Resident Evil 2 (1998) Is this game truly the greatest game in the franchise?

[Hardware]

IMHO, yes it is. It's the game that truly defined the series and made it a recognizable brand. Most of the imagery commonly associated with RE comes from it and it still casts a long shadow on the series and on the survival horror genre in general.

 

[Artas1984]

To me also yes, because it has the most amount of content - 4 scenarios. Imagine if Resident Evil 3 had 4 scenarios... Increasing difficulty makes enemies much tougher, which is a MUCH better and MUCH more interesting option that the VERY boring damage increase like they do in the remake games. Increase enemy damage - same boring scenario, same strategy. Increase enemy toughness - now you have to totally reconfigure your walkthrough strategies, because A: you won't have enough ammo to kill everyone, and B: you won't have the time to stand and kill a bunch zombies in a narrow corridor, because they will surround you before the first one even falls down, so you have to think of strategies of getting around them.

Original is still much better than remake.

 

[Ikawaru]

RE1 is the greatest game in the franchise because its atmosphere oozes of originality and RE2 struck me at the time as the competent knock off. I do enjoy it though. RE2 was just way too 1 dimensionally dark and really lacked the atmosphere of the original. However, it did introduce Claire Redfield.

 

[Jonipoon]

IMHO, yes it is. It's the game that truly defined the series and made it a recognizable brand. Most of the imagery commonly associated with RE comes from it and it still casts a long shadow on the series and on the survival horror genre in general.

Is it though? There's been more "Spencer Mansion-like" imagery in the series as of whole, just look at Code Veronica and RE4 which more closely resembles the gothic setting of RE1 (although the mansion became more gothic in the 2002 remake). Even the police station in RE2 was changed from it's original modern look in RE1.5 to more resemble an antique museum. You can even see the Baker's house in RE7 taking inspiration from the Spencer Mansion with its main entrance staircase layout.

RE2 is a really damn good game but in terms of imagery it's not unique or original. Even RE3: Nemesis did a better job at portraying a decaying Raccoon City in flames and chaos.

RE2 took what worked in RE1 and perfected it.

 

[Ikawaru]

RE2 is a really damn good game but in terms of imagery it's not unique or original. Even RE3: Nemesis did a better job at portraying a decaying Raccoon City in flames and chaos.

I agree with both, but I think a lot of opinions are centered around which game you first played that got you hooked in the first place. For me it was RE1 so naturally that type of imagery is what stuck, and I did know some "people" ( ) back then who did not like RE1 but did like RE2 when it came out.

RE3 always struck me as what RE2 was supposed to be back when it was advertised. When I saw RE2 in the commercials it made it look the the entire game was going to take place in the city with burning buildings and zombies and I did notice that when it first came out and started playing it, I was like "Wasn't this game supposed to take place in a city rather than some dark colorless police station?" Not that it was a gamebreaker or anything but upon reflection it was an interesting observation I think.

 

[Hardware]

Is it though? There's been more "Spencer Mansion-like" imagery in the series as of whole, just look at Code Veronica and RE4 which more closely resembles the gothic setting of RE1 (although the mansion became more gothic in the 2002 remake). Even the police station in RE2 was changed from it's original modern look in RE1.5 to more resemble an antique museum. You can even see the Baker's house in RE7 taking inspiration from the Spencer Mansion with its main entrance staircase layout.

RE2 is a really damn good game but in terms of imagery it's not unique or original. Even RE3: Nemesis did a better job at portraying a decaying Raccoon City in flames and chaos.

RE2 took what worked in RE1 and perfected it.

I wasn't referring to the first location. I was referring to the characters, the creatures, and the general setting (the zombie-infested Raccoon City): those are all super-iconic. Even people who have never played RE recognize them. Hell, when they made the first RE movie and they could only bring in one monster (not just zombies or zombie dogs), they went for the RE2 licker. The game was and still is the most successful game in the series: go and have a look at Capcom's best selling titles (https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/business/million.html) - RE2 is still number 10 with 5 million copies sold. That's the original PS1 release, they are not counting the ports (the different editions of every game are listed separately). All the other games in the top-10 (save for Street Fighter 2 on the SNES) are multi-platform releases. RE2 was essentially owned by everyone who owned a PS1, which is something that few games achieve even today (one of the very first I can think of is "The Last Of Us Part 2" - I don't think the proportions match, since there are more gamers now, but it still sold a lot on a single system). Unsurprisingly, Capcom's third best-selling game is RE2make. So RE2 essentially appears twice on Capcom's top-10 list.

 

[Jonipoon]

@Hardware I'll give you the licker part, but that's about it. Like I said, you barely visited Raccoon City in RE2 and RE3 did a much better job at portraying it. The movies definitely helped popularize certain aspects aswell, for example up until the RE2 remake more normies preferred Nemesis than Mr. X (they chose to include the first but not the latter in the movies) and for a very long time Nemesis remained one of the most recognizable monsters from the series, and he kept popping up in other Capcom games.

RE2 might have been the most recognizable game back in the 90s but when the movies and RE4 came along it definitely changed the general view. For example, even though Leon is arguably the most recognizable character from the series, he is more well-known for his RE4 appearance than RE2. Although Leon already had a sizeable fanbase back then, it was RE4 that made his character extremely popular.

And out of the four big OG leads, Claire is still generally ranked as the least popular character in the bunch.