YMMV / Resident Evil: Revelations 2

• Accidental Aesop: One subplot in the game addresses attitude towards guns and implicitly civilian gun ownership, with an interesting combination of anti-gun and pro-gun undertones in its handling of the topic.
  • Barry is known by fans to be a firearms enthusiast (other characters throughout the series are suggested to be as well, though not as overtly as Barry) who goes beyond merely using a standard issue sidearm strictly for police work, but brought his own personal revolver whilst on duty with STARS in the first game, and was implied in the original Resident Evil 2 to be a member of the National Rifle Association by name when inspecting his police station desk filled with replica firearms, this passion of his was challenged when one of his daughters, Moira, accidentally shot and nearly killed her sister Polly during her childhood sometime after the events of the original games in his new Canadian home after stealing and playing around with one of her dad's handguns which he was in the process of repairing; this left Moira scared of guns for most of the game (heavily implied to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder over the incident) to the point that she can't use a gun to save her life. Her trauma invokes the debate on American gun ownership and the accidental deaths of children who find their parent's firearms, giving Revelations 2 somewhat of an anti-gun message in this context.
  • On the other hand as far as we see in the game, Barry seems to have not changed his views on gun ownership to any significant degree, retaining his personally owned (as opposed to BSAA issued) weapons such as his iconic .357 revolver and STARS issue Samurai Edge pistol whilst taking responsibility for trusting his children too much for their age at the time and not doing enough to keep them out of harm's way. Moira ultimately has to use a gun despite her traumatic flashbacks to save Claire from a mutated Neil, otherwise Moira would die and Claire, who doesn't share Moira's anti-gun beliefs (who was exposed to guns at a young age through her brother Chris, and early in the game going as far as echoing her friend Steve Burnside from her previous RE game Code Veronica that a firearm is "more reliable than any person") and would use the gun to save herself. Whilst stranded from Claire, Moira was taught to shoot and forced to hunt by an old Russian hermit, and at the end of the game she was very happy to see Claire with a sniper rifle and rocket launcher, implying that she changed her views on firearms, so Revelations 2 can be seen as alternatively having a pro-gun message (unlikely considering Resident Evil's origins in Japan where gun ownership is commonly looked down upon quite negatively even by non American standards), or discussing how gun ownership can be both a benefit and a liability depending on the circumstances whilst encouraging the audience to debate with themselves the risks versus rewards with owning guns (or in other words, discussing guns in the context of gun safety, rather than straight up promoting or condemning their civilian ownership). Also worth noting is that Barry blatantly violated a key rule of gun safety (never leave your weapons where an unauthorized individual can access them), a point which can go in either direction.
  • Revelations 2 can also be interpreted as addressing the common disconnect between older socially conservative parents and their children who have opposing views, often of the left leaning or rebellious variety, as Barry is implied to be conservative due to his strict parenting style, being religious (as indicated in the original version of the first game referencing watching out for his daughters from heaven in a note if he dies during a Jill playthrough depending on your choices), and stubborn defensive views on gun rights; Moira, on the other hand, is the opposite of her dad, dressing in a style similar to ether an emo or punk subculture (as opposed to her militaristic, cowboy-like father), implied to (at least initially) be not only against guns, but also against eating meat, despising not only her dad, but also older men she perceives as "dinosaurs" similar to him (like the Russian hunter she encounters), but by the end of the game they appear to understand each other’s points of view and reconcile their strained relationship.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Revenants. They're fast, have a long reach, don't stagger after being shot, and you absolutely have to shoot them in their (random but detectable thanks to Natalia's sense) weakpoints for them to finally go down. In higher difficulties of Raid Mode, their grapple essentially amounts to a one hit kill, and without Natalia players are left to guess which limb contains a core.
  • The Iron Heads in Claire & Moira's story. They have huge clubs, take an absurd amount of punishment to go down, look like Pyramid Head's 'roided up big brothers, and you run into an alarmingly high number of them. And true to their name, their iron helmets mean headshots are completely ineffective against them. (Though neck-shots seem to do more damage than normal due to the exposed skin, it's still not something that can stagger them.)
    • On the other hand, Moira's flashlight can stun the Iron Heads relatively easily, and their helmets do not protect the back of their heads.
  • Glasps. An Invisible Monster with a One-Hit Kill ability. They go down very easily, but you'll probably fire off a lot of ammo before you hit them.
  • Raid Mode adds in some old friends from previous RE games; including Hunters, Rasklapanje, The Executioner, and Scagdead. Worse, in raid mode, monsters may get buffs which increase their durability, speed, allows them to cause damage, or et cetera.
    • One of the missions in the daily rotation takes place entirely within the short hallway at the start of Leon's campaign in Resident Evil 6, and the last enemy to spawn in it is an invisible, sped-up Scagdead. No thank you.
• Fan Nickname: Some have started to call Natalia by the moniker "Natalex", a combo of her name and Alex Wesker, for good reason.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Slightly, but the Unholstered skill makes Single Player combat much easier in Claire and Moira's chapters. The AI Claire has infinite ammo, but their attack damage is decreased. However, her shotgun still does the normal amount of knockdown, making it very easy to set up for Moira's crowbar finisher.
  • Also, it seems partner characters have regenerative health, perhaps so that the player never has to worry about spending resources healing them. However, this also carries over to co-op play, where a competent human player can throw Moira into any situation that doesn't result in a One-Hit Kill and come out no worse for wear. This makes the boss fights where you need your light much easier, as you can shine your flashlight on them without worry and the worst they can can do is knock you down.
  • The Little Miss DLC campaign can also count. The level takes very little time and can yield anywhere from 20,000 - 45,000 BP with little effort meaning you could potentially unlock and upgrade all skills to their highest level before even beginning the main story campaigns.
• Genius Bonus: The Overseer is a big Franz Kafka fan, so a lot of incidental things throughout the game are deliberate callbacks to Kafka's life and work. For example, the Wossek tavern in Episode 2 is named after Kafka's father's birthplace.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • When Natalia kills her first zombie, Barry says "Wow! You're braver than me!"
  • When fighting for your life against a horde of bloodthirsty monsters, you'd want you and your partner to be packing as much heat as possible. Moira has an aversion to guns, but Claire is understanding and doesn't force her to do it.
    • By the end of Episode 3, Moira overcame her trauma to kill Neil and save Claire's life.
  • Barry and Natalia in general since she's a little girl. Seeing him help her down tall ledges is really cute.
  • Natalia gets her leg hurt at one point, so Barry has to carry her on his back. There are no enemies at all throughout this section, so they get to have a talk about why he and Moira are estranged. Barry knows it's his fault, but he hasn't told Moira yet.
  • Moira and Barry reuniting in the good ending, spouting profanities against technology together.
  • Barry adopts Natalia at the end, Moira approving wholeheartedly.
• It Was His Sled: Just about everyone in the fandom knows about Alex Wesker by now.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Some people play the game just for one of the last playable appearances of HUNK in the Raid Mode before Resident Evil 2 (Remake).
• Narm: The Terra Save ad at the beginning ends with the painfully bad line, "Because 'Terr' doesn't always have to end with 'rist.'" Not to mention that the ad begins with various black people being shown, followed by the voice over dramatically saying "BIOTERROR" as if it's implying something. Considering the almost facepalming way the actors in the ad dramatically turn toward the camera and have their teeth twinkle as they smile, it may be a lampshading of how self-righteously so many NGOs advertise themselves in real life.
  • Mutated Pedro's Madness Mantra would probably be a lot more haunting if it didn't include him saying "B-Balls...".
  • AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! I'M BURNING UUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!
  • Moira's Bond One-Liner to Uroboros-Neil being "Go jump on a dildo, Boss!".
  • The letters that Lottie leaves for Natalia during the Little Miss DLC are supposed to be disturbing, but the manic-depressive suicidal lines coming from a teddy bear in a bellhop outfit comes across more like a Black Comedy routine.
  • All of Dark Natalia's hammy deliveries to "Natuuhlia".
• Narm Charm:
  • Barry deciding to jump off the chopper to face Wesker is super cheesy, but is also extremely awesome.
  • As is his earlier declaration to The Overseer.
  Barry: YOU CAN'T HAVE HER, SHE-WESKER!
  • Claire saying “I was almost a Claire sandwich” and Moira responding “ugh, does Barry tell everyone that story?” is a legitimately funny nod to the classic “Jill sandwich” moment from the original game. It would only be an Ascended Meme rather than Narm if that were it. However, the new Narm comes in when one actually thinks about the ridiculous way that they shoehorned in the reference. According to this game, Barry apparently went around telling everyone “I saved Jill Valentine from becoming a Jill sandwich!” Out of everything that happened in the Spencer Mansion incident, it was his “Jill Sandwich” line that he apparently felt was important enough to recap to everyone. Still, due to its association to the original moment which fell under Narm Charm itself, this new one is also rather charmingly cheesy.
• Player Punch: Moira getting crushed underneath a pile of rubble after pushing Claire out of harm's way.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: The co-op component of the series after 5 have generally been considered to be poorly done, largely due to factors such as how hit-or-miss the partner AI is when playing alone, as well as being almost impossible to ignore due to the co-op being built into the campaigns. Revelations 2 not only makes the partner characters play differently, but the player can freely switch between characters, which means the player doesn't need to rely on the partner AI as much as in prior games, and also lets them be more thorough in finding items they need in areas Claire or Barry can't access.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Using the non-combat character of the pair to discover additional loot might slow the pace down for some.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Due to improved weapon handling, generous amount of ammunition (compared to the preceding action-based Resident Evil 6), large ensemble of playable characters, and RPG mechanics, the Raid Mode is just as fun, if not more, than the story mode, despite the tone shift from Survival Horror into straight-on Third-Person Shooter. It was also available on the first Resident Evil: Revelations, but the one in Revelations 2 has more content.
• That One Level: The extra episode, The Struggle. You have to hunt meat for rations, and every ration acts as a mission retry token. Run out, and your progress is wiped. The problem comes in during the second scavenging section. For whatever reason, getting spotted by an enemy here turns that nice and luxurious 15 minutes into a 25-second rush to the exit. These enemies are perfectly killable with bullets and have never been shown to be able to summon backup, so this limitation makes no sense. The worst part is that two of these enemies are bugged and will always spot you if you try sneaking up on them. And one of these enemies is further from the exit, but you don't get any extra time to compensate for the extra distance. If you do abandon the search early, then you'll be woefully unprepared for the following horde. Thank goodness this chapter is optional.
• Tear Jerker: Evgeny Rebic's story. The man lost his daughter and his home to the virus, and is left a paranoid wreck by the time Claire and Moira find him. He rescues Moira later on, and it's clear that he comes to consider Moira another daughter to him as he nicknames her "Kroshka" ("crumb" or "little one" in Russian). Eventually, after finding a letter confirming his daughter's death, he gives up on living altogether. The last time he's seen alive, he quietly locks himself inside his room to die of illness/starvation while Moira tearfully pleads for him to reconsider. He doesn't.
  • Moira Doesn't Like Guns and this is the reason why she uses a crowbar and flashlight instead of a gun. It's revealed that she accidentally shot her sister when they were kids^note the two having come across Barry's guns, which he'd forgotten to lock. She has to power through this trauma and the flashbacks brought by it to save Claire's life.
  • At the start of his segment in Episode 3, Barry finds Moira's phone and goes through her messages. Moira's last recordings were of her apologizing for being a bad daughter.
  Barry: I was the one who was bad.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Gina Foley is considered to be a mild example of this as she was considered to be an appealing Ms. Fanservice who was a intelligent and friendly young woman who worked at Terra Save. However in the main story she was quickly killed off in Episode One as she was the only TS member seen in the Prison other than Claire and Moira. But since Gina was not a well established character (or related to one), she gets killed off rather quickly and is basically forgotten about shortly afterwards, making her official appearance rather pointless. One could speculate that this is the reason why Gina was one of the first characters on Raid Mode was to hopefully downplay this.
    • There's also the notable similarities to Rachael Foley, suggesting that they could easily be written as sisters: Both work to fight bio terrorism (Gina is an activist, and Rachael took a military approach), both share the same last name, and have similar design elements in hair and proportions. Rachael is even an option for Gina's alternate skins in RAID Mode.
  • After Resident Evil 5 killed off Albert Wesker, it was exciting to have another Wesker to antagonize everyone. Unfortunately, she dies at the end of the game... Maybe...
• Woolseyism: A couple of notable scenes come off entirely differently in the Japanese dub, suggesting that they were introduced by the English voice director. Specifically, Claire and Neil's relationship comes off as entirely professional, as opposed to Unresolved Sexual Tension, and Claire is much less robotic when she first meets Natalia.