Resident Evil 3 Nemesis completes the original trilogy by pulling pieces from the first two games while managing to forge its own identity along the way.
What Is It? Resident Evil was one of the flagship franchises on the original PlayStation. The original was a very early release that put survival horror on the map and would define many core tropes of the genre for years to come. RE2 then took that formula and improved nearly everything about the gameplay to create a masterpiece.
Enter Resident Evil 3, released just one year after RE2 and three after RE1, the final entry before the series jumped to a newer console generation. What was left for the RE series on the PlayStation? A whole lot, apparently.
Gameplay wise, there is nothing drastically different from the first two games. You’ve got your pre-rendered backgrounds and tank controls making their return. It is still survival horror; ammunition and healing items are scarce, enemies are plentiful, and you have to collect random items and solve extremely video game-y puzzles. I, personally, haven’t been in too many clock towers, but I still can’t recall ever seeing a set of three clocks where weighted rocks below each would turn the clock hands, with only an exact combination aligning all clocks at midnight to reveal a golden cog…which combines with a normal cog to create the ultimate cog to fit into the tower bell’s gear system to start ringing the bell. Maybe that’s just me, a clock tower novice.
As Jill Valentine, you get dropped into Racoon City at the tail end of a massive outbreak that was covered in the first two games. You quickly move throughout the city, visiting some recognizable spots along the way, collecting items, killing zombies, and solving silly puzzles. As seen in RE2, this game features a recurring, unbeatable enemy; Nemesis. Nemesis is an incredibly quick enemy who will close the gap and toss you aside in an instant. It shows up a handful of times throughout the game including some spots where you are forced to fight instead of run. Nemesis absolutely does the job as far as invoking dread into the player throughout the game. You never know when it will pop up and you’ll need to move quickly the second it does. Thankfully, most of the time you can just run through to other areas to lose the beast.
A highlight for me was how quickly this game moves you through locations. The first few hours of RE2, by contrast, have you in the Racoon City Police Department. You will return to that building here, but will only spend about 20-30 minutes there in a fairly linear path with the ultimate goal being to acquire a lockpick. The pacing of this game is great, you will see a lot of the city, indoors and out, and that aspect is perfectly echoed by the speed of Nemesis and how often you will find yourself running from him. For a series where the primary goal is often to GET OUT, RE3 is the first time where you can actually move through the city with any sort of pace, not needing to spend a few hours assembling music boxes to unlock a cabinet. Those puzzles definitely still exist, but they move quickly and don’t require you to clear 20 different rooms to find all of the necessary pieces.
The Best Part: Nemesis is a take on Tyrant from RE2. Tyrant was a slow moving monster who’s relentlessness was countered by your ability to get away from him fairly easily if you knew your way around. Nemesis is the same, but about three times faster than you and may or may not be holding a rocket launcher. It is truly nerve wracking when you’ve made a bit of progress since your last save and Nemesis shows up. Ideally you can escape without firing a shot or using a healing item, but simply surviving feels like a massive win.
The Worst Part: Close quarters boss fights. There are good boss fights here, but given how fast Nemesis moves, the close quarter fights, or just when he chases you randomly, can be frustrating. I kind of think it was intentional, because Nemesis is supposed to be an unstoppable beast, so not being able to create space to shoot actually makes thematic sense, but from a video game perspective it is still a bit frustrating. There are also a few other spots where you need to move way quicker than these controls reasonably allow.
The Verdict: Resident Evil 3 might be my favorite of the original trilogy. I loved what the game did to completely flip the series’ pacing on its head, and Nemesis is a great rival to struggle with for the duration. The core gameplay and visuals are basically the same as RE2, but the approach to moving through the city is a big departure and one that I think pays off quite well. At the very least, RE3 deserves to be held up alongside RE2. If you can pull off the tank controls, RE3 is very much worth playing over 25 years after its release. If you can’t, check out the 2020 remake instead.
How to Play: PlayStation 1, Dreamcast, GameCube, PC Remake: PS ⅘ Xbox One/S, Switch, PC
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