Resident Evil 3 Review: A Shorter, Faster Nightmare

Introduction

Raccoon City is already dying when Resident Evil 3 opens, and Capcom wastes no time reminding you of it. Fires crawl up apartment blocks, the T-virus has turned half the population into shambling obstacles, and Jill Valentine has roughly one night to get out before the city gets nuked off the map. The RE Engine remake, built on the same foundation that reinvented Resident Evil 2 a year earlier, keeps that premise but changes the rhythm entirely. Where the 2019 remake stalked you, this one chases you. The original 1999 PS1 release was a side story told at its own pace; this version compresses it into a sprint, and that compression is the single decision every other choice in the game orbits around.

Raccoon City's Last Night: Story and Pacing

The campaign moves through fewer, denser environments than RE2 did: a condemned apartment block, a clock tower, a hospital, and the subterranean NEST 2 facility, each one shorter and more linear than its predecessor's puzzle-box precinct. Carlos Oliveira gets a genuinely expanded role here, splitting playable time with Jill across a hospital stretch that didn't exist in the original game, and his section leans harder into straightforward combat than anything Jill does. The trade-off is content that got cut outright, most notably the entire Clock Tower puzzle sequence and the dodge-reliant Grave Digger worm fight, both casualties of a campaign that clocks in closer to six hours than the ten-plus of its predecessor. It's a faster story, told with the same commitment to Raccoon City's doomed geography, but it ends before it earns a second act of dread.

Nemesis: A Predator Redesigned

Nemesis himself is the game's clearest win. Capcom gave him a voice this time, a rasp of "S.T.A.R.S." that still lands as a threat rather than a gimmick, and reworked his mutations into genuine set-piece boss fights rather than scripted ambushes. He shape-shifts across the campaign, from the hulking trench-coated hunter of the streets to a grotesque, tentacled mass by the NEST 2 finale, and each form demands a different combat approach instead of just more bullets. The catch is that he's been pulled out of free-roam sections almost entirely. The original's unpredictable encounters, where Nemesis could appear in rooms you'd already cleared, are gone, replaced by scripted chase corridors and boss arenas. He's scarier in the moment and less unsettling across the whole runtime.

• Redesign: Three distinct mutation stages, each introducing new attack patterns instead of padding out the same fight.
• Presence: Confined almost entirely to scripted sequences rather than stalking open exploration, trading persistent dread for cinematic spikes.
• Voice work: A rasping, guttural delivery of "S.T.A.R.S." that still raises the hair on your neck a dozen hours after you've memorized his attack timing.

Combat, Dodge, and the New Jill Valentine

Jill's perfect-dodge mechanic, pulled straight from the 1999 original and sharpened here, rewards precise timing with a slow-motion window and a free counter-shot, and it changes how you approach every encounter once you've internalized it. Ammo crafting returns from RE2, letting you convert gunpowder into handgun rounds, shotgun shells, or grenade launcher ordnance on the fly, which keeps the inventory-management tension alive even as the game leans more aggressively into action beats than its predecessor did. Zombies hit harder and swarm in bigger numbers through the apartment and hospital sections, closer to a horde shooter than the controlled drip of RE2's precinct. Carlos, by contrast, plays almost like a different game: full-auto rifles, grenade spam, and zero dodge mechanic, built for players who want Resident Evil 3's combat without its risk-reward core.

• Perfect Dodge: A tight input window that triggers bullet-time and a guaranteed counterattack, turning Jill's evasiveness into her signature combat tool.
• Crafting: Gunpowder combines into multiple ammo types on demand, preserving RE2's resource-tension even as enemy density climbs.
• Carlos sections: Straight-up third-person shooting with no dodge mechanic, a deliberate pacing break from Jill's riskier playstyle.

Visuals and the RE Engine

The RE Engine does the heavy lifting visually, rendering Raccoon City's decaying architecture with the same photogrammetry-driven detail that made RE2's police station feel tactile. Rain slicks the streets with real-time reflections, fire licks up collapsing buildings with convincing volumetric smoke, and Jill's character model carries subtle wear, torn jacket, bruised knuckles, as the night wears on. The clock tower's gothic stonework and the NEST 2 facility's sterile, blood-streaked corridors both show Capcom's art team working at the top of its game even when the level design beneath them got trimmed down. It's not pushing new technical ground the way RE2 did on arrival, since it's reusing the same engine and many of the same assets a year later, but it's still one of the better-looking survival horror games on PS4-generation hardware.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Nemesis redesign: Three mutation stages and genuine boss-fight structure make him one of the series' most memorable antagonists.
• Perfect Dodge: A high-skill-ceiling mechanic that makes Jill's combat feel distinct from every other character in the franchise.
• Visual fidelity: The RE Engine renders Raccoon City's final night with convincing fire, rain, and decay.
• Pacing: A tighter campaign that rarely lets momentum sag, built for players who want action over slow-burn tension.

Cons:

• Runtime: A five-to-seven-hour campaign feels thin next to RE2's remake, especially at the same launch price.
• Cut content: The Clock Tower puzzle sequence and the Grave Digger fight, both series staples, didn't survive the remake.
• Reduced Nemesis freedom: Scripted chase sequences replace the original's unpredictable free-roam stalking.
• Carlos's shallow combat: His sections strip out the dodge mechanic entirely, leaving a flatter shooting gallery in between Jill's chapters.

Conclusion

Resident Evil 3 is a tighter, meaner night in Raccoon City that trades the slow dread of its predecessor for a dead sprint toward the exit, and it mostly lands the landing even with the runway cut short. Nemesis earns his reputation here, Jill's dodge mechanic is one of the best combat tools Capcom has built into the franchise, and the RE Engine makes every burning street look the part. What it doesn't do is justify a full-price tag against a campaign you can finish before dinner's cold. It's a brilliant six hours wearing the skin of a game that used to run twice as long.