YMMV / Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • When Steve Burnside spots a couple of swinging cranes that they can use to escape Nosferatu:
    Steve: Claire, you like to swing?
    Claire: Excuse me?
  • Another one:
    Alfred (to Steve and Claire): The girl and boy, destined to be one, will reveal the way!
    Claire: 'Girl and Boy'...? What!?
• Arc Fatigue: As cool as it is to finally play the Resident Evil 2 story, the campaign slows down immensely during the lab chapters and is a bit of a chore to get through. And you still have the Code: Veronica and original campaign to go afterward.
• Badass Decay: Hearing Jack Krauser's internal monologue makes him sound whinier and more cowardly than he normally seems. Considering he's suffering a mental breakdown at the same time his raging inferiority complex decided to flare up, it was to be expected. To his credit, from Leon S. Kennedy's perspective, he never actually loses his composure.
• Base-Breaking Character: Alexia Ashford in this version. Her Adaptational Villainy here completely eradicates her reedeming quality presented in Code: Veronica. Here, Alexia kills Alfred instead of caressing him in her arms while he succumbs to his injuries. As a result, it makes her later actions of hunting down Steve and Claire seem to be just a game instead of an act of vengeance for her own brother. Some fans believe that this change markedly deviates Alexia for the worse and turns her into a shallow psychopath, while others believe that it befits her personality as a egomaniac.
• Complete Monster: Alexia Ashford no longer has love for her brother as a part of her personality, the way it was in Code: Veronica, and her evil is cranked up a few notches higher. A Child Prodigy who joined the Umbrella Corporation at the age of twelve, Alexia was also an entitled sadist with a serious god complex. She aided her brother in murdering and experimenting on their father, tortured a classmate to death (and recorded the session) for being almost as smart as she was, and eventually injected herself with the T-Veronica virus, which she planned to use to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Reawakened from cryogenic sleep in her twenties, Alexia kills her brother for not waking her up on time, transforms Claire Redfield's Love Interest, Steve Burnside, into a monster and forces him to fight her to the death, and tries repeatedly to kill Chris and Claire for no other reason than their presence is at her facility. She reveals that her plan is to infect the world with the T-Veronica Virus, enslaving most of humanity to her will. When asked why, Alexia just gloats about how, as a superior specimen of humanity, she deserves to be queen.
• Even Better Sequel: Whilst The Umbrella Chronicles is good on its own merits, and adds more depth for Albert Wesker, The Darkside Chronicles has improved graphics, widens the range of headshots, except on Hard and Very Hard difficulty to add to the experience, remasters and remixes some of the most beloved music pieces in the series, has a well developed, original story with a more complex villain in Javier Hidalgo, a good supporting character in Manuela Hidalgo, and the settings revolve around Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica; the former is one of the most beloved games in the series, while the latter is a cult favorite amongst fans.
• Game-Breaker: Having a second person playing turns the game into a joke as the enemies increase in neither volume nor toughness to compensate for the fact that they are being shredded by twice as much lead. Note that this only applies to Normal mode and lower difficulties. If the player doesn't have anyone to play with, they can always go Guns Akimbo. It just takes a while to get good at aiming with their other hand.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Some stages have small, weak enemies that jump at the screen and obstruct the player's view. They have to be killed with knife slashes, otherwise they deal small bits of damage over time. Examples include spiders, G-embryos and roaches in "Memories of a Lost City", and the ants in "Game of Oblivion" and "Operation Javier".
  • Crows, bats and piranhas can be killed with a single bullet, but will annoy the player to no end due to their fast movement.
• Inferred Holocaust: There are T-Virus infected piranha loose in the Amazon river system. South America is boned.
• Narm: Here.
• One-Scene Wonder: You only get to play as Chris Redfield for a single chapter, as he and Claire journey through the Antarctic base with the intent of stopping Alexia and avenging Steve.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Annette Birkin of Resident Evil 2 fame was hit by this, as her brief depiction in this game is a lot nicer and more sympathetic/tragic. She seems to be much more of a mother in this game than she was in the original, showing far more concern for Sherry and far less of an obsession with William's G-Virus. She even takes it upon herself to stop her mutated husband as opposed to fangirling over his work in spite it being a major contributing factor in the Raccoon City incident.
  • Not completely rescued, but some fans who dislike Steve in Code: Veronica found him more tolerable in this game due to him having a new voice actor and for acting far less of a jerkass towards Claire.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Most fans of the game aren't very fond of the more pronounced and active shaky-cam, which can easily mess up the player's shots, more so if they're going for a critical hit on a zombie.
• That One Boss: Most of the late chapter bosses will have the player swearing at the screen, as they tend to be iron Lightning Bruisers whose weak spot is small and hard to hit. The fact they often come sequentially is alleviated only by the fact that the game usually throws you a checkpoint in between each boss. Props definitely have to go to Alexia who is just as frustrating as she was in the original game. Worse than that, she comes right after the battle with Mutant Steve, himself a painful boss.

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