The First Resident Evil Game is Not the Best One to Start With

When you have a franchise where the mainline games are numbered sequentially, you tend to feel like you have to play the games in their proper number order for the best experience, and so that you don’t end up missing out on important information that helps you understand the following games in the series. With a series like Resident Evil, you don’t need to play the games in order, as most of them are disconnected enough from each other that you won’t miss out on important plot points that you need to help you understand what’s going on in the later games.

If you’re first diving into Resident Evil, it’s actually better to not start with the first game. This is especially true if you generally play games that have the over-the-shoulder or first-person camera style and a decent dose of action. Instead, you want to pick a game from the series that gets you right into the heart of the story with a more modern control scheme than the first game.

Resident Evil 2 Remake Is the Best Starting Game

If you’re first jumping into Resident Evil, then you probably want to start with the remake of Resident Evil 2. You get put right into the middle of the action and explore Raccoon City through multiple perspectives, as the campaign has two parts: Leon’s and Claire’s. While the first game is driven primarily by your investigations of the mansion and a desire to figure out what happened at that location, it has a much slower pace compared to RE2. Additionally, it feels like you get to learn more about Raccoon City and the outbreak through each campaign in RE2 as opposed to the differences between Jill and Chris’ campaigns in RE1, which are rather minimal in terms of story.

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With the situation at the mansion being contained, you have less combat in general, which isn’t suitable for the tastes of every player. Quite a few rooms and hallways in the mansion have an enemy or two, and the danger comes with all the backtracking you have to do to solve various puzzles, as the enemies revive stronger as Crimson Heads after a set amount of time passes. While Crimson Heads can scare you when you first encounter them without knowing that this happens, you still have a lot of time dedicated to running around the mansion rather than in combat or cutscenes, and that’s simply not the best introduction to the series anymore. The latest Resident Evil games and remakes have taken an approach that includes more combat and better controls.

You still have puzzles in RE2, but you get more action and have the ongoing threat of Mr. X following you. On top of that, you have the stressful section where you play as Sherry, who has to rely on hiding due to her young age and lack of combat ability. It encompasses the core features of what modern Resident Evil games are like now. You also still get to have two characters who are classic to the series—Leon and Claire—as your guides through this experience.

When to Play the First Resident Evil

Whether you even play the first Resident Evil game depends on what other games in the series you want to play and how much background information you’re willing to miss out on from those games. The best time to play the first game would be before you play RE3, as you see Jill’s life after the incident at the mansion and how she has to navigate an outbreak that she tried to warn her superiors about. While you can go through RE3 without playing the first game, it’s nice to have the background knowledge of that first encounter with the t-Virus.

Of course, you might not be drawn to the first games in the series at all, in which case you could start with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and move to Resident Evil Village afterwards to experience the full story of the Winters. However, with Resident Evil Requiem set to take place in or around Raccoon City, at least partially, now’s the perfect time to pick up the remake of RE2 and start your exploration of the area and its past before you join Grace on her upcoming mission.