Resident Evil: Revelations 2 Review (Spinnerweb)
Revelations 2 is one of the worse RE games before the Winters saga. It has terrible writing, not in the way nerds say, "Buh-well Resident Evil never had good stories!" but to the point that it becomes irksome. Moira Burton is not a character, she is a millennial anger archetype and a conduit for Barry to have his development channelled through.
Claire Redfield has lost everything in this game, most notably a personality. She talks like she's been lobotomized. Remember when she spent the entirety of RE2 taking care of Sherry? ... Yeah, suddenly this game establishes that Claire isn't good with kids, in order to give Moira exactly one trait.
The odd thing is that even in this game's awful storyline, there are moments of brilliance such as the plot of the Struggle DLC and the true ending. Speaking of true endings, this game has possibly the worst and most arbitrary case of being locked into a bad ending for reasons you could not have foreseen.
As for gameplay. This game has it. The episodic nature did its structure no favours, but there is a lot of clever recycling of locations. I'm pretty sure a few models, animations and sound effects were recycled from RE4 on the PS2 as well; that's fine by me though. The stealth mechanic is completely scuffed and broken, which makes focusing the Little Miss DLC on it a stupid decision. Otherwise however, the third person combat is still pretty fun even in this low-rent state.
The game is buggy and has low production values. It came out in 2015, yet the graphics resemble those of a PS2 game. Even the first Revelations game looked better... on the 3DS. It would make some small sliver of sense if this game was designed with the PS Vita in mind (even though we know the Vita is capable of better) but it clearly wasn't. I've played through the PS Vita port in its entirety, including the DLC, because I am a masochist. It verges on unplayable, with frequent stutters and graphical downgrades that make it look like a pre-alpha version.
The PC version looks so low-end yet demands high system requirements for the visual fidelity on offer. Even on my gaming laptop, it never felt like it was running 100% perfectly, because it's simply built in a very spotty way.
So why am I giving this game a Recommended despite all those criticisms? Because it's still fun enough to play through. It's like frozen pizza: you know there's far better out there, but this will do in a pinch. Be sure to buy it on a massive discount. And I cannot stress this enough: be sure to buy Claire's Rodeo Outfit and Moira's Urban Ninja DLCs along with it. They are sexy as hell and make the game a whole lot more fun to play through.