Resident Evil 0

You should neither buy nor play this.

First off, this game won't work on modern PCs. I'm on Windows 11 with an RTX 4090 and just couldn't get it to start. I fiddled for two hours with various tips in the forums and nothing worked for me. I ended up playing the Nintendo Switch version, which as far as I can tell is identical in every way. But even if you get the Windows version to work, I think it should stay on the shelf. It's a frustrating game with too few rewards. If you're interested in how the whole Resident Evil saga started then you're better off watching a video playthrough of Resident Evil 0 instead of playing through this painful game yourself. Note, though, that even when watching someone else play it's impossible not to feel the frustration!

The game's basic DNA is closer to that of point-and-click adventures than action horror, as it's essentially about solving puzzles by finding items in the environment, using them on the environment, and sometimes combining them. There are some enemies, too, and combat follows the usual survival trope of having very limited ammo so that every bullet counts, which encourages you to consider running away instead of attacking in order to conserve ammo. So far so good, but there's a lot to keep you from enjoying this basic formula.

One major issue is the atrocious save system. Its in-story conceit is cool, but there are ridiculously few opportunities to save. And because it's too easy to die due to a silly mistake (did you waste all your ammo?), you're often sent way, way back in your progress.

And this sucks because everything about the gameplay is tedious. Your inventory is extremely constrained so that much of the game consists of dropping items, moving them between characters, going back to pick them up again, etc. There's no clever thinking involved in terms of strategy or efficiency of inventory management. It's just an arbitrary obstacle that adds nothing but annoyance.

Another annoyance is the load screens: they occur very often because the levels are so small, and they are incredibly slow. Couldn't this have been fixed for the HD remaster? Save slot loading times are very slow, too.

The final frustrating issue has to do with the fixed camera perspective. It's great for atmosphere and the remastered HD graphics do make it look majestically cinematic. However, it's a disaster for gameplay as it's very common for enemies to come at you from angles you can't see. How did this nonsense ever pass any kind of playtesting?

After the fourth time I died and had to tediously repeat the same puzzle sequences and inventory management rigamarole, I rage quit. I was not having fun. At all.

What is your reward for suffering through such poor game design? A mediocre, predictable plot conveyed via bad storytelling. Despite the rich environmental design, herein is a narrative that too often prefers to tell you rather than show you. The cutscenes are blatant exposition with the characters saying out loud exactly what they are doing and why. The writing is almost comically bad.

Relatedly, the game doesn't know how to treat its female protagonist. On the one hand it wants you to take her seriously as a capable, professional law enforcer. On the other hand it lets you to dress her in skimpy "sportswear", a cheerleader outfit, or as a sexy nurse. It's hard not to feel sorry for her.

All in all, Resident Evil 0 is a disappointing entry in the franchise.