Resident Evil 4 (Remake)

[Moonface]

They also lied; on Hardcore difficulty (which is the recommended difficulty if you've played the OG Resident Evil 4), durability on knives does decrease on stealth kills. It's not much, but it is there.

Ah, I've been wondering if stealth kills did any durability damage to the knife. I've wondered the same thing about parrying too; IGN had a video showing someone doing a ton of attack parrying but I never noticed the durability bar going down. My guess is it wouldn't do it on parries since it already takes good timing to get it in the first place, and I'd be bugged about it going down on stealth but I get the feeling that most encounters in the game aren't going to be suited to being stealthed entirely or even at all.

How far did you make it before giving up because of Denuvo @Maniakkid25?

[Maniakkid25]

I'm at the merchant in the quarry where you fight the El Gigante in the original, but before the Del Lago fight (again, relative to the original). They did, however, make A BUNCH of changes to the map, setpieces, and ordering of enemies that makes it a lot more realistic and free-flowing. I'd go into examples, but then I'd hear the immediate cry of "NO SHPOILERSH!!!!!1!!!111011!", so I won't.

Also, I can guarantee one situation were you lose durability in a parry: if you parry a chainsaw. Because yes, a lone knife can parry a GODDAMNED CHAINSAW and not immediately snap in half. Speaking of, keep a hold of the combat knife you start with; it can be repaired.

Edit: Well, I immediately failed on not playing it more. It seems that my lock-up bug appears to be a bug that only arises after a good hour of play or so, given that nothing happened while I did a short run. I got to the Del Lago fight, and they did something they absolutely did not need to do, and made the fight way, WAY harder than it needs to be! No one -- ABSOLUTELY NO ONE -- was saying "You know, the Del Lago fight is pretty terrible, but that boat should really have a health bar that auto-kills you if you crash into too many things! That would make the fight even better!" I know we're trying to not do QTE's anymore to make games more accessible, but Jesus Christ, there are SO MANY OTHER WAYS you could have fixed it! Or at least give us a way to repair the goddamn boat!

Yeah, I know I said "No spoilers" before, but this fight is just that egregious! The change that was made to the fight is just horses***!

[Moonface]

Well the boat in the original would cause Leon to lose health if it hit anything and you'd just die if your health was low on an impact, so it doesn't seem to sound very different on paper to me.

[Maniakkid25]

There's a major difference: you can still HEAL on the boat in the original! You can't heal on the boat anymore! And it doesn't help that the boat has a tiny health pool, and the movements are NOT the same! He has new movements, and you can take 3 hits on Hardcore, MAYBE 4 if you're lucky. The fight is a straight up nightmare, now. Thanks, Capcom; I hate it!

[Moonface]

Would healing on the boat in the remake even matter? I know there's gonna be new moves but any attack that could hurt Leon in the original that see still present here also would hurt the boat, so healing yourself wouldn't address the fact that the boat will just kill you anyway once it runs out of health unless there's a decent number of attacks now that only hurt Leon and not the boat.

[Maniakkid25]

...the boat was invincible in the original. The only health bar was your own. Now, it's inverted: you are invincible, but the boat has a health bar. There are no repair kits for the boat. Are you starting to see how this is a colossal pain in the ass?!

Edit: Well, I managed to beat it. Turns out there's an exploit that the game just doesn't communicate. Despite the fact that Leon has no hands on the rudder when doing so, yiu can still turn while aiming the harpoon. This makes it A LOT easier to dodge things, because you don't have to wait for Leon to come out of his aim animation (which he does by THROWING THE HARPOON, WASTING MORE TIME!) in order to get out of the way. It really makes a world of difference knowing this.

Edit 2: Made it to the second skill gate: The cabin fight with Luis. Oh my god, this fight! This is an absolutely insane nightmare of a fight! I'm starting the fight with basically no resources to start with, and this fight is INSANELY HARD! You know, for being recommended for those of us who played RE4 2005, Hardcore is WAY too intense! I might just end up restarting on Normal, because this is too much, too quick.

[Maniakkid25]

So the game is 5 days old, and we're already seeing speedrun exploits develop. See, the game devs have a few "oversights" that they purposefully combined into an easter egg. The boundaries of the world do not extend to infinite height, the hitscan line on the guns have infinite range, and the entire level is loaded at once. Combine all this together, and the church bell can theoretically be shot from anywhere on the Village map. So the devs coded the big village brawl at the beginning such that shooting the church bell ends the fight automatically, as if the battle progressed normally. As you can see in the video, the shot is not obvious, so this probably is only useful in a New Game+ to the average player, but speedrunning is a hell of a drug!

[Moonface]

...the boat was invincible in the original. The only health bar was your own. Now, it's inverted: you are invincible, but the boat has a health bar. There are no repair kits for the boat. Are you starting to see how this is a colossal pain in the ass?!

Ah, I thought they had added a second health bar so that both Leon has one and now the boat has one. I guess I can understand having one for the boat since it doesn't make sense that the boat can't take damage, but I can see how changing it would make what is the first boss fight of the game become what I expect to be one of the hardest fights in the entire remake now, just because of the lack of healing available. It reminds me of the Ndesu boss fight in RE5, where you're locked into the gun on top of the truck for the entire fight. I'm pretty sure you can't heal in that fight either, since the health is the truck and not Chris/Sheva, and I hated the shit out of that fight even on regular difficulty.

Edit: Well, I managed to beat it. Turns out there's an exploit that the game just doesn't communicate. Despite the fact that Leon has no hands on the rudder when doing so, yiu can still turn while aiming the harpoon. This makes it A LOT easier to dodge things, because you don't have to wait for Leon to come out of his aim animation (which he does by THROWING THE HARPOON, WASTING MORE TIME!) in order to get out of the way. It really makes a world of difference knowing this.

I'm trying to remember if you could steer the boat while aiming in the original or not. I feel like you could but I also don't recall being able to use harpoons until the boat comes to a complete stop and Del Lago disappears underwater. Maybe I should give the original a replay before I jump into the remake?

Edit 2: Made it to the second skill gate: The cabin fight with Luis. Oh my god, this fight! This is an absolutely insane nightmare of a fight! I'm starting the fight with basically no resources to start with, and this fight is INSANELY HARD! You know, for being recommended for those of us who played RE4 2005, Hardcore is WAY too intense! I might just end up restarting on Normal, because this is too much, too quick.

Yeah, this is one of the fights in the game I'm worried to come across after my time with the demo. I found the village fight in the demo to be something I got through by the skin of my teeth and my immediate thought after I finished the demo was wondering how bad the cabin fight is going to be. XD

So the game is 5 days old, and we're already seeing speedrun exploits develop. See, the game devs have a few "oversights" that they purposefully combined into an easter egg. The boundaries of the world do not extend to infinite height, the hitscan line on the guns have infinite range, and the entire level is loaded at once. Combine all this together, and the church bell can theoretically be shot from anywhere on the Village map. So the devs coded the big village brawl at the beginning such that shooting the church bell ends the fight automatically, as if the battle progressed normally. As you can see in the video, the shot is not obvious, so this probably is only useful in a New Game+ to the average player, but speedrunning is a hell of a drug!

One of the comments on the video claims Capcom purposefully put in a few sneaky skips for players to discover, so if this skip is something intentionally put in I wouldn't call it an exploit myself. These are the sort of cool easter eggs I'd love to see become common in games, although I can't think of any case where one could exist in any game when I try to think of it. XD

[Maniakkid25]

I barely managed to get through the cabin fight, and it ate all my health items. My ammo supply is okay, but I'm running on fumes, and I'm not looking forward to what comes next. Also, I have to note: while I won't spoil specific details to the changes they made, overall I think the writing is better in the remake, which you think would make sense, but that doesn't actively have to be the case. While the overall arc of the story seems to be the same, it's the little changes they make that help the events make MUCH more sense than they do in the original. Quite a few Deus Ex Machinas happen in the original that I've seen straight up fixed here, and it's neat to see them recognize something and be willing to say "Yeah, this bit was s***; let's try it again, and have it make sense this time."

I hate the new enemy type, though. And the new mechanic they added to the Plagas. Both of them can go straight to hell.

Edit: I made it to the castle! Not sure how, but I did! And it's already giving me nightmares, to be honest. The devs also lied AGAIN! Hiding spots have NOT been removed entirely; they are just used very, VERY sparingly! How sparingly? I've only found ONE so far, and I'm in chapter 8 7. Out of 16. Yeah! I should start compiling a list of them, tbh.

[Moonface]

I recall one of my big gripes with the story in the original game was how Krauser's history with Leon was never covered, and from what I can gather it wasn't in any media until The Darkside Chronicles released in 2009. I can't say I recall any other moments where the story was weird but I never took the story super seriously to begin with to start analyzing what did and didn't make sense. XD

Also for some reason, Ashley has developed a fan art following where people want to depict her as a mouse: https://www.resetera.com/threads/ashley-...ng.703081/

[Maniakkid25]

Well, that's weird. But not even the weirdest thing I've seen related to the game. No, that honor goes to the Tramp Stamp mod you can get for Leon! Why? Reasons, I'm sure.

I mention this in the edit to my last post, but I'm gonna start compiling a list of the lies the Devs made when they told us about this. So far, that list includes:

• Knives do not lose durability for stealth kills.
  
• The goodest boy has been removed.
  
• There are no hiding spots for Ashley.
  

I expect this list to expand as my playthrough continues.

[Moonface]

Started the game today and I'm just after the Del Lago fight. I didn't have any problems with the boat or the fight; the only time I hit anything was because I didn't see the debris through the water splashing in front of it from the boss.

However I will say the boat controls like absolute shit when navigating the lake after the fight. It turns terribly and I detest that it locks the camera so you can't look around without turning the boat.

Also really don't like enemies no selling shots and just running at Leon full sprint to dish out a one hit kill because I have low health.

The merchant also needs to be quieter. I'm already tired of how he can't stop making quips when standing near him and he has to give a running commentary on shooting gallery runs. I'm just so tired of games nowadays being unable to not have a character constantly talking to the player. It's such an annoying trend it's making me just lose interest in game releases because I can't trust it to not leave me the fuck alone during gameplay.

[Maniakkid25]

Oh, the enemies no selling is just a straight up problem? I thought that was just a Hardcore thing. My personal favorite is when you shoot them in the face 3 times, and they just do not care because their stagger meter isn't full up, yet. How are you liking the new plagas mechanic, by the way? Because I think it's busted to s*** and only exists to eat your knives. Also, did you explore every nook and cranny of that lake? Because there's a special gun waiting for you if you can find it.

What is this special gun?

It's the Red9; it's sitting in the boat wreck in the middle of the lake. It's also not nearly as overpowered, especially since you don't get the stock until much later. Like, "after the cabin fight" later.

Edit: So I've made it past the Garrador fight, and honestly, the fight is really interesting if you have the Bolt Launcher, but the Garrador eats the bolts, so I just nuked him with the Broken Butterfly. Cleared that fight, and made it successfully into the worst fight of the game: the Water Hall. You know the one. The nightmare room where you're attacked on all sides and THEN have to do a game of "defend Ashley while she slowly opens the path out". The room that is so infamous, literally searching "Resident Evil 4 hardest room" nets you web posts discussing about this exact section. I'm taking a break before tackling that, because I have enough stress in my life today, thank you very much!

[Moonface]

Oh, I'm playing on Hardcore too so I don't know if the enemies are doing that bum rush thing on regular difficulty or not. I just dislike when an unarmed enemy rushes me because to my knowledge I can't parry them, so if they rush me and grab me I'm just dead with no defense available to me. At least if they have a weapon and my knife isn't broken I get a chance to defend myself. It just feels really unfair to have to take an attack that can't be avoided which results in a death.

As for the new plagas mechanic, are you talking about when an enemy falls onto the floor and starts spasming? I'm not a big fan of it because most of the time when I encounter it is when it's very hard to deal with it. Either my knife is busted, or I'm fighting a horde of enemies and so trying to reach the one guy on the floor who's about to get a huge buff is a borderline suicide mission.

For the lake, yeah I explored every inch of it. I grabbed the treasure map from the merchant as my first spinel redemption because I knew that would be the most beneficial thing to have, so I saw on my map that there was treasure in the middle of the lake.

The last thing I did was the El Gigante fight and grab Ashley at the church. Absolutely hated the Gigante fight; it has some really wide sweeping attacks that seem impossible to avoid if it does them in certain spots due to the size and layout of the arena, especially the attack where it sweeps its arms back and forth looking to grab you. Also just didn't like how it ate up so much ammo and I really, really hated how the melee attack when it's stunned will use up like, 99% of your current knife durability so that the next time you get an opening for a melee attack you'll get in exactly one hit, the knife will break, and it'll just end the stun sequence early and make you miss out on dealing damage. I just started discarding my current knife after each of the stun sequences just to get rid of a worthless knife and ensure I'd have one equipped with enough durability to get the most out of the stun sequences.

[Maniakkid25]

Why did you do that to yourself, Moony? You saw my struggles, and still you made the same mistake I did. Also, by the sounds of that Gigante fight, you didn't save the Goodest of Boys. I think it's actually triggered by running into a bear trap in the third chapter? I have no idea, I just know Leon said "You too, huh?" when he saved him. Yeah, the Goodest of Boys still makes the fight MUCH easier, because you aren't having to constantly dodge his grabs.