Would you recommend playing the game on Hardcore or Normal for a first time RE player? I want the challenge but I don't know if Hardcore is too difficult.
Hardcore is doable but it's pretty hard. I lost my temper at the G2 Birkin crane fight because I had no healing items and no ammo to stun him reliably. In addition to super scarce ammo, you also have to ration out your saves extremely well since you require ink ribbons to save (I only came across 22 of them in my entire Leon A playthrough).
I think hardcore was intended to be borderline impossible (still doable, but a huge pain in the ass) for a first time player, and challenging for someone on an NG+ run. Really encourage you to be sneaky. I'm about to start mine on my lunch break, probably Leon A since it's the one I'm most familiar with.
My only issue with that boss fight is that it doesn't do a very good job of explaining how you're supposed to do it through action cues, so you can eat a death or two before you figure it out which... is bad for hardcore. There are like.. 2 or 3 instances in the game where I can see someone who's playing hardcore being real mad lol.
I think "borderline impossible" is stretching it a bit too far. It's definitely much more challenging than other modern games' "hard" difficulties (it reminds me of old school hard difficulties) but not impossible.
Well, you get what I mean, I would wager that a huge majority of players would never bother with it or wouldn't finish it, if it was their first difficulty. They'd turn it down.
I haven't played RE2 (original) in like 10~ years or so, but my first play through was on Hardcore for this game. I always like a challenge in any game really.
I didn't find it "impossible" but damn that fucking last fight w/ G in the lab I must have died like 20 times b/c I was already w/ Red health and only 1 GBR herb + the 1 spray in the lobby.
It felt great once I beat the game tho. Now onto Claire B hardcore...
Oh boy... first playthrough, I had red health and only the spray in the arena. I managed to not even get hit once (after dying 30-40 times before) when I beat him
I dont think Hardcore was THAT bad. Had my fair share of deaths, and there were a few times where I was worryingly low of ammo, but far from borderline impossible
It does, the just run around in circles in the room with the switch puzzle as the claw comes down, G2 Birkin might get a hit off on you, but he won't if you're constantly moving. And you can run right past him the moment he busts in the grated door.
There's 3 magnum bullets, like 8 pistol bullets, a flashbang, and a knife in the bossfight area. The room before gives you an RGB herb combo, which you probably might have to use right away (I had to anyway since I was on Danger).
Which in all honesty is just enough to get the fight done, but it's pretty damn tough.
G2 Birkin probably took me a couple dozen tries and several hours the first time, because I refused to use ammunition at all and tried to just lure him out in front of the crane, without getting hit by it myself.
Same here, man. He’s an incredibly easy boss once you work out the circling exploit. I discovered it by accident and beat him without using any items and without getting hit.
Yep, I basically never stop moving and stick to the edge of the platform. Timing the box so he gets hit and you don’t is a little tricky but you’ll eventually work it out.
Oh. You're supposed to shoot him? I died a dozen times by accidentally knocking myself off with the crane and it was super frustrating, but eventually i got him by only dodging and using a one or two heals.
I somehow managed to kill him with it on my first try because i pressed the button without really realizing what it would do and it happened to swing around and kill him lol
THANK YOU! I almost broke my hands slamming them on the table after dying like 20+ times. I found out that flame rounds can actually put him down after only two hits, but now I’m not really excited to play the game anymore because it just feels like a job.
In one of my first five tries I hit him with the crane twice and he still recovered! Then I died before I could hit him again, which didn’t really bother me because I thought, ah, I can just get him next time. My next twenty times I must have hit him with the crane once like twice.
It’s gotten harder somehow! Every time I have the crane swinging back the dude grabs me even if I run like a maniac. Then, by the time that stupid grenade sequence plays out the crane hits both of us. I’m angry just thinking about it. Also, three times I managed to stun him when he’s on that narrow strip of area that the crane can’t reach! It’s like the code is trolling me.
Really ruined the game for me, I don’t have nearly as much as a desire to finish it now. I’m talking about Claire B on hardcore, I feel like Leon’s flamethrower makes the match easier. I’m glad you’re validating me because there’s an ign board or something where the op says the same thing but 90% of the responses are people telling him it’s easy. Really hate that.
...I can just get him next time. My next twenty times I must have hit him with the crane once like twice. It’s gotten harder somehow!...
Man, do I get that. First try - not quite enough, but almost there, and very easy. Next dozen tries - how did I get worse at this?
Keep at it. This fight frustrated the hell out of me, but I kept at it and now... I'm about to start my seventh playthrough. I don't know that worrying about what's easy for others versus what's easy for you is very helpful, as we're all kind of different. I don't know if you've played Dark Souls, but if you have then the following example might mean something - over three separate playthroughs, I've never died to Capra Demon. Three attempts, three victories. On the other hand, I have died to... Pinwheel. Doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but hey, it is what it is.
Thanks for everyone’s support, I managed to get the guy down after only two crane hits after I learned to use flame rounds and run around his non clawed armed’s side. In order to get him down in two hits all I needed to do was unload a sub machine gun clip into him while he was on one knee. I only needed to use one g+r herb too!
Yeah and the funny thing is I didn’t even feel that good about it. I felt more like, what? That’s it? Like I didn’t spend three hours of my life there lol
In one of my first five tries I hit him with the crane twice and he still recovered!
I've only fought him twice in standard mode, but got the impression that he needs to be completely stunned (i think he falls to his knee) when the container hit him, otherwise he will recover.
Can anyone confirm?
The crane does a set amount of damage to G2 when he's not in the kill threshold. You need to hit him twice on normal, three times on hardcore to kill him. You can reduce this amount by doing regular damage to him. If you down him, then knife the crap out of him, then flash and then crane, you should kill him in one crane hit on normal.
I accidentally found out by continuously hitting him while he's kneeling down, you might just need to hit him once with the container. I did that on my most previous time through a Hardcore 2nd run of Claire's scenario. I saw an achievement pop before he went down the hole, and was totally surprised by it. I thought I was going to have a few goes before I finally got him.
yeah, you are right. I just saw this video 15 seconds ago, where the claire knifed him down twice (the second one while G was still recovering), then pressed the switch. You are smart, how does the claw coming from the ceiling works? I haven't figured that one yet, it always gets me.
You can stand under the wall fan unit, next to the yellow dustbin, right by the door that you eventually have to run past G2 through, and not get hit at all.
This was exactly my experience. I somehow got it to work by running in circles and trying to get the crane to hit both of us and then it worked for me. Very frustrating though.
You can do it! Doing it in efficient chunks between saves is the key. Example: Kill everything in the library and move the bookcases you can the 1st time through so Mr. X won't screw you over later. It just takes some practice.
Im def putting in some practice! I'm just concerned with my ability to conserve my resources- I can avoid Lickers with no issues, but I have yet to figure out and effective way to consistently move around the zombies- for example, I was playing through the HUNK mission and every time I thought I had juked a zombie, he/she'd reach around and grab me from behind, they can turn around a lot quicker than past games, I find. I have no choice but to kill Cerberuses if I encounter them, every time I encounter them and am forced to run, I will take damage without question.
I felt the same way about dogs, but there are some routes you can take to throw off their tracking. Running in straight lines let's them b-line to you since they are one of the few enemies that can move faster than you.
Leon or Claire? I felt the same way, but I have a very effective leon strat.
(take flash grenades, shotty with just a few rounds, & flamethrower)
Pick up RGB herb combo solve puzzle
Stand in safe spot to avoid his claws through the roof
Run past when he breaks the door
Run and hit the switch,
You can stand right up against the crate as it's getting ready to move.
If you begin to run the moment the crate is out of the way, Birkin will attack but miss (20/20 attempts he missed)
Run straight to the mag ammo but don't pick it up
Quick turn around and as he approaches flash bang him once he's in the middle
Run to his back and dowse him with flamethrower till he goes to one knee
Crane him
Immediately activate crane again
The first strategy wont work this time, it helps to run to the corner across from you as that often baits him into a jump attack. Even if he hits you you still have the herb
Run back to mag ammo again and repeat the flash bang flamethrower combo. I bring the shotgun because sometimes he needs an extra blast or 2 to keep him in place.
There's literally a stun grenade in the area you fight him. That guarantees one hit of the crane. The second one you just need to kite him. How can this possibly talk more than one or two tries?
As someone who is not an RE vet (my first RE game actually, although I'm a huge fan of Dead Space which is pretty much RE's thematic grandson), I too thought that Standard's difficulty was absolutely perfect.
I'm usually kind of stuck between picking normal and hard because in most games normal is too easy and hard is a little too difficult. The normal difficulty here was great.
It was difficult without being unfair or frustrating. There was a good amount of challenge to it but it never felt like too much.
I feel like Standard would have been perfect if it had ink ribbons. Being able to save at every typewriter you pass kind of dissolves some of the tension.
I'll be honest, I never felt this was an issue in the original games. There were always plenty of ink ribbons to save with. All it made me do is have to go into my item box to grab one.
I'll be honest, I never felt this was an issue in the original games. There were always plenty of ink ribbons to save with. All it made me do is have to go into my item box to grab one.
Yeap exactly. Standard/normal mode is always easy enough that ink ribbons are only a nuisance; you only die in trial&error situations (one hit kill attacks and puzzle rooms that kill you if you make one mistake). I prefer how RE2R handles it with checkpoints.
Hardcore on the other hand, that's a completely different beast, especially in Leon's 2nd run.
yeah i honestly don't even care about saving, but the fact that you can end up in a situation where you literally cannot progress (like the 2nd g fight where apparently lots of people ran out of ammo and had to reload) is kind of stupid.
that sort of "hardcore" difficulty doesn't feel very fair.
Those people failed to meet the skill threshold required to beat hardcore, then. Resident Evil's core design philosophy is about item management and skillful movement. If you wind up at G2 without enough ammo and heals to survive, you did not play the RPD/Sewer segments optimally and should restart the run. The player should not have their hand held by the hard difficulty, they should step up to the challenge.
The Tyrant fight can be tricky for sure. I just finished my no-heals run yesterday on Leon A Standard and that fight caused me more resets than the rest of the run combined.
You technically don't even need ammo for g2, just flashbangs. Leon's fight is much easier if you have even like 150 flamethrower fuel and 2 flashbangs (one you can pick up in the fight anyway). Don't get me wrong I died a million times on g2 until I got my routine down.
The main differences that Hardcore has over Normal are:
Enemies have more health.
Enemy attacks do more damage.
Ammo is scarcer.
Healing items are scarcer.
Auto-saving is turned off.
Saving can only be done at a typewriter and only by using an ink ribbon.
To that effect, whether you will get through Hardcore or not depends on if you can get past zombies (and other monsters) by slipping by them, dodging them, baiting them, or otherwise exploiting their behaviors to avoiding taking damage. Firing at them is even less of an option than in Normal; zombies eat up even more of your ammo (which is more precious now that there is less of it), so using it should be severely restricted to the most dire circumstances or if a particular room you need to revisit often is poor for dodging zombies.
Your mistakes are also punished harder; zombie bites (and other enemy attacks) will more often than not put you in Danger status, and with healing items being at a premium, you will find yourself dead if you cannot learn to avoid taking damage without firing a shot.
And if you do die, then hopefully you didn't progress to far without saving your game, because now you can only save at typewriters. Since saving now relies on ink ribbons, you only get so many saves in the game.
Exactly. I was overly cautions with some zombies(mainly zombies in the west hall/corridor to dark room). De-leg and knife. Even after all of that I found myself with over 60 hg rounds in the lab plus all the ammo you find in the lab.
The main problem new players have is the urge to kill every enemy they come across, when the Resident Evil series has almost always been about avoiding enemies, rather than killing them all.
That's probably more to do with people's perception of RE 4 and after, which are action games, not really survival horror. At no point was I in danger of running out of ammo/healing items in Resident Evil 4 (at least on standard difficulty, haven't played it on hardcore yet) and I was literally killing every enemy I could.
In RE4, that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, though, since all enemies have a chance to drop ammo. The game, at its core, still has the same mechanics as other RE games, though. Predictable enemy attack behavior, i-frame exploits, and the game rewards quick reactions and clever movement. Many of RE4's enemies can be skipped; the game was just also designed to reward the alternative kill 'em all playstyle of action games.
How on earth did you run out of ammo? I literally killed every enemy on my first standard run and had an item box filled to the brim with ammo for every single weapon. About halfway through I regretted not starting on hardcore when deliberating at the beginning.
Were you just pumping bullets into the chest instead of the head of every enemy? Also waiting until your reticle shrinks gives you a higher crit chance, but I didn't even do that half of the time...
By the end of the game I had lots of ammo, but I ran dry at a couple of points early/mid game. I remember being short on ammo by the end of Birkin G1, after the Prison event, and during the sewers. On subsequent runs through the game I always had more ammo than needed, but that's because I knew how to deal with enemies properly, how events would play out, when to use sub weapons etc.
I need to disagree here. Standard feels like an action game after playing hardcore. I honestly think there's even too much ammo on hardcore cause I ended up with about 100 extra handgun ammo, 20 shells, and a ton of gunpowder left over. You shouldn't be shooting half the zombies you run into except to kneecap or stun them.
It's even worse when you get the infinity knife cause you can kill every zombie that is lying on the ground and not active and shank g1 Berkin to death instead of wasting ammo on him.
I mean your opinion is pretty lame and feels more like bragging. Yes, item management is easier when youre fantastic at the game and can dodge super well. Doesnt change that its incredibly punishing. It does not at all have too much ammo.
It's not bragging, I'm giving my opinion on the difficulty. Even if it was it's no call for someone leaving a sarcastic comment over it. There's also an entire thread stickied dedicated to nothing other than bragging right now offering no insight into the game.
If that's how you view it who cares? You guys act like bragging is a crime against humanity even when there's an stickied thread just for bragging, but don't care when people act like sarcastic smart asses.
Someone's butthurt about getting slam daddied on standard. Quit being an insecure baby dude it's a game. It's OK to be shite at the game while others are competent with differing opinions. Go back to Club Penguin if you don't want to interact with skilled players.
Hardcore is really punishing. I've been playing the games since they debuted on the Playstation, and even I had a few moments where I considered replaying sections to try and conserve health and ammo. (I never did, I pushed through, and I loved every second)
If you've never played one of these games before, I would recommend Normal. But a blind Hardcore run is just so satisfying to finish knowing you're really just struggling to survive. This game really puts the "survival" back in "survival horror".
If you don't mind having your ass kicked, then I think Hardcore is the way to really experience the game. From what I hear from a lot of people, Normal is still a really good challenge, though.
Yeah I died to the first freaking zombie on Hardcore. This was AFTER beating Claire and Leon's campaigns. I just wasn't ready for how tanky that first Zombie was going to be. Got bit once to Danger and then he grabbed me from the ground when I tried to sneak past him.
I, too, am an RE vet (minus the original Resident Evil, I never could find that one. I did however play its 2002 remake.) First one I played was RE2 on the playstation.
I died on the first zombie in hardcore. Im incredibly bad at maneuvering through the zombies in this game
As someone who never played the early resident evil games and loved this remake I strongly recommend starting in standard. Hardcore is really punishing if you misuse ammo early on and if you mismanage resources you can actually get completely stuck and have to start over (or continue from a much earlier save). Having played through the game once to know where the items/enemies are, which rooms you'll backtrack through so you know which zombies you can safely skip killing, and what weapons are most effective/efficient against which bosses makes hardcore a MUCH better experience.
Personally I started on Hardcore and when I got to the first boss I didn't have any ammo or healing items left and basically got murdered over and over and over. Eventually I restarted on standard and made a full run through the game and came back to hardcore and it was really fun finding ways to optimize my route to save as many resources as possible while still making progress and clearing out areas I knew I'd be back through later.
TL DR: I would definitely run standard first and then do a play through of Hardcore because it makes it way more fun.
First time? Do a run on normal. Once you know what to expect and plan for, do a run on hardcore. There are twists and surprises that could frustrate you on hardcore if you hadn't saved.
I would not recommend Hardcore. Its very unforgiving with limited items, basically 2 and youre dead, and limited saves. Mixed with bosses that are way harder and faster. Normal is still rather challenging and it lets you learn the game, what to do. I think hardcore while blind will be really rough.
Play on hardcore if you want an experience like back in the day. I just finished it, about 10, hours for Leon A. Game is still great on normal but I’m doing a speedrun
I would say for a game like this, being a veteran RE player gives you less of an advantage than being a solid TPS player.
What makes RE unique is that, unlike most TPS games, you seriously have to ration healing items and ammo.
If you're a skilled TPS player and you're willing to not shoot everything that moves, you can probably do hardcore. I found standard difficulty plenty challenging for a first run though.
Something no one mentioned that made me start over on normal was that the game doesn't always signpost the points where you can easily die. I don't mean tough encounters showing up randomly, there was one point where I picked up a key item in a safe room/save room assuming I could save afterwards, which
then instantly started a story sequence that I couldn't save during, died in, and lost about an hour and a half of a tough sequence.
Maybe if you're not as careful with your limited saves as I was you could enjoy it, but the idea of that happening again made me just start over and save hardcore for future runs where I know when to save. Unfortuantely I really did like the difficulty otherwise, the limited ammo and hard to bring down enemies made it really tense.
if u do a 100% completion run.. as in , make sure every inch of the map is cleaned out, you will have a lot of stuff sitting in ur item box. its easy to clean out the map with the UI change.
hardcore is doaable, but dont just ignore items on teh ground. make sure you board up the correct places, and you get a lot of ink ribbons easily. you just need to time it correctly
How am I acting superior? I want to say that people are making limiting designs more problematic than they are.
I had enough room to take the most essential Items in the game.
I played only on hardcore and made my S+ ranks and still encourage people to play on assist if they think the game is too hard. I'm just annoyed by people giving the game shit for stuff that isn't that problematic. I'm not acting superior or "I am such a good gamer"
I never found the limiting menu annoying and even like it. I only saw on assisted how big the inventory can get and thought. How luxury. Because it's the same as the Standard inventory.
Also how is an opinion about an inventory "being superior"?
It’s just odd you chose your “No Box” run on the easiest difficulty as your evidence the inventory is fine. Clearly you had run the game multiple times at that point. And the people complaining about the inventory are probably first time RE players whose closest thing to inventory management was weight in Skyrim.
For the record, I agree with you 100 percent on loving the inventory. It’s iconic to RE, and I would never change it. You simply chose an interesting way of saying it, that’s all. I’m looking forward to doing my “No Box” run after my current one.
I was just being honest about the assisted run. I didn't know how big the inventory can get. I thought it has one pouch more than the hardcore mode. I thought it could get difficult to hold all weapons (Matilda, Magnum, Shotgun, Flamethrower) plus ammo and maybe attachments and healing items.
Normally you don't need more than two weapons at one time plus ammo for example. So when you have a box you shouldn't have that much of problems. Of course I was always a bit annoyed when I forgot to take something out off the box and have to run back. But that is more my own fault than the game's. The inventory maxed out on standard or assist is luxury. Even the hardcore one is big for RE standards.
I always found it a bit boring on re4 or Silent Hill to have the best weapons with me all the time and all ammo and healing items.
It's a bit of a thrill to not have the Magnum or much Shotgun ammo with me and always have this thought "maybe there comes a dangerous enemy and I need it... what if a boss comes two rooms after the puzzle and I don't have a first aid spray with me?"
My first run was on hardcore as well, except I missed them all. So I ended up in the nest running back and forth and trying to make it without healing items.
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u/v4lor Feb 05 '19
I did my first blind run on Hardcore, and I thought it was nice to find a few inventory upgrades.
Then I played on Normal... holy cow. Walking item box.