Depends. do you want to go in chronological story line order or game release order. The RE games story wise generally all tie into each other and if you follow the story/lore closely you’ll get “oooooooh yeah I remember that” moments in different games.

You could start with RE 0 but then there are some things in that you won’t get until you play RE 1. So you could start with RE 1 and then do RE 0 so you can have “oooooh” moments in RE 0.

Personally I’d go RE 1, 0, 2, Code Veronica, 3. Rest of them you can play in order.

As far as FF7 vs Remake…go with the original FF7 first because some of the story elements in Remake won’t make sense unless you’ve played through FF7.

If all you want is to follow the story, Umbrella Chronicles and Dark Side Chronicles basically recap 1-6, I think, as lightgun railshooters (they were originally released on the Wii).

Good luck finding all that typewriter ribbon.

I would argue the overarching story across Resident Evil isn’t that important. The first 3 are kinda close, but the rest take place across the world and there’s a new virus/outbreak each time. The only overlap is the characters. They’re all very different games, RE1 and RE4 have basically no overlap in play style, so pick what looks fun and start there. Odds are you’ll never get around to playing them all.

If you care about story, my suggestion for any franchise is release order. And in case there’s remasters (which RE has besides remakes), I’d consider their release dates as the OG ones for simplicity.

Resident Evil 1 Remake. If you first play one of the new games it’s going to be a lot harder go back to previous games, plus, is where the story “begins”.

In that orser, personally, I would do: RE1 remake, RE2 original, RE3 original, RE4, RE2 remake. RE5 and Code Veronica if you want more. Everything else if you really want more . . .

Resident Evil 1 Remake.

The remake of the first Resident Evil is where I started, and it’s where I recommend you start. To me, the series never topped it since. It gets hard to make apples to apples comparisons given all the ways that series changed over the years, but that first game is a really good escape room, where combat measures your ability to manage resources and risk/reward.

If you have the patience for some of the ways that FF7 may have aged, start with the original FF7. FF7 Remake, without spoiling anything, is sort of about the legacy of the original FF7.

Many of the games are pretty far-disconnected from each other, so really you can start anywhere that feels right for you. Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, and 3 are more tightly-related to each other, so if you want to experience the “original” story, I’d recommend going with RE1 Remake, then RE0 Remake, then RE2 Remake, and RE3 remake. Note that the RE1 and RE0 remakes are a lot older than RE2 and RE3, and are the traditional “tank control” game styles, while RE2 and RE3 remakes are more modern, over-the-shoulder games, so there may be some disconnect while playing through these. But these four games focus more on the Umbrella Corporation and the T-virus outbreak in Raccoon City, while the rest of the series strays away from the events in Raccoon City, entirely.

RE4 is a must-play. There’s like a billion different versions of it, too, so just pick up whatever is newest for your platform. You can’t go wrong with any of them, IMO. This one is often seen as a soft reboot of the RE series, so it’s thematically much different than the games before it. Honestly, if there is any RE that you should play, it’s RE4. This is a perfectly fine starting point, if you ask me.

RE5 and RE6 are honestly skippable, if you ask me. These ones kinda continued the “reboot” path RE4 took, but don’t really have any iconic moments of their own; I hardly remember anything from these games, and you’re not really going to miss out on any important storylines or anything by not playing them.

RE7 and RE8 are a sort of second reboot to the series, and are tightly related to each other. So if you want to start with the most modern “era” of RE, start with 7. I didn’t care much for RE7 and RE8 because they didn’t “feel” like Resident Evil to me, so I can’t really speak to how relevant they are toward the overall story.

There’s also a ton of side games, as well. I wouldn’t recommend bothering with any of them unless you really like the lore of the games they’re related to.

Resident Evil 2 remake from 2019

Regarding FF7 Remake, I’d say it might be fun if you just want to play an action RPG, but once you get to about the midway point of the first game, the story gets impossible to follow if you’re unfamiliar with the plot.

The remake definitely assumes you’ve already played the original, as it’s not a 1:1 replication at all. There’s a ton of foreshadowing and specific story deviations, which won’t make any sense if you don’t know how the story first played out.

Without giving anything away, you can kind of think about it as if you were seeing the same story from another vantage point. Most stuff overlaps, but you also get new information, and some old information is only hinted at or isn’t mentioned at all.

Lots of stuff from the original has been cut for pacing, and new stuff added, so it really does feel like a completely different experience. Of the remakes, I’ve only played the first game, but Im waiting for the whole thing to be done so I can get the collection.

In my opinion, you can start anywhere. They all build off of each other’s lore in small ways. You won’t be missing out on anything by starting anywhere you want.

I agree with the other comment: RE2 Remake is a good place to start if you care about having modern quality-of-life stuff. You really can’t go wrong with anything else though.

The best entry point is Resident Evil 2 (2019), then play in sequence. RE1 introduces some characters and concepts, but they get better introductions in subsequent titles, and the game is… best experienced as a written summary, or while high.

You can also start with RE 7 if you want less action and more horror, it only intersects with the main storyline at literally the last moment, then move on to RE 8 before going back to 2.

As others have suggested, the RE1 remake is great. I don’t know how well it would perform on the Steam Deck, but there is a mod that increases the resolution of the pre-rendered backgrounds that is great as well. Probably won’t make much of a difference on the Deck’s screen, but might be nice if you have it attached to a larger one.