Must say that Code Veronica turned out quite a disappointment. And I have finished now most of Resident Evil games, some of them multiple times.
It started well, though. Decided to check how Code Veronica X plays on GameCube, and couldn’t stop playing for a few hours. My first attempt at it was back in 2007, on Dreamcast, and I got stuck somewhere in the middle, before Chris appears. Looking back, I should have played the PS3 version, Code Veronica X HD (wonderful naming!), which has better lighting effects.
The game is brutal compared to Resident Evil 2, though. Or maybe I just know Resident Evil 2 too well. Plenty of ammo, but by the end of Training Camp I was running out of healing items.
Not being limited by the PSX hardware anymore, Resident Evil allowed itself to become bigger. And it is actually a problem. There are more enemies, that respawn more aggressively. And since the world isn’t broken into small self contained chapters anymore, there is much more backtracking, much more things to remember.
Bowgun is arguably even worse than the basic pistol. The only useful role are the explosive arrows. And the fact that it doesn’t need to be reloaded.
First encounter with the Tyrant is mostly a standoff, in a space so narrow all you are able to do is shoot and hope it will go down before you do.
The second encounter on a plane is much worse, though. If you didn’t save enough explosive arrows, you may be out of luck, and will have to load an earlier save. The boss will stunlock you, and its attacks track quite badly.
Nosferatu boss was extremely annoying. At least it has a free checkpoint just before the fight. Maybe I just don’t like “sniper” fights.
Interesting how the game tells you a set of lies:
– There are twins: Alfred and Alexia
– There is no Alexia, Alfred was just crossdressing
– There was an Alexia, but she died 15 years ago alongside her father
– Their father didn’t die, but was turned into a monster
– Alexia didn’t die, but voluntarily went to sleep for 15 year to “evolve”
Chris is able to pilot a Harrier. Guess this is something they teach you in SWAT?
This is the earliest Resident Evil I can remember that has a shared storage between characters. What that means, though, and that is something the game never explains properly, is that whatever equipment Claire uses while fighting Nosferatu stays with her. While it doesn’t matter much for the pistol, it matters more for the grenade launcher, that Chris won’t be able to use.
Second episode with Claire is one of the most annoying parts of any Resident Evil game I could remember. First you need to run under a falling block multiple times. Which mean instadeath if you mess it. Then you need to run away from mutated Steve, and if you don’t have enough healing items, it’s back to the falling block again.
Found it to be very frustrating switching between two characters with separate inventory, not knowing when it happens and what items will become inaccessible. That way some healing items were left on Claire before fights with Alexia.
Speaking of that, first fight with Alexia in the manor has instadeath if she catches you, which is slightly annoying. Easy if you know you need a magnum in your inventory. Hard if you don’t. Second phase is just a standoff again. And the third is again a sniping match, with infinite ammo and only landing a single shot, but with slow projectiles.
A bit sad that by the time Wesker appears again in Resident Evil 5, everybody forgot both about Wesker face getting burned (although maybe he just regenerated it, the guy survived getting crushed by a few tons of rails) and about Steve.
And the whole Wesker fight is strange. In the fact that it doesn’t exist. It’s just a set of scenes. I was expecting some QTE, but nope, just sit back and watch events unfold.
