Resident Evil 2: Should You Play as Leon or Claire? What You Need to Know

Should You Play as Leon or Claire in Resident Evil 2?

The Resident Evil 2 remake from Capcom is a re-imagining of the Raccoon City tragedy from 20 years ago. The remake will feel instantly familiar to longtime fans, allowing you to choose between two characters at the start of the game. Here’s what you need to know about playing as Leon or Claire in Resident Evil 2.

To keep things short, you should just pick whichever character you’d prefer to play as first. To get the full story, you will eventually have to play through the game as the other character, but the story flow will work regardless of who you picked.

In the original Resident Evil 2, playing through with Claire first before Leon was considered to be the canonical way of experiencing the story, and that still holds somewhat true with the remake.

By playing through your first run with Claire, you will unlock a New Game 2nd Run mode with Leon, allowing you to experience the story from her perspective. If the game’s plot is important to you, we’d recommend starting with Claire, then doing 2nd Run with Leon.

However, for first-timers or players who might not be familiar with the way Resident Evil 2 works, we think that it might actually be a good idea to start with Leon so you can get acquainted with the game’s various mechanics.

Leon starts with an easy-to-use handgun with decent capacity, and he gets access to the shotgun early on as well. On the other hand, Claire starts with a five-bullet revolver that’s slower to reload, and she gets the grenade launcher instead of the shotgun.

While the grenade launcher is considerably more powerful, it also only holds one round at a time. It comes with two different ammo types, meaning that it can be slightly trickier to manage Claire’s inventory over Leon’s.

Because of this, we feel that Leon would be a slightly easier character to start with, and would help to ease new players into the game. Start with Leon, then play through with Claire next.

And that’s all you need to know about playing as Leon or Claire in Resident Evil 2. Be sure to check our Resident Evil 2 guide wiki for more tips and information on the game.

TLDR;

Question: Should you play as Leon or Claire in Resident Evil 2?

Answer: For story purposes, we recommend going with Claire first, then Leon. But if you want a slightly easier start to the game, start with Leon.