Quick thoughts: Resident Evil 3 for Dreamcast

So yeah, I talk about Resident Evil a lot, I know. As if my four-part essay of general thoughts on the franchise didn’t make that obvious enough. Anyway, because of that and the fact that I already talked about RE3 in there as well, this will be pretty quick- it’s more or less because I just played through it, it’s fresh on my mind and I have a few lingering thoughts I’d like to get out.

Anyway, so a few days ago I picked up Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the Sega Dreamcast for no real reason other than I saw it for a decent price at my local retro gaming store. Since, you know, I already own it on two other mediums (PS1 and Gamecube). Nonetheless, since I had some rare downtime this weekend to relax in front of the TV, I gave it a quick playthrough. Now as I mentioned in my massive article on the series, since RE3 was one of the few games in the franchise that I didn’t play when it was brand new, I don’t quite have the sentimental connection to it that I do with the other early games in the series. That said, I do like it a lot and still consider it one of the greats in the series.

The Sega Dreamcast port of both this game and RE2 are kind of oddities of the Resident Evil universe. It made sense at the time to start bringing the franchise to the console, as the release of the console-exclusive Code: Veronica a few months earlier was met with great success. They both offer up some unique features, one of which is the utilization of the Dreamcast VMU, a sort of memory card unit that plugs right into the controller.

This is really cool for RE2, as it displays status features such as amount of remaining health and bullets, which is awesome to be able to check without bringing up the status menu as you’d have to do in any other version of the game. However, for reasons that totally elude and mystify me, they left out the remaining bullet count from the RE3 version, leaving only the health status. The health status is a nifty little novelty, but it’s kind of totally pointless due to the fact that you can tell what health status your character has at all times just by looking at them- in caution they’ll clutch their side, and in danger they’ll limp slowly. By contrast, the ammo counter is extremely helpful, especially when carrying a weapon that reloads very slowly and is much easier to reload in the menu, making it imperative to know how many shots you’ve fired. Why they’d have that in the RE2 port but then do away with it for RE3 is beyond me. The RE3 port was actually released a few months earlier than the RE2 one, which I guess might explain it, but it still doesn’t make much sense to me why they wouldn’t have that feature for the both of them.

Left: RE3, Right: RE2

Having already owned RE2 for Dreamcast and expecting that feature to be there when I bought RE3 was a bit of a downer right off the bat. Another thing that made this game a little less than enjoyable as I played through was the difficulty. I don’t know if I’ve just gotten worse with games over the years, and this game has always been the hardest of the original ones I think, but I really didn’t remember it being as hard as it was for me this time around. Granted, I was playing on hard mode, but that’s only because easy mode is too easy. I mean, they give you a huge arsenal of weapons right as you begin. I do want some challenge from a game, but not so much that I want to smash the disc with a hammer. If there were a medium difficulty I feel like I would’ve had a better time, but there’s just no in between. Though this isn’t unique to the Dreamcast version, what is unique is the fact that I also have a hard time with the Dreamcast controllers. I have pretty small hands, so those big things do not work all that well for me. They’re not impossible to play with or anything, it’s just that when the game is already giving me enough of a problem by kicking my ass with the difficulty, having even the slightest control disadvantage becomes a noticeable problem. I ended up repeatedly dying at certain points of the game I never had a problem with before on the PS1 or Gamecube versions.

One interesting, albeit strange aspect is that alternate costumes and the mercenaries mini-game are both available right from the start of the game, as opposed to being unlockable features that become available upon beating the game for the first time. It is cool to see all those extra costumes I could never unlock because, like I said before, I’ve never been all that great at this game. It’s also nice to be able to play the addicting mercenaries game right away, even if it is just as frustratingly difficult as the main game and no matter what I do I still can’t get a damn A ranking in it.

Other than that, there are not many other distinguishing features from the other two versions. The graphics are definitely better than the choppy-looking PS1 graphics, but the Gamecube version has the best of the three. In fact, I think the Gamecube version is the best overall out of the three as well. If the Dreamcast version had the bullet counter that the RE2 port had, I might be able to make a case for it, but without that feature it doesn’t stand out too much on its own. So if you’re looking to pick this game up, I’d say go for the Gamecube one for the optimal experience.

And on one final note, I finally solved that damnable water quality puzzle at the end of the game without using a strategy guide. Even though the game kicked my ass up and down, at least I can take pride in that.