After a long time I finally decided to play through this again, after getting stuck on normal difficulty (see RE4 comments here).
Combat in easy difficulty is pretty easy- only a few of the tougher creatures were able to kill me, ammunition is plentiful. Easy difficulty makes for more of a puzzle game than a conserve just the right kind of ammunition and don't screw up game- though it's still wise to use handguns on the slower lower tier zombies and save shotgun and magnum ammo for the rest. Life replenishing items are too plentiful given how limited the player's inventory is- most of the time I had no room to carry any of it. Inventory management was annoying, I understand they don't want me to cart around every weapon but inventory for puzzle solving items should be unlimited.
The length of the game is a little long, though I haven't playe RE:1-3 or any of the spinoffs so maybe I would appreciate more of the references to the other games and the game would be more satisfying. If not shorter the game really needs a wider variety of environments- the initial train level is nice, but after that it's all dark mansion or industrial grime settings.
One satisfying moment is where the path reconnecting to the train crash is finally made.
The puzzles start easy and then become more difficult, the only time I cheated was to look up the time to enter on the clock because I didn't feel like reading through the level notes at that particular moment.
I suppose I'm tempted to pick up RE1 and maybe the rest of the games now (those on Gamecube at least), though overall the game wasn't all that good- it's pretty boring and slow when trying to traverse a level that has been already cleared of enemies. These older REs make me appreciate RE4 all the more- ideally they would remake all the Raccoon City games with the RE4 engine...
