Guys, Resident Evil is one of my favorite franchises. I finished Survivor and Nemesis on PS1 already, but I really want to finally beat Resident Evil: Director's Cut. I will start a new playthrough tonight.

However, I have some problems with this game. I usually start with Chris, but I just keep dying close to the beginning. I get the gun and some ammo, but everytime I find a zombie, I kill it wasting almost all my bullets, and the knife is pretty useless, since everytime I try to stab an enemy, it grabs me and I take damage.

To make things worse, I can't even find more bullets, and the enemies keep respawning, leaving me no choice other than making a rush for it, but it never works, since the zombies keeps catching me. 

I don't understand, is the game supposed to be really tough or I'm doing something wrong? I feel like I'm never going to beat the first Resident Evil (And I really want to) if things keep going like this.

Anyway, tonight I will try again. I'll let you guys know how it will go.

If I remember right the character you select is basically difficulty, Jill is easier and you will get more ammo I think. I've only played as Jill, didn't finish it but got quite far, and might have had to kill a zombie or two with just knife but was usually ok with ammo if I was careful and explored.

Didn't knew about that. I'll try playing as Jill to see how things change.

Weird. It's been a while since I played the ps1 version but I don't remember the zombies respawning. Maybe if you are playing on a higher difficulty which I don't remember if I did. You are probably just not completely killing them. You must shoot them until there's a pool of blood, that's when you know they are fully dead.

And yeah ditch the knife. It is completely useless because while bullets are scarce you still get enough to kill every enemy unless you go out of your way to waste them. If you find yourself in an area with too many zombies and not enough bullets trying going to a different room where there's just one or two, it's a good idea to start shooting a zombie only if you know you have enough bullets to kill it. And once you find the shotgun things will get easier.

Several things to consider:

• Playing as Jill is easier. She finds more ammo, better weapons earlier and maybe has more inventory space (I'm not sure).
• The amount of times you can save your game is limited.
• It isn't necessary to explore every room. Many of them aren't worth the hassle nor are required to finish the game.
• There isn't enough ammo to kill every enemy (maybe it's possible with Jill...).
• Enemies don't respawn infinitely. It happens at certain story points.

With all that in mind:

Whenever you save your game, do a test run. Enter several rooms, kill all the enemies inside and find what's inside them. Decide which rooms are worth exploring (if it has more ammo than its needed to kill the enemies inside it, for example) or have things you'll need to finish the game (like puzzle pieces, keys, etc). Then reload your save, enter only those rooms, do whatever you have to do in them and save again. Rinse and repeat.

If you can avoid the enemies instead of shooting them, even better.

If you're short on ammo and a zombie is on the ground, you may want to let it grab your leg on purpose. It doesn't deal much damage and Chris/Jill will kill it with a stomp.

I don't remember if I've ever found the shotgun in RE1. About zombies not respawning, yeah, maybe I wasn't finishing them for good. I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks for the hints! I will play as Jill instead of Chris to see how things work.

That strat about letting the zombies with a stomp looks good. I knew about that, but never thought about doing it on purpose.

Ahhh, good old Resident Evil. I have played through the original PSone copy I think maybe 5 times; RE2 at least 6 times; and RE3 maybe 6 times as well.

As others have said, Jill does find more ammo and also has the lockpick (she is the master of unlocking after all). Inventory space is the same between the two though. And the majority of the game itself is the same as well, as far as rooms and puzzles goes. RE2 is where things branched off more between Leon and Claire.

That being said, you shouldn't have any issues playing as Chris. Zombies do not respawn if you kill them "for good" which is when the pool of blood shows. There should also be a notable, last grasp groan then that happens. You can definitely kill the vast majority of enemies as well, but not all of them.

Some tips:

1) Aiming. Sounds dumb but because of the tank controls, is easier said than done. You will get better with practice though. Taking more time in between shots, and letting them get closer to you, will up your chances of getting a headshot, which does massively more damage. This usually isn't a problem with only 1-3 zombies; just be confident in yourself letting them close in. 

2) If you are able, especially with only one zombie, after you knock it down the first time, run up to it and hit a few times with your knife. You are able to aim down at their bodies. If it starts to get up, then move back away again. A lot of times though, depending on where your bullets landed before knocking the zombie down, you can finish them off this way, saving ammo.

3) As mentioned above, they are dead for good once you see the pool of blood.

4) Depending on the sequence/area, it is not worth shooting at all. The dogs and crows come to mind, as you should be able to grab the very few (if any items) in areas while running past them. Other areas though you will realize you have to go through many times (RE1 has a ton of backtracking, easily the most in the series) so in those hallways you might want to get rid of the enemies just to make things easier.

5) Saves are limited, so be mindful of that. I never really felt too constrained by this though. Other than one boss fight, where I had put myself in a corner with the save file, ammo count and health items, and essentially had no choice but to beat this particular boss almost perfectly with no wasted ammo or getting hit. Took me at least a dozen tries lol

Good luck and enjoy, it is one heck of a great game!

I have to be honest, I'm a bit confused on what you're talking about here. I finished the original RE1 for the first time a few months ago and:

1 ) Zombies do NOT respawn. The most you'll get is a zombie getting back up after you've only hurt it a bit, or new zombies populating an area (I honestly can't remember if this is a mechanic in RE1 though, I know it is in RE2, if it is in RE1 it's super scripted and not really a natural gameplay mechanic)

2 ) Unlike its REmake, RE1 (and really all the PS1 RE games) actively encourages you to use ammo and just kill the zombies. It's actually one of the few things I found to be a huge disappointment going back from REmake, zombies are almost always guaranteed to die in 3-4 hits from your pistol, whereas in REmake it's much more randomized.

That being said, OG RE1 is harder than OG RE2 by far and probably harder than OG RE3 if you don't include the gimmicky Nemesis battles, so I can understand having some difficulties. To me, REmake made it a very easy game because that game is so much more methodical.

Edit: I'm pretty sure in OG RE1 the only time the mansion might "repopulate" is when you go back to the mansion and the hunters are activated, even then I'm not sure if those are new zombies though or just the hunters themselves 

The goal of the original trilogy is to get through most of the game, conserving as much as you can. So if you can run around a zombie, or dodge it? That's what you're suppose to do. You're not suppose to mow down every enemy you see. You're suppose mow down, only the ones you have to mow down in order to advance.

If you go into the game with this mindset (as well as understanding that in the old era, dying and having to start over was just a part of the experience), you'll do fine, and you'll have plenty of herbs, supplies and ammo when you need them the most.

I'm playing it.

Ok, so I think one of my biggest mistake when trying to play this game is that I wasn't exploring enough. I started the game with Jill, and got a lot of ammo just by checking the corpse of that guy at the beginning of the story. I mean, not "a lot" but it was enough to survive the first floor. The lockpick is helping a lot too. I can say this is my best attempt at RE1 so far, since my map is pretty big already.

I died to some crows. Good thing I had just saved. Hehe. And yeah, the zombies aren't respawning if I kill them for real. Good to know. Also, I got rid of the knife at the storage. I wanted more inventory slots, and I don't intend to use it.