Directed by the visionary Hideki Kamiya and produced by Shinji Mikami, Resident Evil 2 is the expansion of everything we had in the first game. The game abandons live-action scenes to bring us CGI cutscenes that, although dated, deliver the story very well, as the title no longer relies solely on reading files to present the plot.

Filled with action, chaos, and a lot of gore for its time, we follow rookie cop Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield—Chris's sister, who went to the city to visit her older brother—who now find themselves in the middle of the city's collapse and need to find a way to escape.

The game is full of intrigue and some expository dialogue, like a good soap opera, which keeps us engaged in the story. The gameplay is faster and more fluid, the movement has been improved, and we have a larger number of enemies on screen, as well as a greater variety of foes, bosses, and weapons. This is where the franchise's body horror is definitively born. Instead of reading about how mutations or zombies arise, we see it happen right in front of us. This makes us question how far Umbrella's scientists were willing to go; seeing all the lives ruined by the company directly and indirectly is very tragic, although the game doesn't delve too deeply into this reflection. The level of gore rose considerably and sparked several controversies at the time.

The way the two campaigns intertwine is very fluid, showing that Capcom was committed to not repeating the mistakes of the first game. There are still some incongruities, but I overlook them by using the "non-diegetic gameplay" card.

It strikes me, however, how the developers thought more about level design than architecture: an immense police station with no bathrooms, and a factory and laboratory that are little more than half a dozen corridors. But that is just a scenic detail. Even so, the RPD manages to be as charismatic as the Spencer Mansion, with a much higher level of environmental strategy. At various points, you will question whether to spend heavy ammo to clear the fastest route or use light ammo to clear the longer one.

The game's difficulty is more balanced than the first one's. Even with a much larger amount of zombies on screen, the game offers you mechanics to deal with them. The corridors are wider, and in several rooms, it is possible to "loop" the zombies using the environment itself. At the end of the day, a good player would think: "If there are too many enemies here, or an enemy too strong for the resources I currently have, it's because I shouldn't be here yet." Zombies no longer take half your health with one hit like before, partly because the game now features a system to push the zombie away if grabbed, which reduces the damage the character takes.

Resident Evil 2 is the refinement of everything we saw in the first game: more engaging, more fun, although I know many missed the heavy atmosphere of the original.

Genres: horror, survival horror, body horror, bio-corp, and action horror.

Resident Evil 2 (1998), rating: 8.8