Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episode 2 Review – A more Interesting Prospect

Today we’re taking a look at the next instalment of Capcom’s episodic survival horror game, Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episode 2 which is available now on consoles and PC. The story continues in two parts featuring the continuation of Claire Redfield and her sidekick Moira Burton alongside Barry Burton and Natalia’s intertwined story. Effectively offering gamers two takes on the survival madness set by the opening episode.

Without offering much in the way of spoilers in terms of the stories contained within, all we’re going to say here is the episode ups the ante from the first episode and gets into the real nitty gritty of survival horror. Whilst the opening episode was a bit dull in terms of its penal colony environment, the new environments feel a lot more creepy, open ended and less confined making for a better gameplay experience all round. There’s also some additional enemies thrown into the mix to spice things up and a couple of new boss encounters to keep players on their toes. It’s a less introductory experience this time and certainly picks up the pace although some of the new enemies will have you cursing at the screen where you’re left unable to see anything due to a splattering of green goo.

The gameplay remains unchanged offering a heady mixture of stealth moments – that’s if you use the Barry/Natalia combo effectively where Natalia is able to sense the enemies presence and acts as a radar before swapping over to the well tooled up Barry to take them out. Some of the stealth encounters are a bit too predictable, but nevertheless are still tense and enjoyable to play. The swapping of characters is ever present as outlined in the first episode where it’s much more free form this time during the Claire/Moira story. Players can choose to melee attack with Moira, often performing finishing moves once they have been blinded by her flashlight, or they can stick with Claire and shoot with the guns – of which a couple of new weapons are also introduced. There’s more action in the Claire story compared to the first episode and it all works well. Some new characters are also introduced into the Claire storyline but we’ll save mentioning anything more about them in case of spoilers.

In terms of length, both parts of the episode are much longer this time, and rightfully so considering players will have unlocked the Raid Mode from the first episode. Each campaign will take approximately one hour on a first play, but there’s options to jump in again after upgrading the characters skill and trying the Invisible or Timed Modes on offer.

Episode 2 is a better experience than the first, and feels like the story is beginning to ramp up as one would expect. Couple this with some new Raid mode characters and unlockables and there’s good reason to dive in even if the first might not have grabbed you fully. With a bit more to do this time, additional tools and more foes to take down episode 2 comes highly recommended. If there’s any negative then it would have to be directed at several moments where nothing in particular happens in the Barry storyline which is a bit of a wasted opportunity, but this is a minor quibble.

Score 8.5/10

Written by: Rob Cram

Rob Cram has hundreds of video game reviews, thousands of articles under his belt with years of experience in gaming and tech. He aims to remain fair and free from publisher/developer influence. With his extensive knowledge, feels his gaming opinions are valid and worth sharing. Agreement with his views are entirely optional. He might have a bias towards cyberpunk.