The announcement of the Resident Evil 3 remake late last year came as a bit of a surprise, especially since we’d already gotten the masterpiece that was the Resident Evil 2 remake in that same year as well. Still, with the momentum that Capcom was building up with this series, I certainly wasn’t going to complain about getting even more RE content in my life.
With the Resident Evil 3 remake, however, while the game has improved upon the RE2 remake in a few ways, it also takes a few steps back. Don’t get me wrong; this is still a great game that series fans will surely enjoy, but here are four ways it could’ve been even better.
Include S+ Ranks
By far my biggest gripe with Resident Evil 3 is the exclusion of S+ ranks. Like most other games in the series, RE3 is all about speed and replaying the campaign over and over again to collect everything and beat it as efficiently as possible.
As you moved up the difficulty levels, the requirements for the higher ranks would get tougher, and the highest you could achieve was the S rank. However, if you wanted to challenge yourself even beyond that, you could get the much coveted S+ rank as well.
The Resident Evil 2 remake handled this perfectly: beating the game in under two hours (depending on which campaign you were playing) would give you an S rank.
However, if you also managed to beat it with less than three saves, and without using any bonus items, you would get the S+ rank and be rewarded with the infinite rocket launcher or the infinite Gatling Gun at the end.
That was an incredible reward, and definitely one of the main reasons why I continued playing RE2 for so long even after I’d mastered the entire game. Well, that and it was also just an incredibly fun game to play.
With Resident Evil 3, however, S+ is no longer a thing. Not only that, you can still get the S rank even on the highest difficulty setting (Inferno) if you use the bonus items you get from the shop, such as coins, the S.T.A.R.S. manual, and the powerful infinite weapons.
There’s no incentive to really challenge yourself, which was always the point of replaying the games in the first place.
Resident Evil 2 remake perfected the ranking system. Why mess with it in Resident Evil 3, Capcom? Why?
