First Impressions: Resident Evil: Revelations 2 - Episode 3: Judgement [Claire & Moira] (NS)

Welcome back to Episode Three: Judgement of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 on the Nintendo Switch, wherein I cover my experiences playing the first chapter with Claire Redfield and Moira Burton.  The first chapter can be found here which includes both Claire/Moira and Barry/Natalia, and the second one here.  And just another warning, there are going to be spoilers in the form of me talking about story points, people the characters run into, and places that they go.  Y'all've been warned.

I guess we're going there now then?  TO THE FACTORY!!
The Red Tower can fuck off!

For the most part, I felt that this chapter for Claire and Moira offered a lot of the same in terms of gameplay compared to the first two chapters, but there were two kind-of-new additions, which I will get to when they come up.  This chapter started off right where Episode Two left off with Claire/Moira outside of the Red Tower (because that's what I like to call it) and Natalia having been taken by a mysterious person, although to Claire/Moira, she is mysteriously missing.  What I found a little frustrating with Claire was that when the two reach the doors to Red Tower, there is a note for them from Neil (a fellow TerraSave employee who was kidnapped and re-introduced in Episode Two) telling them that they need to "Head to the factory". . .because the writing looks like Neil's handwriting.  This is about the flimsiest form of storytelling that I can think of.  The characters have been trying to get to this location for some time, ran into a young girl who was also headed in the same direction and then when Claire finds a note that she believes to have been written by a coworker, she just decides to up and change plans!?  Maybe because I have been playing mostly as Moira I am more in her headspace than in Claires, but even Moria calls Claire out immediately, but because that is what Claire (and the writers/developers) want you to go, that is where you are now headed.  Yes, we get it, Claire, you have a thing for Neil and now you are going to possibly get Moira killed in the process.

Good thing that's bullet and vision-proof glass!

That being said, I did enjoy a lot of the Factory stages.  There was a lot of exploring, finding hidden objects with Moira's flashlight, and a little bit of backtracking.  This area was pretty straight forward in that you had three buildings with only one being immediately accessible and after exploring that first building, you gained access to the second building where you found an item that gave you access to the final building.  Oh, and like I was afraid of, the Vulcan Blubber has now become a recurring large enemy, although thankfully and not entirely unexpectedly, its HP is significantly lower than when it was the end boss for Episode 2.  One area in the Factory that introduced a newer gameplay mechanic, kind of, was that it forcefully split Claire and Moira up in a catwalk heavy area complete with exploding tanks, spreading fire, countless Afflicted, and a countdown timer to the entire room blowing up and insta-killing everyone.  What made this area difficult was that with one character you had to locate and turn a wheel/crank in order to allow the other player to continue along their path which lead to another wheel/crank to let the first player continue, all the while being attacked by 1-2 Afflicted at a time and for Moira (the one with the flashlight without any weapons) I believe, there was an Ironhead thrown into the mix just to be a jackwagon.  As a co-op game, this would not be an issue at all because you could have both characters moving simultaneously, but here, I could only move one character at a time and had to physically control the character so that they could interact with the wheel/crank.  I did die once in this section, but was able to make it out on my second try, apparently with more than 1 minute to go out of the 5 minutes you start with.

Probably not the cleanest water to be wading around in, and they
both know it. I also just realized the way Moira's holding the flashlight
and it is really bothering me.

The next area was an underground sewer that was somewhat reminiscent of the sewers in Resident Evil 2 and had either of them made a comment about running into a giant mutant alligator, it would have been an appreciated quib.  To me the inclusion of a sewer level was included to make the player feel hampered by movement since sludging through thigh-deep water meant you moved slower both while walking and running, and it meant that enemies could be hiding under the water and spring up to attack you (although you could often see bubbles or water ripples where they were which allowed you to either shoot them or use a melee attack to bring them to the surface).  I ran into another Vulcan Blubber here, which I was thankfully able to kill relatively quickly.

"And fuck you too Larry!"  I've decided that this Vulcan Blubber's name is now Larry.

The last section of the game lead Claire/Moria to the base of the Red Tower, into a very large open area rife with ammunition, green herbs, and plenty of floor space to run around in.  At this point, I looked at my inventory and noticed that it was overflowing with items and this, along with the size of the room only cemented this thought.  This was the first real area that screamed MAJOR BOSS BATTLE ARENA, although this almost seemed like the area for the final boss battle, not the fight against an Uroboros infected Neil; oh yeah, who did not see that one coming?  During the battle, I did try to use Moira at first, thinking that there had to be some use for her if you were playing c0-op, maybe her flashlight could stun him, or chucking explosive bottle might help too.  But I have found that AI-controlled Moira does not take initiative when it comes to using bottles of any kind and that using Claire would be the most efficient way to kill Neil. 

My loadout for this battle was equipping Claire with the Magnum Model 329 (because a high powered weapon is always good when going up against a boss) the Samurai Edge pistol, the Shotgun TAP194 (because less frequent reloading is nice, even at the cost of damage dealt), and the MP-AB50 (just in case there were annoying single-shot-kill enemies that would spawn out, but there weren't).  All of the guns had some modifications to them although I cannot remember which ones specifically.  

While I did manage to kill Neil in Uroboros form, there were times when I could not tell if all of the ammunition I was plugging into his massive frame was actually doing any damage or if he was just absorbing bullets like a sponge.  It was not until the creature screamed about being overheated (probably due to a mutagen tripling the mass of a 5'11" male in the span of 30 seconds) and ended up with his pulsing yellow weak spot exposed while standing under a torrent of water that I knew at least something was being effective.  Either way, Uroboros Neil, Claire's possible love interest died having forced me in the process to use up a lot of ammunition and green herbs.  About what I was expecting.

Since I have found out that it is an optional event to happen at the end of this chapter, I was able to have Moira overcome her fear of guns by grabbing Claire's pistol shooting Neil in the head finally killing him.

I do wonder how this will advance Moira's character in Episode Four.  Will she now be able to use guns?  Will she be able to only use the pistol?  Or will she go back to her flashlight/crowbar wielding self completely ignoring any semblance of a character arc that was fleshed out more in Barry & Natalia's chapter in Episode Three?  I guess I will just have to wait and see in Episode Four.  You know what, I think I really did enjoy Claire & Moira's chapter this time around, much more than in Episode 2, and being killed eight fewer times than in Episode Two probably helped a lot as well.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
Instrumental


P.A.  And for all of those wanting to see my score for this chapter, here you are.

I was surprised that dying only four times resulted in a C rating.  I understand that S rank would be zero deaths, and maybe 1 death would be A and 2-3 would be B, but this tells me that this Episode is supposed to be much easier than Episode Two where I had 12 deaths and a C rank.  And from this you can also tell that I only found one tower coin and zero of the Kafka painting-things.  I did genuinely look around for them, but they are apparently too well hidden.