Resident Evil 3 Remake - Hardcore - No Damage / No Shop Items Playthrough

A playthrough of Resident Evil 3 Remake in Hardcore difficulty. I am using the default inventory (no shop items) and I am not taking any damage.

There are a lot of things that I like about the remake of Resident Evil 3, and a few that I'd rather do without. I love its atmosphere and overall design, which give out this compelling claustrophobic feel, and the fact that it is action-based, although I admit that I was looking forward to a revamped version of the Clock Tower, the Park or the Cemetery and the Clock Tower puzzles. And I do not like certain aspects of its gameplay that could have been great additions if they were implemented in a more player-friendly way.

More specifically, the game has a set of mechanics which, although in reality are more elaborate than those of Resident Evil 2 Remake, in practice they don't offer you more flexibility. I am talking about the Dodge and Perfect Dodge moves, two evasion techniques that are supposed to save your life when you are in a desperate position, or when you are low on ammo. The simple Dodge is fine, as you can execute it any time you want - whereas it will really save you or not is almost exclusively up to you and the zombie that is about to grab you. The Perfect Dodge, however, is a painful story. You have to practice again and again on your timing to make it successful, but even if you feel you can master it, you may not always make it work. What's worse, this move is essential in the higher difficulties (Hardcore, Nightmare and, especially, Inferno), where the enemies are much stronger and Nemesis in its "human" form can't be stopped with one grenade when stalking you in the city streets (except for in Hardcore).

Nightmare and Inferno feel like a different game, and a very nasty one for that matter, as their setup is not like that of the other difficulty levels. Items and weapons are found elsewhere, more enemies crowd narrow passages, different monsters appear in certain places; most of the times, you are forced to come up with new strategies as those that you have practiced do not work anymore. Hardcore, however, is set around the classic demanding high difficulty of the Resident Evil games; a challenge that you can take after having practiced your gameplay strategy in the lower levels. In this Hardcore run, I didn't use any shop items or perks, and because of this I was extra cautious: I saved a lot, never rushed ahead, took care of the enemies carefully, shooting the weaker ones with the handgun then knifing them to make sure they were dead for good. I kept my grenades in store for Nemesis, and wasn't stingy with my flame rounds in the sewers, therefore getting rid of the Gamma hunters much faster. If there was a way to simply avoid an enemy, I went for that option, and practiced perfect-dodging quite a bit. 

The final boss fight still was a pain, but thanks to all the practice throughout the rest of the game, I made it through with some successful Perfect Dodges. Nemesis may be huge, it may look intimidating, it may cover half the room while being able to devastate the other half with its enormous arms, but it has one major weakness: it cannot move. This may seem trivial when you consider its size, but just think of David and Goliath. Jill is able to run around as much as she wants, evade all attacks, even trick the monster by heading towards one direction, then quickly turning to go the other way while the monster is already attacking an empty space. Of course all this applies to Hardcore mainly, because Nightmare and Inferno are a different story.