Game 13 of Spooktober 2025 Complete!

This was a weirder game than I remembered going into it. I think having played them as they came out, when I was younger I didn't notice the significant shift in gameplay as this sequel was noticeably aiming for a clearer "Survival Horror" angle than its RPG-leaning predecessor. While that's not a genre I typically struggle with, I think I ultimately still prefer the gameplay of the first and the fact this one has the quasi-RPG elements at all made me wish it still played like the first one as the more limited resources were more annoying than anything. Other than all that though, I think this game is still pretty neat for what it is and while the sterile labs and Umbrella-like corporate villains plot are less interesting, the second game does bring a lot of variety with the desert setting full of new monsters and characters.

As for my overall goals for spooky month 2025...well umm, I still have a good ways to go on two more games and it's about to be the final day of the month. I think it's still possible to hit 15, but I'm not going to force it if I'm not feeling it tomorrow, so we shall see!

Beat rank F with bad ending because I let the dog die, did not bring Pierce ice, and did not save him at the end game. I did not generally revisit rooms unless they were red shaded for enemies to kill. I was very impressed that this game fixed all of the problems I had with the first. They pretty much made it Resident Evil with magic, with exceptional attention to detail. I loved the realistic ammo, weapons, armor and usable items, and the flavor text for just about everything you can check. I started off doing only level 1 of training, so I missed the tutorial on the GPS and magic to go straight into the starting mission. The combat took some getting used to, with the target locking and enemies being tougher, faster, and more numerous than typical survival horror. I put the baton in my attachments with intentions of switching to it instead of reloading, but I opted to run around and reload instead. Will have to experiment with that during next playthrough. I learned heal, energy shot, metabolism and antibody (why didn't they call it barrier?) because I prefer support magic. I quickly learned the efficiency of keeping my hp up with the mp earned from battle. I took a photo of the bridge puzzle for later but I just ran across without solving the puzzle or killing the fish. Afterwards I surmised the point of the puzzle was to avoid the fish. I died multiple times to the boss and had to check a walkthrough. I had already figured out shooting the cables to electrocute him, but missed shooting the pipe at the end to cause massive damage. I loved the touch at the end about how the weapons and armor I found were returned to the local police. Great realism and tutorial like trial of those items.

Then I did the rest of the training but don't think I scored enough to win anything. I only did each level once and failed level 5. I bought the combat armor. The concept of getting currency from killing enemies to buy upgrades and supplies reminded me of Dino Crisis 2, only this game did not have absurd numbers of enemies. I hated the starting machine pistol because of its low damage, frequent reloads, and lack of area effect. It was not really suitable for fighting large groups of enemies. I had the most trouble with the little gremlins because of their numbers and high damage. The camels gave me a hard time, especially when there was more than 1 or mixed with other enemies. I learned how to shoot them after avoiding a charge but some camera angles were terrible. A predator that kills using blunt force trauma without even a horn was such a dumb idea. I learned plasma and combust to help with the swarms and powered up healing to the max. I beat the cyborg boss by taking forever to pump him full of 9mm. I bought the shotgun and assault rifle, though in retrospect the shotgun was probably a waste. I did try out the 9mm pistol but was not impressed and loaded a save. Though according to guides it was worth using with its extended mag. I bought both the extended mag and bayonet for the rifle, but was very disappointed to not be able to equip both at once. The extended mag was a waste, though I never actually attacked with the bayonet. I solved the cash register puzzle and almost cracked the safe code. I could not find any silver plates so I tried to guess the code (did not realize it meant mirrors, I was looking for dishes). But the message said how many phones were on the street, so I thought the answer was 1; the phone at the beginning was on the street while the others were inside buildings. But the correct answer was all the phones, so I had to look up the code. I used shotgun for the first time on the mini boss chameleon under the town as it was taking way too long to kill with pistol. Then I beat the flamethrower boss by hiding in the corridor and shooting 9mm. It was tough to avoid the flame and the fight took a long time.

Then I died at the camel boss. The machine pistol was really not cutting it so I had to change my attachments to include my other weapons and plenty of health restore. I beat the first phase with 9mm, then unloaded on the final phase with rifle and fire shotgun ammo. Then I got killed multiple times by the mini boss chameleon. It was absurd how much more deadly it was than the one under the town. I had to run past to the elevator where it would not come so I could reload and cast spells. I learned necrosis a while before after reading in a guide that it did poison. The in game description made no mention of poison, just lightning. So I did not see the point of having both fire and lightning nukes. That poison was a great spell and I maxed it out. I killed that bastard with shotgun and loved how the shotgun could interrupt/stun enemies. Then down into the end game area where I found the armory with the spas and infinite buckshot and 9mm hollowpoints; god damn. With that shotgun and the silenced pistol I felt powerful and prepared for the first time in the game. I maxed out my pyro to deal with those physical immune blobs and later dealt with them using the flamethrower or stun gun. I tried poison on them but it seemed to be more likely to miss. I died first try on the garbage boss when he sucked me close and insta killed me. Now that I knew his trick I beat him next try using a mix of rifle and buckshot. It was interesting how the maps linked together to allow me to get back to the town where I bought the amazing semi auto shotgun and grenade launcher for the rifle. I never bought the grenade pistol and could not afford the mp5. I also got the tactical vest and seen the sweet bomb squad armor, but I had used a lot of belt pouches on my combat armor and decided to stick with it for the rest of the game. Nothing else would have as many slots and the in built GPS and silence immunity freed up 2 more slots. Plus the GPS on the armor had much better range. I tried to crack the computer password. I even thought about going back to the sleeping area to look for clues, but changed my mind and looked it up instead. Oh the clue was the sleeping area after all. I died at the magic shooting boss. Next time I went in with slugs and grenades equipped. The grenades absolutely wrecked him because they interrupted almost every attack.

Then came the worst part of the game, in the room filling with gas. It was a figure out what to do within the time limit or game over situation. I had to look it up and even then the little girl barely scraped out with 1 hp because it was finicky to get her to follow. That whole thing should have been a cutscene. The puzzles at this point became obnoxious. God damn sliding block puzzle, and I had to look up the pyramid puzzle. I knew the steles and clock had something to do with it but could not be bothered to figure it out. I beat the water boss with poison and buckshot. I kept forgetting to try poison for bosses. For the ending stretch of the game I maxed out antibody and energy shot, then got energy ball. Now that I knew there were hidden magics I maxed metabolism to get and max life drain. By the end I managed to reveal inferno and apobiosis but could not learn them. The raptor like enemies were tough so I resorted to using the stun gun on them. I killed most of the cyborgs with the silenced pistol and realized how useful that flashlight was for making them miss me in melee. I went all the way back to get the mp5 and it was devastating with very high dps. It became my main weapon, though it went through ammo very quickly. I also tried out the laser. Both weapons were great though I think the mp5 killed faster. I did not try using grenades now that they were infinite. The invisible cyborgs killed me a few times as it was very difficult to figure them out. I used energy ball to reveal them, then stun gun, then unload with bullets. I hated the one right before the final boss; such a dirty trick. I almost beat the final boss on my first try, but I simply did not have enough ringer solutions equipped. For the first phase I stood still in the low area pumping grenades to kill the base and head. Kept antibody and energy shot up at all times and cure status as needed. Then when the core opened I fired a grenade followed by rifle rounds until it closed. Reloaded while it was closed and life steal as needed to heal. Life steal hit Eve for over 600 damage and could 1 shot her clone. Such a sweet spell. It was not hard to beat her second try after I removed everything except the rifle, skull and holy water for a ton of ringers. I did try to follow a walkthrough for the first phase, which was about getting behind to slow the boss, but it did not work without the best grenade launcher.

Then I beat bounty mode using walkthroughs to get everything and learn how to properly defeat the more difficult enemies. Especially those cloakers that gave me so much trouble the first time. I had to redo the beginning because I left the church before getting the black card, which meant I would never access to the armory. The enemies were brutal at first, but this playthrough was overall easier due to knowing optimal tactics. I got healing 2 and necrosis 1 very early, the latter was useful on the 2 mutant fat guys on top of the escalator. I saved my magic level ups for when I needed mana, and hardly used any health or mana consumables. After the beginning I bought the combat armor and M4. On my lost attempt I managed to ace the first level of training, but I could only get the 100 bp bonus this time. I did ace all the other levels with the M4 on a single attempt. That rifle was so much better, with single shots destroying yellow targets and 3 round burst destroying red. It allowed me to spend much less time reloading. So I ended up with a bunch of extra items that cluttered up the storage boxes. I bought about 100 5.56 ammo to take out golems. The main take away I got was how useful it was to have both ths machine pistol and pistol equipped, especially with the 32 magazine for the pistol. I could take out many enemies without worrying about getting hit while reloading. I got my healing to 3 for the most efficient healing. By the flamethrower boss I got necrosis to 3 to absolutely wreck him so I could prevent the dog from dying and get the good ending this time.

The rest of the game was pretty much the same only I got the sweet weapons earlier. I got metabolism to level 2, then energy shot to level 3 for the garbage boss. The M950 was awesome with its 100 bullet magazine and was one of my most used guns. It was not better than the mp5 with 120 mag though. I learned how useful the flamethrower for the puppet and water boss. I also learned that riot and air burst grenades did not interrupt the puppet boss, and barely scraped out of that fight. At the end I got the m249 and mm1 grenade launcher, which were both amazing. With energy shot 3 I was dropping those cyborgs in seconds. I also got the magnum but was not impressed when I tried it on golems. I maxed out all my magic, consuming the 4 accessories to max the third spells. I got the EOD suit for impact resist now that I knew how powerful that effect was, especially against the final boss. I only had 9 attachment slots though because I used 1 belt pouch on the combat armor and did not realize there were less in this mode. I beat phase 1 easily by pumping grenades into the front, head and core while casting life steal as needed. The EOD suit allowed me to wait until I was at 1 hp before casting, though I also had some protein capsules left to use. Then I wrecked Eve with a mix of m249, grenades, lifesteal and Maeda's poison shots. I only used a couple healing items during the fight, and even still had those colas.

Then I beat on Scavenger mode at rank C. I skipped training because I was sick of it and jumped right in. It was similar to my first playthrough only I knew what I was doing, and had more deaths and close calls due to the higher enemy damage. I had to redo the entire beginning because my save files started getting corrupted. I did figure out how to tell when the file was corrupted so I could make a new file; ended up with about 7 different save files. This did not happen in the other modes though I was getting memory card read failures on occasion. No idea if these issues were from the game, the rom or my aging psp. I opted not to buy the P08 pistol. It would have made some encounters easier and prevented some damage, but I was using most of my mana on healing anyway. Bought some flares and riot grenades to use in the tougher fights. I stalled during the flamethrower boss to let the dog die so I would get the chicken plate. Being able to survive any hit with 1 hp saved my ass so many times and made the final boss much easier. But it was why my rank was so low. I followed the same magic path as my Bounty playthrough. Healing to 2 first thing, then I waited until buying the military vest to raise my hp enough to need level 3 healing. Necrosis to 3 by the flamethrower boss, energy shot to 3, metabolism 2, antibody 3, plasma 2 for the giant Bowman boss. Just before the final boss I spent all my xp and the medicine wheel to max all spells excerpt fire. Once I got to the shelter the game was not so difficult, especially once I bought the M4. The garbage boss took a few tries because he took a long time to kill with only the silenced pistol and spas. The main trouble was getting him to suck so I could damage. I finished off phase 1 while he spammed the tongue attack, which was easy to bait and dodge. The giant Bowman boss was a little tough because I did not have enough grenades to finish him. I left 4 back in Dryfield and really should have gone back for them. I finished him off with slugs while casting plasma on the girl to interrupt every attack. I killed the raptor like enemies using the bayonet, but I never got the hang of properly dodging the melee golems. I used energy shot with airburst grenades, M4, laser, and silenced pistol with Spartan ammo to kill the melee golems. I burned down a few of the ranged golems but most I killed with free hydra ammo. I killed part 1 of the final boss by just standing there and taking the hits as I used grenades to destroy the front, head and core. Life drain when my hp was 1. Eve was tough and I barely scraped by while using all the ringers I had attached. It was because the grenade pistol lacked the range to reliably break her ultimate attack, so I got hit by a few of them. I had to use the laser for it. I still managed to beat her in one attempt, and would have done much better knowing to keep energy shot up as highest priority to break her ultimate faster. I had fewer healing items attached because I took a pencilin and stim. I also forgot to save Pierce from the freezer, but oh well I was not on the good ending anyway.

I decided not to play Nightmare because I am sick of this game after playing 3 times back to back. And Scavenger was annoying enough with how easy it was to die. Nightmare would have the harder enemies and fancy loot of Bounty, with the crap stores and even worse survival of Scavenger. It would pretty much be the same as my Scavenger playthrough only more save scumming between battles, more flare and riot grenade use, and lots of annoying battles vs golems. I would get the P08 pistol for free, let the dog die to get the chicken plate, and use necrosis 3 for the flamethrower and camel bosses. I would likely skip healing 3 until later and focus more on energy shot, plasma and apobiosis. Kill the garbage boss with pistol and possibly use spartan ammo to get past the timed part after. Get the M4 and buy plenty of ammo. Use the stun gun for camels and raptors, flamethrower for water boss and rest for Bowman boss. Save all grenades for the Bowman boss and use plasma on the girl to finish him with other weapons. The nightmare guide says to save slugs for very specific encounters. The final boss should go the same except I could bring the magnum with poison rounds.

This was an amazing game that fixed every problem I had with the previous. It was an excellent different take on survival horror and crafted at such quality as to rival Resident Evil 2. I loved the attention to detail, the huge amount of flavor text from examining the environment and the realistic items. The absurd rpg mechanics from the first game were replaced with just leveling up magic, so there was more unique utility among the weapons and armor. Excellent gameplay replayability and story too. I really have little to criticize about this game. The tank controls and camera angles could be annoying, but that was a part of the genre, and the music was fairly boring compared to the previous. One of the best games on PS1.

9.5+/10