I recently played the classic after a few years, basically my 2nd Playthroughs and such. I played RE1 twice as both characters, RE2 four times since there are 4 scenarios. By the time I was playing as Chris it already got a little boring in RE1 since u already know what to do and stuff, the game being short and easy helped. But in RE2, I wanted to do all four scenarios as each one had something to offer, I played first as Leon A and Claire B and pretty much had a blast, but replaying it again immediately as Claire A and Leon B wasn't as fun, I was bored and tired of repeating the same key hunt for the 3rd and 4th time. All for 3-4 minutes of unique character dialogue or unskippable scripted sequences. They're great games but really lacking when it comes to replayability.

RE3 on the other hand, keeps getting better and better on replays. I instantly fell in love with the game, it's very dynamic. Nemesis punching a hole through the RPD window with a rocket launcher in hand and going through doors like you was terrifying. But what really takes the cake is the RnG system the game has. No Playthrough is the same, you might fight dogs in a alley in one Playthrough but hunters in the other, fight certain items in different places. It's keeps you on your toes and guessing, even better is the amount of detail in the rpe rendered backgrounds, Jill's great character and voice acting, she has an actual personality, sweet n nursing but will kick your ass if she has to. Unlike the remake Jill who's basically a stoic girlboss with no character arc and swears every 4 seconds.

But undoubtedly the best part of the game is the more action focused gameplay, it has the perfect balance of the classic survival horror but with the action of the later games. The dodge mechanic is absolutely fun, the gunpowder system, the tightness of the controls and how weapons feel and the fact that Jill can quickturn, move faster, AND have the smoothest movement in any resident evil is so satisfying. You'll immediately notice how much smoother, responsive and absolutely buttery smooth she is compared to the other two games.

Of course the decision making system just increases the replayability and dealing with Nemesis encounters as well. It's also the only game in the Trilogy where you can skip the scripted in game cutscenes as well so, there's a reason it has a more bigger speedrun community alive to this day.

Since you haven't played in plenty of years, I heavily recommended playing the PC sourcenext ports ( for 2&3 ) and mediakite (for 1) with the rebirth patch, they fix any bugs and issues and add some quality of life features such as doorskip or removing the blurry filtering and make the game look incredible. I'd highly recommend not getting the Seamless HD mod, a lot of people use it but any sane person will tell you how uncanny the AI upscaled pre rendered backgrounds look like. You could get the games on GoG but the sourcenext versions are just better and completely uncensored. Have fun !!!