Given that the gameplay is derived from RE2R, it's still solid.
My first playthrough was a little under three hours on PS4 and I explored a decent amount. The reason for why this game can be completed so quickly is that there's not really much to explore compared to other RE games you never have to backtrack that much because what you leave behind is relatively insignificant and you never have to go back to places for more puzzle solving. That could be confusing considering that most RE games are short, but RE3R is one of the shortest Resident Evil games I've ever played due to the fact that it's the most linear RE game yet. The only characters who improved from the original were Tyrell and Carlos who is by far the best character out of everyone anyone who plays this game will LOVE Carlos. Jill is snobby and acts way too hard to be a badass, Nicholai may as well be wearing a big white mustache to twirl whenever he's going to do something evil, Mikhail's despair over the loss of his subordinates under him is replaced by a generic disgruntled leader character, Dario is turned from a survivor struck with overwhelming grief over his daughter's death to a complete noodle of an idiot, and Nemesis is turned into an incompetent goofball that only tosses Jill around even when he's got her dead to rights. It's like the RE3R team read a synopsis of the RE3 plot and decided it needed a human main antagonist to show that, "oh, it's not the monsters that are actual evil, it's human greed that's actual evil" except the original already showed these points much better without Nicholai being such a blatant villain, albeit less obviously.Īs for the characters, almost everyone in this game has been dumbed down to a certain degree. Also, aside from other reasons, Jill already has the T-virus antibodies from being cured so this plotline with the vaccine was pointless. Jill makes the vaccine to save the city and the vaccine gets destroyed anyways (Jill and Carlos couldn't give less of a s**t at the end).
The issue I have with this story is that, halfway, it goes absolutely nowhere. The plot for RE3R is almost like the original plot, except there's plotline switch that focuses from escaping the city to getting the vaccine to stop the missile strike from blowing up. Most people will mention a lot about how improved the storyline is in the remake compared to RE3 Nemesis and I can see why: it's a lot more focused and streamlined.
That being said, this is probably my least favorite RE game and I didn't have that much more fun outside of my first playthrough. There are a couple of ways to tackle this game so I'll be reviewing it from the perspective of one who's grown up playing the original 1999 game. As a Resident Evil game AND a Resident Evil remake, it's pretty terrible. To make things clear: as an action horror game, it's okay there are issues here and there but it works about 70% of the time at least.
For someone who holds RE3 Nemesis as one of my top RE games, I have a lot to say here. I was one of the fools who pre-ordered this game on PS4 thinking it was going to be bigger than RE2R. Resident Evil 3, the great remake that could have been.