Just replayed
Zero (After many many years so bear with me), and it's a much better experience, to me at least, if you travel as a pair as little as possible, and use only one character to clear out rooms. For instance, for zombies, dogs, and crows I will use Rebecca and keep her equipped throughout the game with the Berretta Samurai edge.*
For plague crawlers, eliminators, hunters, spiders, mimicry Marcus', and
most bosses I will use Billy equipped with the Shotgun, Magnum, and Molotovs (The latter best used on the Mimicry Marcus' of course!). I only used the Grenade Launcher once, against the Centurion.*
With monsters cleared out, you are free to enjoy the teamwork required for most the puzzles in this game.
In the old days I played much differently and remember combat was always an annoying tussle and trying to juggle random weapons and items between each character and using ammo inefficiently and taking damage unnecessarily, so I guess finding a playstyle that works for you is king here. If you
can't find a playstyle that works for you, than it's probably not a game for you.
*
Knife is virtually WORTHLESS in this game, and REmake as well, Resident Evil 2 and Nemesis are the only RE games I have played where you can save a ton of ammo and it being generally beneficial to hone your knife skills, in Zero it is absolutely pointless to keep a knife in your inventory because inventory space is extremely limited as there's no item box and tons of equipment you have to carry around, and using the knife in combat is very high risk on top of all that. There is literally only one instance where I used the knife, against Stinger on the train.
LATE edit:
Perhaps the only RE game to date where you can beat it in over 3 hours and still get an 'S' rating.
15 heals shows my combat skills need some brushing up haha.
