YMMV / Resident Evil 0

• Contested Sequel: Prequel in this case:
  • The game has plenty of fans that liked it for being the last game to stick true to the series' survival horror roots before going into Actionized Sequel territory, for expanding on the original game's story and for turning Rebecca Chambers from a scrappy to a fan favorite character, claiming it’s essential to the series.
  • However, it’s also got a sizable amount of detractors who see it as one of the weaker games in the series for its frustrating item management and dual character control scheme, a weaker story that is essentially a retread of the Mansion Incident with some very blatant Ret Cons (e.g. The Tyrant from the original? The "Ultimate Life Form" that all that clandestine research at Arklay Mansion was focused on developing? Yeah; it turns out they had a fully-functional spare just farting around nearby the whole time).
  • A smaller third group believes that the story itself is fine, but the gameplay is repetitive.
  • The high difficulty (especially on Hard mode) is highly contested, some see it as more frustrating than scary while others feel the horror is cranked up with how the player needs to be extra careful with management.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The leech zombies, without a shadow of a doubt. Tough as nails with an insanely long reach, they cause considerable damage when they hit, and when they die, they explode for even more damage. Luckily, fire kills them fairly quickly, mitigating the annoyance a bit.
  • Eliminators are small, soak up more damage than they have a right to, attack in packs, and like dodging bullets.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Billy is this among the Resident Evil player characters, with many hoping to see him return someday.
• Goddamned Bats: Actual bats, too!
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The unlockable submachine gun appeared to have been a modified version of the Heckler & Koch MP5. However, it ended up bearing a striking resemblance to the SIG-Sauer MPX, released approximately 13 years after the game.
• Inferred Holocaust: One possible reason Billy didn't show up in later games? The last you see of him is him walking into a forest infested with man-eating monsters...
• Moral Event Horizon: Billy's flashback reveals that his commanding officer commanded his unit to kill an African village of 23 people simply because they were given wrong information of a supposed guerrilla hideout. Billy tried to stop him, but he was knocked out for his trouble. And thus, Billy was Wrongly Accused for a crime he didn't commit.
• Narm: It's Resident Evil. What did you expect? Special mention goes to Dr. Marcus controlling his leech doppelgängers through a countertenor opera solo.
• Nintendo Hard: This game is comparable to Code: Veronica as the overall lack of ammo and healing items (that you have to split between two characters) is among the stingiest in the entire series. Unlike that game, however, you do not have a decent knife to help conserve ammo, so you must make every shot count, avoid enemies when possible and only heal when absolutely necessary. If you don't have an excess of ammo for your best weapons and healing items for a boss battle than forget it. Have fun starting the entire game over.
• Polished Port: The HD remaster is a marked improvement over the original, as it has better models, animation, lighting, and the addition of an analogue control scheme. That said...
• Porting Disaster: The Switch version has longer loading times compared to any other version of the game (and not just a few more seconds, a loading screen in this version can go up to 35 seconds). Due to the longer loading times, getting a S rank in the Switch version is close to impossible as the timer still works during the loading screens. There are also missing textures and shaders (the box for the gondola in the treatment plant being the most egregious example), and the last few cutscenes have audio issues due to the longer loading times making the whole thing off-sync. There's also a Game-Breaking Bug reeking of Obvious Beta only in this port; if Billy and Rebecca split up, if the non-controlled partner dies, the game implodes on itself and just crashes or resets to the prologue cutscene if no save data is detected.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Rebecca was easily the least popular character of the original Resident Evil, but her starring role in this game elevated her to being a fan favourite.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Unlike previous games, there are no crates for you to store your stuff in. Instead, the inventory system here works by having Billy and Rebecca ferry stuff you need from one area to the other. While it's convenient that you can finally discard items to make room, it's not so pleasant when a small majority of the items you receive, such as the Hookshot, take up two slots while trying to have room to spare for your weapons, ammo, herbs, and other plot-related items. Especially since there are several moments in the game where Billy and Rebecca have to split up.
  • Rebecca is disgustingly frail. While this may have been intentional to put more emphasis on Billy being the fighter of the two, there's a difference between can't take much punishment and "two attacks put Rebecca into orange caution status." It's frustrating using double the healing items necessary if you're not careful, but the game also has various goddamn enemies such as Eliminators and leech zombies who are hard to avoid regardless.
  • The hatred for the partner system isn't quite as vitriolic, but it is there. It means you can burn through ammo a lot faster then you intend, it requires you to keep an eye on two separate characters' health bars (if one dies, game over), and some of the puzzles relying on it are notoriously fiddly — the "retrieve the Fire Key" puzzle has it worst because, if you accidentally call Billy to rejoin Rebecca after raising the cage, you get a Non-Standard Game Over as the cage drops on top of her and kills her.
• That One Achievement:
  • Who's Got Herb and This is Serious Business, the two achievements/trophies that require a no healing run. A problem with this is unless you are good at dodging, you are going to be in caution or even danger for most of the game. This is also a problem playing as Rebecca, who is so frail in this game that you're likely to tear your hair out. The other is using the green chemical that heals poison as there are four spider enemies and the chess puzzle where if you make the wrong move, you'll release poison gas which can poison both characters.
  • Save Your Prayers: The requirement is not saving at all, meaning you have to breeze the entire game in one sitting.
• That One Boss: The Giant Bat is one of the most widely hated bosses in Resident Evil history, for starters before you even see the boss, you are locked in it's area as you enter a dead-end save room (and presumably save) then leave and get ambushed to start the fight so if you've saved here then there is no way to return to grab ammo/health/weapons as you are simply stuck with what you brought with you. With an extremely quick and erratic flight pattern, and its spawning a steady stream of smaller bats to run interference, it seems tailor-made to exploit every weakness of the game's aiming system. Worse, the bats it spawns not only make it harder to target the Giant Bat, but they will steadily whittle away at your health. Even exploiting its stun-lock vulnerability to flame grenades isn't a sure thing, because when it's hit, the "stunned" bat will jerk in mid-air, throwing off the auto-aim and making it hard to continue pounding it with grenades.
• That One Level: The section of the game where the player has inserted the 3 tablets into the Observatory and has yet to unlock the elevator that leads back to the training facility can be this; especially on Hard for one simple reason as the Observatory room is lowered so the doorway back to the facility now leads to the terrace, which has two Eliminators after the basement which can wreck the player or force them to waste a decent chunk of much-needed ammo on Hard mode if the player needs to backtrack for any items and what makes this really evil is that Rebecca may very well have to make this journey on her own if this is after Billy is separated from her and not helping matters is that this is when you fight the Giant Bat.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans complained about the changes to Rebecca's face in the HD remaster. Her original face from the 2002 game was based on Japanese pop star Ayumi Hamasaki. However, since Capcom no longer has the rights to Hamasaki's likeness, they attempted to cover up Rebecca's face in the HD remaster with lots of mascara.
• They Wasteda Perfectly Good Character: Billy and Rebecca do not get enough dialogue as they should for a game focused on their cooperation, Billy notably seems to even have a PSTD episode at one point which is especially notable considering no other Resident Evil protagonist had done so at the time but it's never elaborated on.
• Vindicated by History: Zero had to compete with being released after the remake of the first game, which considering the incredible reception to that game, was no easy task. It also introduced a lot of new features like the partner system and lack of item boxes, and both were disliked by just about everyone. With the HD re-release of the game, however, a lot of detractors have been much kinder to it, and have stopped comparing it to the RE1 remake. It's now regarded as a flawed, but ultimately entertaining and unique entry in the series (being the last installment to date to employ the classic fixed-camera gameplay style earns it a few extra brownie points).

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