One of the weakest of the best is still good, right? Resident Evil 0 is a rather mediocre entry among the absolute best classic Resident Evil titles, which means, it’s still way above a lot of classic survival horror wannabes. And in its HD Remake version the game got better. Not just visually, like it mostly was with REmaster (not like it was a bad thing, mind you) – RE0 HD is actually more fun to play than the original GC (and later Wii) release.
Resident Evil 0 itself is a game with a long history of development. Prequel idea started being R&D’ed before RE1 was even released, game was finally shown in some playable state on N64 in 2000, but it seems like a lot of post-train story and gameplay was still not 100% set. After that the development was completely restarted for GC alongside REmake with slight story adjustments for both for continuity. And I think for a lot of people the concept of the “Resident Evil on a train” was something that stuck with them – it sounded interesting and new. And it actually is. Sadly, the Train is only about 1/5 of the entire game.
The game has a lot of interesting concepts – two playable characters at once, change from item boxes to “put item on the ground anywhere”, a bit more emphasis on unique abilities of playable characters – something RE1 introduced and since hasn’t really been used again in the series. But it’s the implementation that makes it all go average instead of great. Playing as two characters is not as fun as it could be, item management is more forced and boring and unique abilities of characters apart from gameplay differences (Billy deals with recoil better and gets hurt less), are very rarely used despite the possibilities. Even the ideas from other games in the series up to that point, are either unused or underused – zombies travel across rooms only once, Crimson Heads are not here, there’s no dodging or self-defense items, no creepy pursuing enemies (just an annoying, but often easily skippable, leech-monster), no real scenario variety.
But the main downer is the levels and the overall feel of the game. Story is all over the place, never sticking to any particular tone, with jRPG fabulous-looking evil guy being the main bad, game opening with documentary style narration (but never going back to it), character suddenly referencing the future (because it’s prequel, you see?). And yes, it’s storytelling in Resident Evil, who cares, right? Well, thing is – no matter how silly a lot of RE stories went, they usually did it with style and in a memorable cool way. RE0 is just “eh, it happened, I guess”. And the levels are just… boring. So are the bosses. They all feel like a collection of discarded classic RE ideas put together in one game. It also cannot really choose between the more colorful and stylish look of classic PS1-era REs and the “creepy old” look of REmake, something that was improved a lot in the HD Remaster (original was very gray/yellow-ish), but still feels not as good as other games.
But HD Remaster fixes not just visual issues and makes the game look very good. In addition, it adds several welcome changes in the controls (realtime reload button is a cool thing), most notable of which is the alternative control scheme. Now it was also present in REmaster, however REmake worked perfectly fine with classic tank controls – all the animations felt right, moving and shooting and evading was fun to master and use. In RE0 original tank controls have a slight delay due to additional animation frames for a lot of actions which are simply removed in alt. control scheme, making it a much better option, especially when controlling the partner character, even despite few places, where camera changes to screw up your movement. In addition to that, game also gets a silly and fun to play Wesker mode, where Billy is changed into RE5-style Wesker, who can run at super speed and explode enemies with his aura at will. It’s a ridiculous mode, that gets even sillier when you complete it once, as sadly there is no Wesker Leech Hunter, but all the rewards in the game are just unlocked for the second playthrough. It’s funny, it’s fun, it’s a nice way to relax after Leech Hunter or hard mode playthrough, and it’s always fun to explode zombie heads with your thoughts.
So, is it a good game to get? Well, if you like classic survival horror and this is the game you’ve missed before – definitely. If you’re a fan of RE series – yep. If you want to get into classic survival horrors – only after you try out better options. REmaster is a better option, but I would’ve suggested checking RE Director’s Cut (just not dual shock ver., if you value your ears), 2 and 3 as well, if possible. And same goes for people who are just checking this out without knowledge of the genre and the series – this is a rather good way, but there are better options to start with.
P.S. I also made a quick and dirty comparison of the original running on Dolphin versus the remaster: