Don't take the title of the review as a knock against the game. This is without a doubt the most technically impressive of Capcom's Survival Horror titles for the PS1. It is, especially for its time, a gorgeous game and a technical marvel and in many ways ahead of its time, featuring full 3D environments, fairly robust gunplay, and challenging, quick enemies that will test your skills to the limit. The voice work and script are also leagues ahead of earlier RE games; more corny big budget action-horror blockbuster and less lowercase b-movie featuring the local community theatre. That said, this game I would argue is as much of a puzzle game as it is a Survival Horror game, and that's something a player needs to prepare for. This game is without a doubt the most puzzle-packed Survival Horror game of its time, second perhaps only to Parasite Eve 2, to the point where it approaches a level of puzzle density unseen outside of the adventure game genre. With some puzzles, like the fingerprint scanner puzzle, feeling like they could have been lifted straight out of one. The game does not hold your hand either; like an adventure game, it absolutely is one of those games you will need a pen and paper for if you want to solve some puzzles blind. The later DDK locks can be especially brow-furrowing. But if you can get over that hurdle, you will be able to enjoy a severely underrated survival horror game that I personally will always fondly remember as my first forray into speedrunning on many a lazy summer afternoon and evening. And as it absolutely must be said: Thank you, GoG, for doing what you can to make sure games like this are not lost forever to the ravages of time and skinflint game publishers.
As a preface: I absolutely love this game's presentation. It's both an interesting take on the Third Person Shooter and a fun little artifact of a time when social media was seen as a novelty. I'm also not squeamish for grittiness - Manhunt is one of my all time faves. But under that gloss is a game with shooting and movement mechanics so frustrating, a story so nonsensical and a duo of player characters that are somehow even more undercooked than in the original K&L that you realize that the gloss is what's carrying it - it's certainly what the positive reviews fixate on to the near total exclusion of all else. The cover mechanics are just awful and finicky and cover that should protect you (i.e: solid blocks of concrete) doesn't due to hitbox quirks. Enemy AI is spotty at best and non-existent at worst. Glitches abound: I died twice to enemies that popped through a wall to blast me at close range. By far the worst part are the shooting mechanics. How bad are they? For the first half of the game, your best option for consistently downing enemies at range is a *shotgun* with zero recoil. Pistols are a much weaker second. As for the automatic weapons, they have such ridiculous spread until the ones encountered in the later half of the game that they're effectively useless. The enemies using the same weapons meanwhile are just about laser accurate with them, can kill you in seconds with them even at lower difficulties, and shrug off multiple shots to the head, but are instantly killed by a pistol shot to the ankle. K&L2 is, effectively, a substandard mid-aughts linear cover shooter some of the worst gunplay in the genre attempting to cover up its bad mechanics with a coat of exquisite varnish. It's clear that the game that needed way, way more time to develop and better QA testing, and for that reason is a frustrating disappointment. If you want it, get it on sale, otherwise, hard pass. Do not believe the nostalgic hype.
