Headshots and being a good shot feel insufficiently rewarding

[gecman]

I like most of the changes and I love that the game is harder, but I am not a fan of the fact that enemies are completely immune to the laws of physics. One does not absorb a 9mm round at point blank range to the middle of their face and keep running forward with absolutely no change in velocity.

I feel a bit like being good at aiming is not really rewarding because you hit something in the head and it just keeps coming completely unchanged unless you hit twice or get lucky with a crit.

Is this just me?

[socially ept outcel]

I feel like they can't make pinpoint aiming too rewarding because this is a game that is going to be largely played by controller users on console.

[Nat 1]

The problem is that being a good shot is significantly easier with the better aim assist on consoles and mouse and keyboard on PC. It can make the original game ridiculously easy in ways that were never originally intended. There was a reason they rewarded you for mastering the controls when the game was only on the GameCube or PS2. Heck, the original PC port didn't even use the mouse.

They're also seeking a design middle ground between allowing us free movement and the intended difficulty. Originally you had to stop to aim and the game was designed around it. Hence the easy staggers as a means of crowd control even on hard difficulties. Perhaps Capcom went a bit too far to the difficult side, but I'm enjoying it myself.

[Xengre]

Try the Handgun and upgrading it until you unlock its special perk. I've not played far yet as I haven't had time but I heard it has the special from the OG which gave it a 25-50% crit rate meaning it 1-shot heads (and if las plagas spawned 1-shot those too) when it crits so usually in 1-4 bullets making it far more efficient than other pistols as difficulty scales up and even on normal (also probably still cheapest to upgrade I bet). I heard the DLC pistol may have this, too, but cannot confirm yet. This may help a ton.

Shotgun you have to be quite close for the bullets to properly do massive head dmg. If you aren't getting close enough you could be losing a good 50-80% of your shotgun dmg per round.

Snipers should be at the head unless there is a superior weakpoint per usual.

One thing is to make sure you let the crosshairs tighten, unless you are especially close when its safe. Otherwise you might be missing headshots. Further, are you sure you're actually hitting the head as much as you think you are when they're swaying around and moving at odd postures? I've seen people fail to realize they're not quite hitting as much as they think they are and the shotgun issue and thus thinking enemies are tankier than they really are such as the Salvador chainsaw fight which shouldn't take hardly any ammo to kill on hardcore (like you should have extra shotgun rounds and like tons of pistol ammo, like 50+, and tons of gunpowder after that fight if doing it right).

Another consideration is if you want to headshot but are struggling with the swaying and odd postures there is a setting that might (note I've not tested for sure the exact effects but based on its image/description...) swap them to simpler postures and movement making it more consistent to headshot them in graphics settings if you want to go that route.

Some enemies might be safer to stagger with a leg shot like the pitchfork charges (at least seems so far but early in placebo maybe haven't thoroughly verified).

[Plank]

When I played the demo, I was honestly ok with it sometimes taking 2. Playing on hardcore I can adamantly say, I am not a fan of it regularly taking 2 or more . As for leg shots, I entirely abandoned the idea. Never worth it.

When you combine random number of head shots to stun with all the other various nerfs to the old RE4 play style I sometimes question why they bothered. I understand some things needed to change, but as I tally up the list of enemy buffs and weapon/player nerfs it begs the question: is a parry and being able to slowly move while aiming that powerful?

[ItalicMaze]

I find Hardcore twice as hard as the original's Professional. I've heard people say that the inconsistent flinches prevent the gameplay from becoming stale, but I find it repetitive when I have to shoot a guy in the face multiple times just to elicit some kind of reaction. I initially didn't mind the lack of I-frames, but now I realise that they should've kept them in. Realistic or not, it's BS.

[gecman]

Originally posted by ItalicMaze:

I find Hardcore twice as hard as the original's Professional. I've heard people say that the inconsistent flinches prevent the gameplay from becoming stale, but I find it repetitive when I have to shoot a guy in the face multiple times just to elicit some kind of reaction. I initially didn't mind the lack of I-frames, but now I realise that they should've kept them in. Realistic or not, it's BS.

Hell yes to the iframes. A lot of the game seems defined around killing things on the ground, kicking, etc but it's often not worth it to do any of that because you get gang banged the second the very small number of i frames finishes.

[The_Late_Shift]

Try the Realism Mode,No Aiming FOV, No Yellow Paint, and Deadly Headshots mods. You can get them on Nexus Mods [www.nexusmods.com].

Realism Mode is brutally hard so the head shot damage from Deadly Headshots evens it out in your favour but, you still die in 1 hit to everything in the game. I was one shot by an angry cow at the windmill early on. I also use raw accel on motivity to help with the scope aiming in the game, works wonders but requires setup and retraining your muscle memory with mouse.

[The Seldom Seen Kid]

This is one of those things they needlessly carried over from RE2R in order to please its fans. Barricade boards, ammo crafting, knife durability, your crosshair tightening, etc. It's like when Splinter Cell Blacklist tried to include all the terrible features of Conviction in order to not lose that crowd while trying to also satisfy the Chaos Theory one. All they really needed to do is remake the graphics, update the controls, let you dodge, shoot while moving and add the arm stun from RE5. They figured most of this stuff out in every other RE game that released after 4 and before 7/RE2R, so IDK why they felt the need to reinvent the wheel AGAIN.

[Sifer2]

Originally posted by The Seldom Seen Kid:

This is one of those things they needlessly carried over from RE2R in order to please its fans. Barricade boards, ammo crafting, knife durability, your crosshair tightening, etc. It's like when Splinter Cell Blacklist tried to include all the terrible features of Conviction in order to not lose that crowd while trying to also satisfy the Chaos Theory one.

It does go a ways towards making it feel more like a survival horror game. The enemies still drop ammo so it's not entirely there but everything is so dangerous now you never feel safe. Thing is the original game is quite easy once you realize headshot/legshot+Melee beats everything except the parasite heads.

[The Seldom Seen Kid]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Originally posted by The Seldom Seen Kid:

This is one of those things they needlessly carried over from RE2R in order to please its fans. Barricade boards, ammo crafting, knife durability, your crosshair tightening, etc. It's like when Splinter Cell Blacklist tried to include all the terrible features of Conviction in order to not lose that crowd while trying to also satisfy the Chaos Theory one.

It does go a ways towards making it feel more like a survival horror game. The enemies still drop ammo so it's not entirely there but everything is so dangerous now you never feel safe. Thing is the original game is quite easy once you realize headshot/legshot+Melee beats everything except the parasite heads.

That is the point though. That strategy only works on your regular grunts and makes them dangerous in large enough numbers. Later on it becomes less viable as enemies start carrying shields and helmets, but the game makes that blindingly obvious to you. In RE2R, zombies take anywhere between 1 to 10 headshots because you are supposed to avoid shooting them. In this game, you can't even progress if you don't kill every single ganado most of the time, so what's the point of throwing in all this randomization? And yes, RE4 original also had a critical headshot chance but you never felt like you needed to rely on it because the stun was almost always guaranteed. If you did happen to pop someone's head off with 1 shot, it was treated as a bonus.