Resident Evil Zero HD Remaster

The person who decided that removing the chest from this game and adding a huge number of story items would be a good idea, I want to address you: I wish you only six slots in your life, two of which would be occupied by a harpoon.

This game is really annoying to play, but the first train section is worth it, DON'T LET THIS BE YOUR FIRST RESIDENT EVIL

Pros:
✅ Great story (it’s not very long, but it’s more than enough).
✅ The graphics look nice (the 2D backgrounds are nicely remastered).
✅ Tons of replayability (you get different items depending on how you beat the game).
✅ Achievements.
Cons:
❌ I know this is originally an old game, but the loading screens get boring pretty fast (highly recommend the Fusion Fix mod to speed up loading times).
❌ I didn’t like how some puzzles require you to inspect items in a very specific way to open or interact with them.
❌ Very limited inventory size (you’ll be forced to drop items all over the map to save space).
❌ The backtracking is crazy, especially on a first playthrough.

A classic in the Resident Evil line with a fun story and good characters and if your a fan of extra unlockable content, then this game has it!
Something to bare in mind for newcomers to the franchise or people who have only played the later games/remakes, this is when the games where extremely trial and error and you had to be very resource mindful. You are not (nor do you need to) supposed to kill every enemy you see or rush through the game. There are some fundamental things you must understand about the legacy games before you play them as I have listed below:
These games are not meant to be beaten in 1 sitting as fast as you can. Take your time, make notes of things and take breaks.
Adding onto what I said above, keep a notepad be it virtual or an actual notepad with you. Maybe even have a print out or digital version of the in game map. Write down what enemies are weak to when you discover it, write down where you found things, the answers to puzzles and where tricky enemies are. Pay attention to what enemies you NEED to kill and which ones you can simply avoid. Information is key to beating resident evil.
Don't be afraid to load up a save or die. Make multiple saves (you have 10 slots so use them) but don't over save since you have limited ink ribbons to do so. Take a risk like I mentioned above, the game is very trial and error so you are bound to make mistakes or even soft lock yourself on the first playthrough. So BE SURE to use all your slots up instead of saving over 1 slot. Don't take death as another set back but instead treat it like a lesson. What did you learn from your death? did you discover where some useful items where? did you find out the location of enemies that are important? did you solve a tricky puzzle? Death is common in this game, if you view it as just a set back then your going to keep failing. Use and write down all the info you learned and try again using your new knowledge.
NEVER JUST DROP SOMETHING! Seriously there is an unwritten rule with these games I see almost nobody mention. The game has an interesting mechanic few people seem to either pick up on or mention to newcomers. Whenever you pick up and use a key item be it an actual key or some piece of equipment, you will be asked "this item is useless now, would you like to discard it?" this means you no longer need it and so you are safe to throw it away. The other instance of this is automatic discarding meaning you use an item and the game disposes of it without your permission. HOWEVER! if you have a piece of equipment and the game doesn't auto discard it or ask you if you wish for it to be removed.....that means you shouldn't abandon it! For example everyone likes to mention the hookshot being an item that can set you back. What they fail to realise is its because the hookshot is to be used the entire game. It never discards it for you and it never asks for it to be discarded. This means the games wants you to keep it for something later. Other RE games have similar items like code veronicas fire extinguisher. The tricky part is this game has no item box, so be prepared to juggle items around, but DON'T abandon them.
Use your characters wisely. For some reason I keep seeing people primarily (or only) use Rebecca. The issue is they keep dying or using up all their ammo failing to realise what the game warns you of at the start. Billy is the combat guy, he tanks more damage, deals more damage and can solve puzzles that involve moving heavy objects. Rebecca can mix herbs and uses a mixing tool which is very useful for a puzzle later in the game. Rebecca however is very weak to damage and not the best at combat. So stop using Rebecca as the primary combat role when that belongs to Billy. Both have their places in this game so use them accordingly. Also their weapons also have unique abilities with Billy's pistol being slower but more powerful in overhaul damage, but Rebecca's pistol is faster and has higher chance of critical hits (headshots). A little extra tip is use your inventory to reload! seriously it saves you precious moments in game. The in game reload animation can let enemies get dangerously close to you and risk you getting attacked. Simply bring up your inventory and combine the ammo with your gun. It's slow in terms of real time pacing but fast in terms of not getting hit. You should also switch to your knife when safe to do so and finish zombies on the floor. Don't waste precious ammo on shooting the zombie an extra 3 times on the floor, instead equip your knife and stab em.
Lastly READ! seriously the amount of playthroughs I have seen or forum posts of people not being able to solve puzzles or getting lost simply because they refuse to read is infuriating. This game has notes scattered all over the place and many of them contain clear answers to what your supposed to do. You can tell this too because many people don't read the tutorial notes that explain characters abilities and how to use certain items hence my previous post about people not using Billy correctly. Once you have done your first playthrough you shouldn't need the notes, then you can speedrun to your hearts content. But don't skip them then complain your stuck.
If you can bare all this in mind you should have a lot of fun with the game. I'm not saying its perfect and it certainly has flaws like removal of the storage box, poor AI for the teammate, annoying enemies that are either just bullet sponges or poorly made and LOTS of backtracking. But you can certainly help yourself by following some of the tips above and not treating it like RE4 onwards where you rush in, gun everything down and move on.

Eng/Ita
Ita: Sinceramente non capisco perchè Resident Evil 0 sia così tanto odiato.
Personalmente, da fan della saga l'ho trovato molto interessante come capitolo.
L'atmosfera è uno dei punti migliori del gioco: cupa e inquietante. L'ambientazione del treno e del centro di ricerca sono ben strutturati riuscendo a creare un po' di tensione nel giocatore.
La gestione del inventario è sicuramente l'aspetto più criticato, all'inizio può risultare scomoda e frustrante, soprattutto per il poco spazio disposizione e l'assenza delle classiche casse degli oggetti presenti nelle save room. Tuttavia, se ci si prende la mano , diventa più gestibile e persino più interessante dal punto di vista strategico.
Un altro aspetto criticato è quello delle telecamere fisse. Io personalmente mi sono trovato bene e penso che aiutino a creare tensione poiché non si ha il pieno controllo della visuale e ogni angolo può nascondere nemici.
La storia è ben scritta e aggiunge dettagli importanti all'universo di resident evil accennando degli eventi che si svolgeranno in RE 1 nella villa spencer. I personaggi, Rebecca e Billy riescono a creare una narrativa più dinamica che accompagna tutto il gioco.
In generale RE 0 è un gioco con una bella atmosfera, una grafica curata, una storia interessante e dei personaggi ben realizzati. Nonostante i problemi con l'inventario, che rimane il difetto principale, e le telecamere fisse che possono risultare difficili per alcuni, resta comunque un capitolo godibile.
Per questo motivo non capisco l'odio che riceve su internet, ha sicuramente i suoi limiti, ma secondo me merita.
Eng:I honestly don't understand why Resident Evil 0 is so hated. Personally, as a fan of the saga, I found it very interesting as a chapter..
The atmosphere is one of the best parts of the game: dark and disturbing. The train and research center are well structured, creating some tension in the player.
Inventory management is certainly the most criticized aspect; it can be uncomfortable and frustrating at first, especially due to the limited space available and the lack of traditional crates for items in the save rooms. However, if you get the hang of it, it becomes more manageable and even more interesting from a strategic point of view. Another aspect criticized is fixed cameras. I personally enjoyed them and think they help build tension since you don't have full control over your view and every corner can hide enemies.
The story is well written and adds important details to the resident evil universe by hinting at the events that will take place in RE 1 at the spencer mansion. The characters, Rebecca and Billy, manage to create a more dynamic narrative that accompanies the entire game.
Overall, RE 0 is a game with a nice atmosphere, polished graphics, an interesting story and well-developed characters. Despite the inventory issues, which remain the main flaw, and the fixed cameras, which can be difficult for some, it's still an enjoyable chapter. For this reason, I don't understand the hate it receives online; it certainly has its limitations, but in my opinion, it deserves a chance.

Capcom's Resident Evil Zero remains a controversial game in the Resident Evil franchise, so it's only natural that such a controversial game was subject to a very rough development cycle. Originally being developed for the Nintendo 64, Zero's development was completely restarted for the GameCube when it became abundantly clear that the N64's storage constraints were insurmountable and the 64DD add-on sold too poorly to justify development for it. Director Koji Oda made a point to differentiate Zero from previous games, partly due to hardware constraints and partly due to wanting to innovate on the survival horror formula. These departures have received a variety of reactions, some praising them for shaking up the formula and some criticizing them for being unintuitive. I'd say I generally lean more positive than most, but I'd still argue the game has some glaring flaws.
The original screenplay was written by Noboru Sugimura, writer of Resident Evil 2, before being significantly retooled post-reboot by Hiromichi Nakamoto and Junichi Miyashita. Resident Evil Zero serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. You play as Rebecca Chambers, the rookie medic from the first game, investigating the strange murders occurring within the Arklay Mountains with the rest of the STARS Bravo Team. After a dangerous helicopter crash and increasingly hostile weather conditions, she is separated from her team and boards the Ecliptic Express, an abandoned luxury train now populated by the living dead. On the train, she meets escaped death-row inmate Billy Coen, with whom she forms an uneasy alliance. Together, they must survive the horrors that lurk beyond.
Zero's story is a mixed bag, to say the least, suffering from often ridiculous tonal shifts and a general lack of focus. The biggest problem with the narrative is the antagonist, a mysterious man who controls an army of shapeshifting leeches, which he controls by singing opera. This feels entirely out of place and only gets more ridiculous when his true nature is revealed. Another issue I had with the story was its connection to the rest of the series. Despite being a prequel, Zero does very little to expand on the first game in a meaningful way, only really delving into what Rebecca had been up to before it. Characters from previous games like Albert Wesker, William Birkin, and Enrico Marini appear very briefly simply to remind you that this is a prequel, and their inclusion feels like hollow fanservice as a result. Like previous Resident Evil games, most of the narrative is told through memos that can be found in the environment, and these memos do wonders fleshing out Zero's story. However, previous RE games told you their stories with both memos and more traditional cutscenes, but Zero seems content to stick to the former. Because of this, the game lacks narrative flow, and it's hard to stay invested when the writers themselves seemingly aren't. You need to have a balance between the two, and Zero simply fails to achieve this. It's not all leeches and zombies though, there is one narrative aspect that Zero's writing succeeds in, and that is the relationship between Rebecca and Billy. Initially hostile, they eventually become blood brothers on the battlefield. The scene where Billy opens up to Rebecca about his PTSD from his service in Africa, reminiscing on how his squad was ordered to fire upon unarmed civilians, is genuinely emotional and you can hear the pain in his voice. The two feel like a real pair by the end of the game and it's heartwarming when Rebecca, despite her orders to capture Billy, decides to falsely report him as a casualty instead of turning him in. It's the only element of this story that actually works and I wish it were part of a much more engaging narrative.
Zero's most controversial element was its gameplay, originally designed by the legendary Hideki Kamiya before being iterated upon by a myriad of other designers. The biggest change is the partner system. RE2 had the "zapping system" which showed that Leon and Claire were working together, though in actuality it was a thinly veiled illusion. Zero, however, gives you control of both Rebecca and Billy simultaneously. Although this has proved controversial as all elements of Zero have, I found it to be a refreshing innovation in the Resident Evil formula, especially after Code Veronica had done so little to change it. It fundamentally changes how you strategize and divide resources, after all, now you have two mouths to feed. This forces you to think a lot more carefully than you would in a comparatively easier game like RE2. The puzzles designed around this mechanic were generally quite fun, too, minus a particularly repetitive box puzzle in the late game. The partner AI is pretty decent, and you can even give it commands if you don't want it wasting ammo on every zombie in sight. You can also leave them behind in a safe room if they've taken too much damage. It's surprisingly very intuitive for a mechanic often described as "cumbersome". The lack of item boxes, on the other hand, I am not fond of. I don't think it makes the game "unplayable" as some reviews have stated, far from it, but it doesn't really add any new strategy to the game either. Any seasoned RE player will just dump all of their nonessential items in the main hall, where nothing will attack them, and just leave them there until necessary. It trivializes any potential difficulty or strategy that the mechanic could have brought since I don't have to worry about backtracking to some potentially dangerous location to find ink ribbons, I can just go back to the always enemy-free main hall. Since the new inventory system doesn't really add anything, Capcom should have just stuck with the traditional item box system, which would have at least made some of the backtracking less tedious. That's another problem this game has: the backtracking. Backtracking is just an inherent part of survival horror and isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in Zero it feels a tad excessive. For the most part, it's a little uneven, but generally fine. However, in the final stage of the game, every single puzzle is spread out so far from the rest that it becomes an act of herculean willpower to actually get through it. The game's difficulty balancing is also fairly unrefined. I played on hard mode, as I want survival horror games to push me to my limits, but Zero goes too far at points. Despite having two health bars to tend to, the game only gives you barely enough to maintain one. The game's new enemies are also ridiculously frustrating at points. The mimicry marcuses aren't too bad, they are the "elite mook" of the game similar to the hunters and lickers in the previous games respectively. The threat they represent is genuinely terrifying. The problem is, the game has two more elite mooks in the form of the hunters and eliminators, so a good amount of the game's enemies can really put the hurt on you. It feels excessive and leads to many frustrating encounters.
When you complete Zero, you unlock an extra game mode called Leech Hunter. In this mode, you have to collect as many crystal leeches as you can throughout the training facility. Essentially, this is Zero's battle/mercenaries mode. Each leech is either blue or green, and each color can only be picked up by one of the characters respectively. I only gave Leech Hunter a brief spin, as it did not hold my interest for too long, but I found it to be an interesting little minigame. The most interesting part is how it doesn't have any timer whatsoever. You can explore the facility collecting leeches to your heart's content, leaving whenever you feel you've got enough. This does mean the mode lacks the tension of The Mercenaries, but I can imagine spending more time on it at a later date. It's decent for what it is.

Resident Evil 0, overall, I think it’s a good game. Not one of the absolute best in the series, and definitely not flawless, but still good. I had fun playing it, and as someone who knows this series very well, I can say RE0 is one of those games that has some really strong ideas, mixed with some very obvious design mistakes that hold it back from being greater than it could’ve been.
On my first playthrough, I played it fully modless, the intended way. And yes, I enjoyed it, but I also felt the game fighting me more than it should. On my second playthrough, I used the item box mod, and that improved the experince a lot. Not a little, a lot. It made the game flow better, reduced the pointless backtracking, and let me focus more on the survival horror itself instead of babysitting dropped items all over the map like I was running a storage company.
One thing that really surprised me was the graphics. The game actually looks fantastic in a lot of places. The pre-rendered backgrounds mixed with the 3D animated elements attached to them looked way better than I expected. Honestly, I think it looks better than RE1 Remake. And yeah, I said it. RE1 Remake is the better game overall, no question, but some of its backgrounds can be so messy and over-detailed that sometimes I dont even know what the hell I’m looking at. RE0, on the other hand, often looks cleaner while still being beautiful, and that really worked in its favor.
Another thing I liked was the new enemies. And this is coming from someone who, most of the time, only really cares about zombies and Tyrants in Resident Evil. Usually when the series starts throwing in weird creatures, I lose intrest fast. But RE0 actually did a pretty good job here. I found its enemies more memorable and more fitting than the enemies introduced in RE7 and RE8. I know that might sound harsh, but that’s honestly how I feel. RE0’s creatures still felt like they belonged in that older, dirtier, more unsettling version of Resident Evil.
Now the two-character system is one of those mechanics that I respect a lot, even if I also got tired of it. At first, it was a genuinely good idea. It gave RE0 its own identity instead of just being “more classic RE.” Swapping between Billy and Rebecca, combining their abilities, solving things together, it was fresh. But then the game starts using it too much for tiny inconveninces, and that’s where the problem starts. Instead of feeling smart, it starts feeling like the game is forcing separation just because that’s its gimmick.
The hookshot is probably the best example of that, and I hated that thing. I really hated it. It feels like a bad mechanic that mostly exists to force the two-character structure and split them apart when the game wants it. It takes up two inventory slots, which is insane in a game with already limited inventory space. So if you’re carrying a pistol and ammo, congrats, now you’ve only got two slots left for healing, key items, or loot. That is just bad design. And worst of all, the hookshot stays in the game way longer than its welcome. Every time I thought I was finally done with it, the game was like “nope, carry this garbage again.” It stopped being interesting very fast.
And of course, the lack of item boxes is one of the game’s biggest flaws. I understand the idea behind it, but in practice it creates the same kind of issue that Code Veronica had, where you can end up with your best weapons or important supplies on the wrong character. That’s not tension, that’s just the game being annoying. The item box mod proved this to me even more, because once I used it, the game became much more enjoyable without losing what makes Resident Evil feel like Resident Evil.
As for the characters, this is another weak point. Billy and Rebecca are not terrible, but compared to other Resident Evil protagonists, they feel weak. I never really got attached to them the way I do with the series’ stronger leads. There were even moments where I cringed a bit, which is saying something because I can tolerate a lot of RE nonsense if the characters are likable enough. Rebecca in RE1 feels more interesting just by association with the mansion incident than she does in her own prequel, and Billy never fully clicked with me either. They’re servicable, but they dont carry the game the way Leon, Jill, Claire, or even Chris can.
Puzzle-wise, this game is mixed. Some puzzles are fine, some are classic RE stuff, but some of them are explained terribly. The animal statue puzzle is a great example. It really needed a better hint or clearer explanation, because the logic behind it is so vague that I was just sitting there asking myself what exactly the game wanted from me. Am I supposed to light them from weakest to strongest? Strong and weak based on what exactly? Physical strength? Predatory rank? Which animal beats which? A snake is weak against some things but its venom can kill a human, so what are we even measuring here? Do I divide them into two groups? Three groups? The puzzle is not clever when the player can’t even understand the logic the game expects him to follow.
And there was another puzzle or sequence, which I won’t spoil directly, where the game puts you under pressure with a timed event, meaning if you waste too much time, you lose. That by itself is fine. The problem is the game does not properly guide you to the correct path. In fact, it gives what feels like a wrong hint, which led me to go the wrong way and lose a lot of progress because I hadn’t saved. That’s not good puzzle design. That’s not the player failing to understand a fair clue, that’s the game misleading the player during a stressful section. It would’ve been much better if they had simply said less, or gave a proper hint, instead of pushing you toward the wrong room and wasting your time.
Story-wise, I also have issues with it. If I’m remembering correctly, RE0 creates a weird inconsistency with RE1 regarding the lab area. In RE0, the facility under the training center basically gives you a NEST-style underground lab setup, while in RE1 the big underground lab is under the Spencer Mansion. Maybe there’s a lore explanation and maybe I’m not wording it perfectly, but it still feels messy when you put both games side by side. That’s one of the classic problems with prequels. They try to add more, but sometimes they make the older story feel less clean instead of richer.
So yeah, that’s basically how I see Resident Evil 0. It’s a good game. I had fun with it. It looks way better than I expected, the enemies were surprisingly strong, and the two-character idea was genuinely cool at first. But the game also has weak protagonists, badly explained puzzles, an annoying inventory system, and one of the most obnoxious tools in the series with that stupid hookshot.
It’s a game I’m glad I played, and as a Resident Evil fan, I do think it’s worth experiencing. But it also feels like one of those games where you can clearly see the line between good ideas and bad execution. RE0 had the ingredients to be something truly great, but too often it chose annoyance over elegance.