Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

RE3 had a lot to prove and maintain after the beauty that RE2 was, certainly it's a beast of its own and does things pretty well but there are others that struggle a little.

To me, RE franchise always has been an action-survival horror game with tank controls, with Nemesis they tried to get things to the next level, having a monster stalking you through all the game and be mostly the only boss is a bold move and a welcomed one, it keeps things on the edge for the most part, although in the final stages it can be gimmicky and annoying it never fails to deliver a good dose of adrenaline and tension, this gives you more dynamic and fast fights and that's were they include some dodging mechanics, and my first real problem comes with them, you don't have a dodge button, instead you use buttons that you use to do other things, i.e. when aiming and shooting you dodge with the shooting button, but in order to do that action you need to hit it at the right moment before an enemy attacks, this can be frustrating because sometimes you want to keep shooting not dodging or vice versa and a lot of the time it keeps doing the other thing around, this mechanic helps but because it seems more luck dependant maybe you'll not use it at all, with RE4 they manage to do that pretty well with button prompts on screen, but progress always arrives late I suppose.

Graphically the game looks pretty well, the pre-rendered backgrounds hold up and the 3D models have a lot of charm to it, Jill Valentine and Nemesis specifically looks great, the challenge is also good, I think that this entry may be the hardest of the classic games, it's not impossible but as I told you before it keeps a lot of tension through all the game, the music and atmosphere is also on spot, and I really like that you visit some places from RE2 and gives you a good sense of scale and lore, like: "maybe Claire or Leon went trough here before or after" I liked this feeling a lot. Another thing that didn't hold up that well are the voice acting, they sound like B-movies or worst, and I'm well aware that RE, in general, have this B movie vibe but this doesn't feel intentional, also, the characters aren't that great either, I love Jill but I prefer how she was managed in RE1 remake or Revelations, is not that she is the most well-scripted character but in Nemesis she strikes me a lot like a pretty generic action hero.

RE3 is a prologue of ideas that want to be achieved ahead of its time but fell short and that will culminate with RE4, still, it's a good entry on a franchise that was struggling with its formula and wanted to twist things if only a little, I believe that this is a rare instance where a remake like RE2 2019 would benefit this game and achieve its true potential.