For those of you just joining us, "The Struggle" is a DLC extra episode for Capcom's 2015 release of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 played on the Nintendo Switch. This episode occurs between episodes of the main game which is told in four separate episodes, separated between Claire Redfield & Moira Burton, and six months later with Barry Burton & Natalia Korda. If you want to get caught up on this series from the game, you can find our articles here, otherwise, you are welcome to jump right in below; also there are going to be spoilers.
Presumably, this episode will only happen if you play the game in a way that allows Moira to survive the collapsing of Red Tower (no, I will never not call the tower Red Tower because it doesn't have a name in-game other than "the tower" and it really needs one). You could hypothetically play this episode if you did not get the (or one of the) good ending, and who am I to tell you that you can't play something!? What I found interesting about this episode was that it is broken up into four sections, each with its own semi-distinct play style. Section One deals with a new hunting mechanic, Section Two is like an enemy/boss rush mode, Section Three deals with stealth, and Section Four is another enemy/boss rush mode but with more and larger enemies. So prepare for a semi-long article.
The episode opens with a warning that the mechanics in this episode will be significantly different than the rest of the game, by introducing Rations which are used to restart after you die or fail a particular section of this episode. If you run out of rations before completing the episode, then your file is erased and you will have to start over from the beginning. This idea of semi-permadeath followed by having to start over from the very beginning was pretty intriguing and one that I do not think has been in the Resident Evil series outside of specific difficulty settings. Here when given the choice, I did choose "Casual" as opposed to "Survivor" because I did not feel like getting an hour or two into the game and then dying too many times and having to restart. I mainly wanted to experience the story, so casual it was, although casual difficulty still offered a pretty decent challenge that nearly had me dying at the very end, but we will get to that later.
Moira already having been rescued from the partially collapsed tower by Evgeny Rebnic, the old man C&M meet during Episode Three who is held up in the sewers. There is no explanation of why/how Evgeny found Moira, but I can assume that he went there to look for supplies since hunting/gathering is a major part of "The Struggle." After the opening cinematic where Evgeny explains to Moira the basic mechanics of how this opening section operates. She is to help out with the hunting of sources of food on the island, including rabbits, snakes, and rats. While scouring around in bushes, I was attacked by some of the spiders and Evgeny said that spiders could also be consumed for food. The other aspect of this stage is that there was a timer warning you that sundown was approaching and that creatures came out at night and that was when you would have to seek shelter, so I enjoyed the explanation why you could not just hang out all day.
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| Moira's About to Learn There's Only One Way to Cook a Brace of Coneys. |
One thing though that was not clear at first was that you were supposed to travel from Point A to Point B. I was under the impression that you were just supposed to hunt in this particular area and then make it back to where you came from before the timer hit 00:00. So with about 4 minutes left on the timer and feeling like I was running around in circles looking for game to kill (that was not showing up), I realized that I was supposed to move on through two additional areas, areas that I would later explore with Barry & Natalia in their story. Had I had this intuition earlier, I might have been able to explore the mill (the last area) a bit more maxing out my Rations and ammunition, but instead, I finished with three full rations and only a somewhat decent amount of ammo stockpiled.
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| Well After This Lot It Will Only Be 26 More! |
The next section and I would learn the transition between story points in "The Struggle" was a narrated introduction by Moira giving context to what was going on when you started. Here we are told that while out exploring/gathering supplies around in the sewers, Moira accidentally led a whole swarm of enemies back to Evgeny's bunker. So this section essentially turned into an enemy rush/survival mode where wave after wave of enemies funneled through an area and you had a line that they could not cross. A couple minutes into this event, I noticed that there was an "Enemies Remaining" counter, and when that hit zero I thought the stage was going to be done, but instead, it automatically transported you deeper into the sewer to do the same thing all over again. This I thought was not handled very well where instead it could have just put the orange/blue map arrow directing the player to proceed further into the map instead of instantaneously moving them.
One other thing annoying thing about this format was that it felt a lot like the optional Raid Mode where you fight a predetermined number and type of enemies, almost like a puzzle in that you have to either just gun your way through the stage, or figure out the best way to use the available ammunition against enemies with varying load out of weapons. The types of enemies in this section of "The Struggle" were basically a mish-mash of enemies from the game, from basic Rottens to Ironheads, to Sploders, to Vulcan Blubbers, as in multiple Vulcan Blubbers; bastards. It really just felt like a menagerie of monsters that were being selected for the sake of throwing monsters at Moira and Evengy without any reason for these specific monsters being there.
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| Don't Try To Attack The New Monsters? Gotcha. |
The third area was a return to the fishing village, which introduced the Revenant to Moira and Evgeny and was the most aggravating and partly confusing stage in the whole episode. When the stage starts you are given a timer of 14:59 and Evgeny prompts Moira to stay away from the new monsters that recently appeared on the island (Revenants) that she should not fight them and if one of them comes after her, that she should run. For me, this level presented the most problems and I nearly lost all of my rations and forced to restart from the beginning, but more on that later. The point of this section is to continue the hunting mechanic from the first section, but now you have the added burden of Revenants patrolling the village, and I do not know if their senses were enhanced for this stage, but they definitely seemed like they were more attentive to you and were able to detect Moira a lot quicker than in the main game with Barry and Natalia.
Once one of the Revenants spots you, your timer immediately drops down to 0:30 and you have that amount of time to flee the area and escape. But you are never told specifically where you have to escape to aside from the little blue arrow on your radar map. The problem I had here was that I do not recall this exit being accessible in C&M's first journey in the village (not that they would have used it, but it felt like I was expected to know where this exit was. So on my first attempt, I found out that the Revenants were hyper-aware and was spotted by the third one I saw after shooting and gathering a rabbit. The timer did its jump down to 0:30 and I started running towards the blue arrow only to have it seemingly double back and pointing in the direction I had run from. My timer ran out and I dropped from five rations down to four. This process continued until I was down to one full ration and I turned the game off before I saw the little blinking autosave light down in the corner of the screen. At this point I was not sure if it did count this run against me, so I went to YouTube to see how you were supposed to get through the level and/or where the exit was.
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| Wait!? You Can Totally Attack Them? Evgeny, You Lying Sack of Shit! |
That was when I found out you could kill the Revenants just like Barry did in the B&N chapters. But didn't Evgney say that you should not attack them? But here was Moira knocking a Revenant in the back and stabbing it in its pulsing weak spot with her crowbar. With a renewed sense of purpose, I started the game back up and I found that I avoided losing a ration altogether. Essentially I cheated. And I essentially cheated four more times as I worked my way through Revenant after Revenant. I made it about eight minutes into the stage on my final playthrough before being caught, all ready to turn it off if I did not make it back to the exit before the time zeroed out, but I did make it back, and so I continued.
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| Despite How It Looks, There's Really No Glass In That Window. |
The final section (which was a surprise) involved Moira and Evgeny going to the mine stage (that B&N would visit in Episode Three) to find out information on his missing daughter Irina. This stage played a lot like the enemy/boss rush mode in that there was an enemy countdown timer that would push you forward once you hit zero. For whatever reason, I was not expecting this and just stood out in front of a building killing wave after wave of Rotten and Afflicted as they came crawling over and through the building. This mechanic only dawned on me (again) when I killed the last enemy and went running inside the building to loot it (you can see boxes of ammunition through the window) and I was transported to the opposite side of a closed gate.
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| Yes, You Can See That Correctly. Two Fucking Durgas In The Same Screen At The Same Time!! |
The next section was a ridiculous romp of stupid proportions. Remember that Durga from B&N's chapter that was the end-level boss? Well, that boss showed up in the first area. And you killed it, granted with less hits required to kill it than when I first fought in with B&N (although chronologically speaking this event happened first). But then it showed up not one more time, but THREE GOD DAMN MORE TIMES in that last area. Now, I thought this boss design was pretty cool, more so when I found out what it was actually supposed to be comprised of and having it be a unique end-boss made it even slightly cooler. Having it appear four times in one stage is overkill to the point that Capcom should have just had Mutant-Pedro show up again along with Mutant-Neil. Granted the Durga is not a named-character-turned-enemy but just a large boss-turned-mini-boss, and throwing more than one at Moira is silly. And on top of that, having two at the same time was just stupid.
The issue with Durgas is that they block their pulsing weak spot, which makes them not so much of a bullet sponge as it does a bullet-deflecting annoyance that you have to shoot at even if you do not see a 100% clear opening because you just might be lucky enough to land a hit. By the end of this stage, I had two Durgas (the two pictured above) chasing me throughout the level with zero ammunition, and because this bonus stage does not take into account all of the skills I had purchased using BP points, Evgeny was using up his rifle ammunition throughout the game and also had zero rifle ammunition. So I ended up crowbarring to death the two Durgas in a desperate attempt to beat this stage. Thankfully it worked because I was not at all mentally prepared to start this beast of a stage all over again.
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| Found Him!! |
You are then shown a cut scene, just like the rest of the between-stages, but this one was more video focused and less Moira explaining a situation. Moira sees Evgeny succumbing to whatever coughing illness he had and Moira realizes that she cannot die on the island like him, and must not "do this to my dad." Maybe I am just being cynical, but it seemed like You then see Evgeny locking himself in their bunkerMoira picking up Barry's wallet that fell after being knocked over at the end of B&N's Episode Three. This somehow then leads Moira to follow whatever trail B&N left behind so Moira finds them although when she does, she seems surprised that they are there. So maybe she was not following them at all and just by chance came across them during the penultimate battle right before Alex Wesker could crush Natalia?
And then the game ends. That is it. Which only makes sense if you felt like the game should be over. I feel like this last part of the story could have been structured just a little differently and in slightly different order. Perhaps have Moira experience Evgeny's closing her out of their main hideout, then the level starts with the player controlling Moira (although this would not make sense if you were playing co-op) on her way to another hideout because to me it seemed like Evgeny had more than one location on the island, then along the way she finds Barry's wallet. Moira then follows a trail of corpses (or follows another path) where she ends up coming across the penultimate fight scene just in time and the game goes into the final cut scene. To me, this scenario just seemed anticlimactic, or at least the last area seemed that way. Maybe it falls under the Tell Don't Show, or in this case, Play, Don't Show?
I did actually enjoy a fair amount of "The Struggle." I liked the introduction of the hunting mechanic and how it related to your being able to continue if you failed in a mission or died. I also liked that in subsequent levels you could still find food and that it was not just a mechanic relegated to the first area. While I ultimately was not fond of the two boss rush levels, I did actually like the mechanic, but the enemy choice felt too much like the Raid Mode, especially the four Durgas in the last stage. And had there been a fifth stage that you played through, or eliminated the first boss rush stage (being Stage 2) bringing Moira to the end of B&N's chapter because I never felt that that storyline did much to advance the plot, I think that this DLC could have been a lot stronger than it turned out to be.
~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
P.S.
And here is my score for this episode. While not entirely accurate as I did turn off Switch a couple of times before the autosave kicked in while playing the stealth-based section of the game in the fishing village. So the score should probably be lower, but oh well. But hey, at least my accuracy was S ranked at 87.7%, that's got to count for something right?
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