I’m playing through RE games (that have Leon first) with my friend and because I’ve actually had a genuine phobia of zombies since I was little and struggle playing horror games we made a sort of deal that I would play the retro games and he would play the remakes/9 probably. (and we’ll play 6 together since. y’know. co-op.)
because yeah there was no way I was playing through RE2make. I actually had to be on my phone for a decent chunk of his playthrough. I didn’t miss any story beats, but I definitely know the original better than the remake because of it.
and genuinely my take away is that you should play the old games.
there are many ways that make playing OG RE2 much easier than it was ever supposed to be. the built in Rookie mode and playing it on an emulator literally remove the two main mechanics that make it difficult; ammo and saving.
once those two things are gone it’s genuinely really awesome to go through the game and appreciate the atmosphere because damn. despite not having to really worry about dying, I genuinely would feel the dread of feeling like something was around every corner.
and I know everyone talks about the loss of the A/B system but there’s a reason for that! genuinely it’s worth playing the original just for that. especially if you have played the remake because it’s cool to see the mishmash of events they used. because both are kinda A and both are kinda B.
the most interesting one is that they used Leon A for the Ada confrontation when the Leon B version was very established as canon. like Ada saving Leon from the tyrant and “dying” was very important. and I guess they just moved it to earlier but—
that’s a whole other topic though.
anywho, OG RE4 is just genuinely a good game lol. like RE2 helped pioneer survival horror, and I think it is a great game for it’s era, but yeah RE4 is just good with the only real qualifier being “it introduced a lot of these things, so they’re not exactly perfect mechanics yet.” and the buttons for fire and reload genuinely kinda piss me off but you do get used to it. oh and the quick time events can be brutal like wtf give me a second to process what’s on the screen. (okay and the insta-kill enemies can be a bit too much, but you can prepare pretty well for most of them and it’s more a “shit okay stronger gun time” than anything else.)
…I do realize that’s more qualifiers than I said there were at first, but none of them really get in the way of me playing. and the quick time events are so of the time that I honestly find them more funny than annoying a lot of the time.
like I really did have to cheat to play RE2, but I’m playing RE4 legit and not struggling that much. like I’ve had to replay sections, but I never feel like I was cheated. because it almost always genuinely feels like it was my fault. like yeah my bad Leon, sorry. I was not looking at your health like I should’ve been. rip.
I feel like you don’t need me to tell you to play the original RE4, it’s one of The Games of All Time™️ buuut idk maybe it might inspire someone to try if I, someone who’s not amazing at games and is here for the story above all else, genuinely says that I am having fun playing the game and that if you beat the remake, I do not think there should be an issue playing the original.
like it’s not easy, you’ll likely have to do certain sections multiple times over, but OG RE4 does not want you dead nearly as bad as OG RE2.
though I’m also only about halfway through RE4 sooo I’ll update this if it gets significantly harder at any point. I am a little worried about end game. but I’m also not dying enough for me to think I’ll hit a point I can’t get through yet.
edit: oh and I am 100% calling OG RE4 retro. it is technically a couple months older than me. January 2005 vs May 2005.
