1. Explore and solve the environmental puzzles
On the whole, Resident Evil Revelations 2 is a pretty linear game with very few branching paths. When you do come across a branching path, however, there are usually more than a few goodies in store for you.
Don’t be in a rush to move on with the story; instead, take your time to explore each room to see if you can scrounge up any green herbs, ammunition, or even parts boxes. Enemies don’t drop items and resources can be pretty scarce, so it’ll be worth your while to search every nook and cranny of the area.
You’ll occasionally come across a few environmental puzzles that require you to step out of your comfort zone and swap over to the secondary character. Get used to it. The rewards are usually worth it. Speaking of secondary characters, that brings me to my next tip.
2. Play as Moira and Natalia
First off, don’t underestimate Moira. She can take down enemies almost just as effectively as Claire. Moira can shine the flashlight at the Afflicted, stunning them Alan Wake style, before going up and bashing their skulls in with her crowbar. She can also use the flashlight to detect hidden Kafka drawings on the walls to net you some extra BP, as well as some secret files pertaining to Resident Evil’s lore.
Natalia, on the other hand, is invaluable due to her ‘sight’ ability that allows her to detect enemies from afar. A good way to tell if that zombie on the floor is dead or alive is to switch over to Natalia and see if his figure is covered in yellow smoke. If the smoke is there, the zombie’s alive and is waiting to ambush you. If there’s no smoke, you’re in the clear.
Natalia can also detect insect larvae and destroy them with her brick, earning you some extra BP.
3. Be stealthy whenever you can
Ammo isn’t exactly easy to come by in Resident Evil Revelations 2, and Barry Burton gets around this problem by using stealth attacks on enemies when they’re not looking. It’s easy to want to run straight for your goal whenever you’re overwhelmed with enemies, but you need to take it easy.
Crouch whenever you can so your enemies don’t hear you approaching. Barry can perform silent takedowns on the Afflicted from behind, and nearby enemies will be none the wiser. One of the tougher enemy types you’ll encounter in episode 1 is the Revenant. Y’know, big scary dude with mechanical tools attached to his limbs? But guess what? You can stealth kill this guy from behind too.
4. Use Natalia to detect enemy weak spots
There’s a reason why Natalia is fast becoming my favorite character in Revelations 2. She’s just so useful.
The first time you encounter the Revenant, you’ll notice that an orange, glowing blob appears on a random part of its body after you’ve weakened it enough. All you have to do is shoot that blob, and the Revenant will fall dead. Sounds easy enough. The only problem is, you have to expend a good number of bullets shooting different parts of the Revenant until you expose that weak spot. If you’re playing on normal difficulty or higher, you’ll be very well aware that ammo is hard to come by.
If you quickly switch over to Natalia, however, she’ll be able to sense the general area in which the Revenant’s weak spot is located. Once you see it, swap back to Barry to take it down.
5. Unlock the AI’s attacking skills
When playing as either Moira or Natalia, you’ll notice that Claire and Barry won’t fire their weapons at enemies even when they’re attacking. That’s because you have to spend 500 BP to unlock the skill that allows them to shoot at enemies. Pretty silly, I know.
The upside to this is that your ammo reserves won’t deplete whenever Claire and Barry are AI-controlled. However, their firepower will be reduced. As such, you might want to consider upgrading this particular skill a little more as you earn BP so you’ll have an easier, and much more enjoyable, time playing as Moira and Natalia.
6. Craft your sub-weapons
You’ll be picking up a good number of seemingly random items along your journey, including cloth, alcohol, and empty bottles. By the time you get to Barry’s portion of episode 1, you’ll have the option to craft both exploding bottles and firebomb bottles.
Now it’s important to know which bottle is more useful for which types of encounters. When dealing with a large crowd of Afflicted, you’ll probably want to go with the exploding bottle. It acts like a grenade, and it’s effective for crowd control.
When dealing with tougher enemies like the Revenants, however, I suggest using a firebomb bottle instead. The firebomb bottle works essentially the same way as a Molotov cocktail and it deals damage over time. I’ve found this to work especially well against the Revenants as it burns them and quickly exposes their weak spot before killing them.
It’s always good to have both bottle types on hand, but do make sure you know when to use them.
7. Upgrade your weapons
This should go without saying, but a friendly reminder can’t hurt. When playing through the campaign, always be on the lookout for parts boxes that you can use to modify your weapons. You can upgrade a weapon’s damage, clip capacity, and even its reload speed.
The best part about this upgrade system in Revelations is that you can remove the parts as well. Whenever you’re at a workbench, take a look at how much ammo you have left for each weapon, and try to assess which gun you’ll be relying on for the next stretch of the game. If you’re out of shotgun shells, you might want to take those damage upgrades off of it and put it on another weapon instead.
Simply put, always be aware of which guns have which upgrades, and swap them accordingly.
If you’re still on the fence about Resident Evil Revelations 2, you can check out our review of episode 1 here.
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