TL;DR For fans of survival horror this game is a must, and for me it is the peak of what the genre can offer and I hope this games success leads to more like it. Depending on how much time you wan't to put into each scenario you may want to wait for a sale, but the game is great!

I sunk almost 80 hours into this masterpiece, completed everything except the hardcore S+ rank so far because my time became eaten by other things. I do plan to go back to them though because I love this game. I'm not fortunate enough to have played the original RE2 (seeing as it was released the year I was born), but I played RE/RE 0 HD and loved them both. So when this was announced and wasn't going to be a classic RE game with fixed cameras and such I'll admit I was skeptical. But once the 30 minute demo came out and i tried i knew it was going to be good,

The atmosphere this game creates is incredible, I love the graphics (despite some janky light reflections at times), the sound design is exceptional, at later parts of them game when a certain enemy is patrolling its amazing to hear what room he's in so clearly, wearing headphones during these parts can make avoiding him much easier but regardless the sounds design as a whole left me pleased and really added to the horror of this title.

As far as game play goes I must also praise that aspect, movement and shooting are responsive without feeling like an action game like any RE game between 4-6, you have to place your shots to conserve ammo and hope for crits. Exploration is satisfying and can lead to many rewards to help you take down more enemies to make backtracking easier. Which leads me to just that; backtracking. Some may hate it and call it lazy, and if it's done wrong I would agree, but I think they did it perfectly, you'll find puzzles (though usually not very hard) that you need to go find something for before you can solve it, which leads to deciding what route to take; the long one with fewer enemies? Or the direct path with a Licker? To me it was great to play it safe on my initial playthough and then learn the enemies and how to best dodge/kill them to speed up my run times. The bosses are fun as well, each is fun and unique in its own way, despite most of them being against the same boss in different forms. I also love the ramp up in pace, at the start you feel powerless and have to tread carefully, but as the game goes on you gain better weapons and skills, so naturally the pace pics up with difficulty and by the end you feel like a capable survivor (much like RE7), some may not love this but to me a game that never stops trying to smother you in powerlessness and dread becomes suffocating, and ultimately draining, making the endgame drag on and on, RE2 doesn't outstay it's welcome. Id rather play a great 6 hours than a begrudging 20 hour story that has so much filler. The game new what it wanted to be and focused on doing that well, while still adding on top of the original, rather than trying to go for quantity as a selling point.

The only complaint I can honestly make is that between the four campaigns (Leon A/B & Claire A/B), its mostly the same bosses, puzzles and routes with only a handful of weapon variations, one unique segment and a different end boss each. While I personally am fine with this I can easily understand why it may be a downside for some. Each initial A campaign will run you ~6-8 hours blind and the B scenario will be ~4-5. So if you play all four its for sure worth the cost on sale, if not full price. I personally paid for the deluxe at launch for the costumes and original soundtrack swap, and was more than happy to pay that much for the end result!

Ultimately I love and highly recommend this game, to date I hadn't played a 3rd person RE game that I loved (yes, 4 is good but not my favorite). To me the best were REHD and RE7, they played very differently but both managed to have the tension I want in a horror game with good replayability for speed/challenge runs. Now RE2 takes that top spot for me, after seeing 3 styles of RE games I love: I can safely say that RE8 could be any of the 3 styles and I'd be happy if it was made with the same care as those games. As a final note this game made me excited for the RE3 Remake but rumors of it being outsourced to another developer is worrying (hopefully this is false), let's just hope that the team who made this game get to work on more horror projects because their product is exceptional in my eyes, and easily contends for my 2019 game of the year!

Dec 10 Edit: RE3 Remake hype! Can't wait for April 3rd!