a game that fucks with the rules the player can not see. It's not fair, it is not fun, it is not challenging to die to something that under all the same conditions previously you have survived. You do actions based on knowledge from previous experiences. That's how humans work. There was a time when I was running through an area, knowing I could survive one bite because I had done the exact same thing before in the exact same condition. So when I die it is cheap and undeserved. When a zombie suddenly takes double the bullets to flinch and gets me because I can't shoot that much in time it is cheap and undeserved. Keeping to the theme of inconsistencies, it's not just dynamic difficulty. Let's look at lickers for example. Lickers are sensitive to noise. Once I threw a flashbang at one and it did absolutely nothing. It's not meant to do absolutely nothing but it did and thenceforth every licker encounter I just walked past not engaging in its unique mechanics because it already proved itself to be a gamble and why would I take that gamble if I can just walk. Lickers in general are just a really shit enemy because they are solved by walking.
Another minor issue I have with the zombies is that when they are downed it can be hard to tell if they're dead or not. This is fine in theory, 1 does it too, but in 1 they just wake up if you get close while here they'll actually damage you. Obviously they can't get up if they have no legs, but it just feels bullshit to get insta-grabbed by one you thought was dead with no way to really counter it. It's lying on the floor, just American X the cunt. At the very least it should do a lot less damage.
Zombies will dynamically shuffle around in a room while you're away which is fine in theory, it adds a bit of dynamism to each individual room, but often they'll shuffle right behind bends or door, or right behind corners and get you while there was absolutely no way to tell they were there.
The blob things in the sewer are just terrible. Too big to go past, too tanky to kill, too tanky to flinch, and if you get grabbed and use a grenade, its recovery time is so quick that it will recover before you can even get past. It ends up with you doing some really janky shit with going in and out of the water in order to get around them. It feels terrible and you're always what feels like an unlucky wind away from getting got by them. So I imagine my anger when I found out on the way back that the flamethrower doesn't do shit to them.
Mr. X was disappointing. Let's start with his appearance because he just doesn't look scary or threatening. They made him too human, especially with the stupid trench coat. He looks like a sex pest not a monster. And even ignoring his clothes he looks like he posts on /fraud/ and /cbt/. His accompanying music sting doesn't fit him either. It's clear from his outfit that he's 40/50s inspired, so why the electronic Skrillex wub wub wub sting? Something using traditional instruments and a bit 40s inspired would be nicer. Even just removing the sting and keeping the stomping would be better. The stomping is very effective because of how heavy it is. It sounds threatening, and it also warns you of the direction he is coming from making for a fair encounter.
As an actual encounter he also doesn't come across as very scary or threatening because he's so simple to deal with. After the first encounter with you you have already worked out most of the ins and outs of his AI package and can just play him like a fiddle. This means whenever you encounter him you just juke him around a table then go on your way because he is slower than you. All that it changes is that you can't stay still for very long but really you're not standing still very often in the first place. Mr. X was a great chance to add dynamism to the map but it just does nothing. I think a good way to rectify this would be to take notes from Ao Oni of all games. When the Ao Oni appears he becomes your top priority, he is fast and deadly so it changes the game and your goals immediately from progress to survival. This is very effective in creating a tense atmosphere around him as you're always worried of him showing up, and when he is there you're always so close to dying and the way of survival will dynamically change depending on where in the mansion you are and where you can hide and run. By using a system like this for Mr. X he will always be a threat, constantly changing your plans, and when he's not there you will always be considering what to do if he comes. He could be what finally provides the fuck fuck fuck fuck moment I have been craving the entire game. At this point I would like to remind you that the person saying this is the same person who was broken by Fatal Frame 1.
The final thing with Mr. X is his boss fight, and normally something like this isn't important enough to single out to talk about but I like it a lot so I will. The confined space makes Mr. X threatening as the only way to dodge him is around himself which is a lot harder, and the constant changing play space continuously makes it harder and different and you're never able to get comfortable because of it. It provides actual tension to the fight because you don't know what's coming next and have to constantly make different strategies on the fly to adjust. It even ends with a rocket launcher like 1 which is a cute touch. My one complaint is that the elevator going down makes me feel a bit motion sick. And I can handle smooth turning in VR so I don’t know what’s up with that.
Weapons and item management. You’d think this is something hard to fuck up but no its quite easy. A lot of it is a consequence of other design decisions such as increase of inventory space and zombie tankiness. A big consequence of the inventory expansion is that you can carry an entire armory in your pockets which really hurts the tension. Even disregarding the damage capabilities of a bullet, having a large amount of them will always feel more secure than not, so seeing 200 SMG ammo let alone 600 is a bit much. This is all ignoring the fact that the large inventory space never means you will need to sacrifice ammo for anything. In 1, occasionally I went with no reserve ammo for my pistol and no knife to optimize inventory space which made zombie encounters far more tense and exciting, but it's just not possible here with the insane amount of inventory space. On the topic of ammo, I don't like that it's possible to waste it in areas where it's not immediately obvious a waste. By this i don't mean missing, nor do i mean Mr. X because you learn that lesson quickly, but more gimmick fights. Specifically the crane one. I wasted ammo on that fight prior to getting to the crane when I didn't know it was a gimmick fight yet. The same could be said with Lisa Trevor but there it's pretty obvious that your goal isn't to bap the bitch from the immediate environment and previous encounters, but with this you have previously had a fight with it where you complete the set piece by shooting it so it's natural to assume that's the answer here too. I just reloaded after I realized. It's not that I couldn't spare the ammo, it's just it felt shit to do so.
Second issue I had; I really hate the combat knife being the dagger. It's not a big deal but it's just something I don't like. The damage of the knife is ridiculous so I guess it's partly to balance that, but just lower the damage instead.
Finally, I like that you can finally discard anything, it's just a shame it came in the game where I never needed or wanted to.
Story
There's really three stories to Resident Evil 2. The overarching story, the Leon story and the Claire story. Don't worry, I'm not going to do a play by play, I'm not a YouTube ’analyst’.
The overarching plot is exactly the same as 1. You are trapped here, get out and blow shit up while you're at it. This is fine. A bit lazy actually seeing as it is exactly the fucking same. It doesn't work as well in 2 however due to the fact a lot of it is chanced into. What I mean by that is in 1 there is a reason why STARS is at the mansion, the whole Wesker shit, while in 2 a lot of it just feels like luck. Leon and Claire just happened to run into each other, Umbrella just happens to be under the police station. Stuff like that. Obviously some things have to exist like that as a requirement of telling a story, but with 1 it felt like you were getting the story that the STARS team has to go set in motion by prior actions of characters, 2 feel like God saw Leon and Claire and said ‘you shall have an adventure’. This is also in each character's individual story, Leon just running into Ada, Claire just running into Sherry. Also seeing as here is probably the best place to mention it, at the gas station when approaching the door on the way out you can see the other character actually walk up to the door before the cutscene starts, and this is just an example of the absolute amount of love and care gone into it because they really didn't need to do that, but it's so cool that they did.
Leon's story is fine. Keeping consistency I guess. I don't have a lot to say about it so I'll talk more about the characters themselves here.
I really like Leon. Pretty boy badass with a heart of gold is nothing new or exciting but Leon does it really well and has a lot of charm to him. Visually he looks really cool, but retains a very normal and homely aesthetic which makes a really good player character. His charisma and suaveness makes every time he's on screen an absolute treat. It's hard not to love him. An issue with Leon that extends into gameplay is his voice lines. This is also a problem with Claire. Him going ‘What the hell” and whatnot really ruins the mood. Don't tell me how I, as an extension for you, feel. It's fine every now and then but he does it too much. I do like his voice a lot though so I guess I'll give it a pass.
Ada I have issues with. First off visually that trench coat is just not something that should ever be depicted outside of hentai. It looks like she (and Mr. X) is about to expose herself outside of a middle school. Maybe that's just my brainworms, except my neighborhood flasher from my childhood days also went around with a trench coat so I don’t think it's just my crippling Pixiv addiction. It's just hard to take her seriously in that getup, and the goofy glasses aren't helping. I get that it's meant to be an old detective mystery man sort of deal as per old cheesy movies to try to retain that B-grade atmosphere from 1, but even ignoring the tonal inconsistency within the storytelling, it doesn't come off as that. Eventually her outfit evolves into a ‘sexy’ cocktail dress outfit. Its clearly going for the femme fatale aesthetic now but it also has some really annoying issues; first it feels way to sex appeal-esque. For what reason is that the outfit you went with, did you just come back from a dinner party? It just doesn't make sense in the context of the story's actions so the reveal isn't a ‘woah’ like what's probably intended but more a ‘huh?’. The second big issue is that it highlights how small she is. Good god put some muscle on her, especially considering her line of employment and the actions she does in game. She looks like she'd get blown away from firing a 9mm. It just looks wrong. As an actual character there isn't much to say because she isn't much of a character outside of Leon. Every bit of her is in context to Leon. It makes her solo scenes very weird and almost nonsensical as she still holds the façade that she has to put on around Leon. The point of that is to keep the illusion up with the player, but it means they forfeit the only chance they have to build her as a character as herself. All she has for a character are her external traits which are all very surface level. She is a strong, smart, no nonsense independent woman. Wow, amazing, such depth. That can be gleaned just from the haircut alone (which I guess is a testament to good visual character design so it's not all bad).
Claire's story. I hate Claire's story, which is a shame because I do like Claire. I've been talking a lot of shit, but this is the only thing in the game I'd say I outright hate. In fact I put the game on hold for a few days just because I didn't want to do more Sherry bullshit. The biggest issue with Claire is tonal inconsistency and there's no real way to rectify this other than changing everything from the ground up. As an example you have a small girl coming to terms with her mothers ,who she felt like she didn't have much time with, death and, then 5 minutes later is a minigun sequence. The issue isn't the minigun sequence, it's the serious shit with the kids. The minigun is goofy and fun, it fits into Resident Evil. 1 ended with a rocket launcher. An attempt at a serious story about child abuse, and distant parents, doesn’t fit into Resident Evil. Just keep the kids out of it as a whole. It's just way too much of a downer for the other half of the atmosphere that the game wants. You can't really use kids as a device like this unless you want them to play the major role in the theming and atmosphere and Resident Evil is just not the place for that. This is primarily what made me hate Claire's route so much because most of the plot is related to Sherry and anything Sherry related is like a mental flashbang it just becomes painful to play. What makes it worse is the integration into the gameplay. When you get to play as Ada it happens in a linear section where you're transitioning between areas. This means that you have already accepted that you're not in the middle of something so the transition never takes away from your plans. The orphanage scene on the other hand just happens when you unlock a door in the station. I still had shit to do, I had plans, I needed to develop some film, and just getting yanked away from that to deal with some bullshit kid stuff which feels like it's for a completely different game is just infuriating.
Other things;
The true end. Not worth the extra playthroughs. While the Leon and Claire route are drastically different experiences, the B routes are not. This makes it come across as padding to hide the ‘true’ ending behind them. I think it's to make up for the fact that it is really short. My first run completely blind as Leon ended at 4:49 which is twice as fast as my first playthrough of 1. Doing Claire I went out of my way to do as much as I could. I did all the treks I complained about in the maps section, not a single section was left red. My time? 4:30. Granted that was my second playthrough so I was a bit better and more knowledgeable, but it's still really short.
Cutscenes. There are too many of them and they're really invasive. Because there's so many of them it's constantly getting in the way of your exploration and makes it feel more like a rollercoaster of cutscene to cutscene rather than actually exploring and stumbling onto things. In 1 cutscenes were used sparingly. If plant 42 was in 2 there would be a cutscene when you walk into the room to show it off which would ruin the ‘oh god what have I walked into’ feeling it gives in 1. It's another feeling that I feel like I've been robbed of a lot.
Graphics, Sound and Performance
Resident Evil 2 is a fucking beautiful game. I should preface this segment by saying I don't play graphics focused games so this is easily the most beautiful game in terms of realism I have played. And it's all on some black magic engine which runs as good as it looks. But realism as a concept for graphics sucks as it's guaranteed to look bad with age as other games look even realer. It's like a cycle of abuse. What never ages is scene design, and it's pretty beautiful here too for the most part, the neon of the gun shop, to the center of the lab, to that one bit with the shadow that looks like a lady. It's all beautiful in a way which isn't restricted to its graphics. Each scene is filled with lots of little individual things which all help to add to how nice it all is. My favorite example is the ‘Welcome Leon’ party signs. They really didn't need to go that far but they did so it's just a nice touch of love and care. This scene design is even shown off in the menu as it changes depending on where you are, which is a nice touch that games don't do enough of.
The sound design is equally great. I mentioned Mr. X’s footsteps but that level of design is found in everything from other enemies to environmental effects and it all combines to create a beautiful soundscape. It also uses silence well and it's nice to let what exists diegetically create the full atmosphere instead of relying on external sounds. The actual music in general in the game is a bit bland but its limited use makes it feel more impactful.
Complaints. You can not use keyboard volume controllers while the game is the active screen. Even in borderless window mode.
Wrapping Up
It's not hard to see why people love this game, but in online discussions it has the reputation of being a ‘zoomer game’ for people unable to play the originals and I can't disagree. Unfortunately I am a zoomer who can't get into ps1 era tank controls. It's at an awkward impasse between what the games were and where they would end up, so to someone who liked the first it feels wrong yet not disjointed enough to view it as its own.
Addendum
I played the original 2. I like it a lot too, if I were asked to choose between them I wouldn't be able to give an answer. That being said, it is very different. Despite that, a lot of the criticism and thoughts laid out here are consistent with my thoughts with the original. The big difference is that Claires story is more tolerable due to less (almost no) focus on themes of child abuse, and Irons portrayal as an abject sadist monster is a lot more fitting for a mid villain than the weird pseudo-pedo loser he comes in the remake. The one scene with the dead girl on the desk is really well done and the remake doesn't have its own equivalent of that. As some more minor things, the sewers in the original are better due to not just their simplicity and flow, but what they do with it. During Leon's story, using the sewers settings to act as a location where you can actually play alongside Ada really helps the connection both Leon and you as a player have to her. Speaking of that, I prefer Leon's more selfish motivations here as they come off as more human and not just a bit of a generic protagonist. It makes the final scene in the lab and his actions there a lot more impactful. It's one of my favourite scenes in a video game.