Nemesis is the Worst Adapted Character in Dead By Daylight
And, no, Freddy is not a valid counterpoint. Freddy, at the very least, has elements of a good adaptation, his Dream Transposition is thematically great and even Dream Snares and Pallets represent the idea of Freddy controlling the fabric of the dream world's reality--if in a lackluster manner. Not to mention that his original power was so evocative and faithful to the character some would argue he suffered for it.
Nemesis' power seems to fixate entirely on Tyrants as 'big guys who break things', nothing more. It's the only power that's completely based on the surface-level aesthetic of a character. I'm not going to say I wanted a rocket launcher or something, but nothing about the Nemesis' power represents the character. The Nemesis is, at its core, an evolving and adapting pursuer, capable of intelligent thought and strategizing where other Tyrants are less capable. The Nemesis' power only has the tentacle to represent the Nemesis itself, and it is not a good representation of the Nemesis' biology. In fact, it actually goes AGAINST the character.
Nemesis' tentacle strike is sloppy, sluggish, and weak--It's limp. The Nemesis primarily uses its tentacles in stabbing motions, quick, decisively. In REsistance, it had a great use of the tentacle called the Tentacle Scythe--Spearing the appendage into the floor to come out and surprise attack survivors from a distance. This is a very good way of representing the Nemesis' intelligence in a small way, using the tentacle in a way that is not obvious and serves to cut off a target's route of escape. If they really only wanted to use the tentacle, they should have at least chosen to use it in a way that plays into the fact it is a part of Nemesis' body, and that he can use his body in precise, intelligent ways.
This is, of course, not to mention how Nemesis' power doesn't even represent anything else. It has zombies, sure, but the Nemesis can't interact with them in any meaningful way. In RE3R, we see the Nemesis mutate common zombies to pose a greater threat to Jill. Even just something like this not only makes zombies less of an afterthought, but gives the Nemesis more room to use the Nemesis-alpha parasite's mutations and more importantly to strategize. To create a bad situation for targets that it forces them into with its overwhelming physicality. And, of course, the T-virus itself is nothing but a third health state. It doesn't even inflict exhaustion or oblivious over time, to allow the Nemesis to ambush survivors as it does many times in the source material? What is here is just skin-deep and hollow.
In even the smallest ways, Nemesis' power fails to evoke anything about the character himself. It's so bad you almost have to wonder if it was meant to be someone else. Maybe, another tyrant, one who is less intelligent and does focus on using an intense physicality--Mr. X, maybe? This would explain the lack of any mechanics specific to the Nemesis, the lack of anything even in the add-ons targeting the obsession, the fact the power is nothing but a slam that breaks the environment. It's the exact way that Mr. X behaves. Lacking in cunning but overwhelming in body, relentless in strength but not intent.
Comments
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My heart aches every time Nemesis gets a stun from pity pallet, even though he can literally walk right through walls without noticing them. This guy should have double Enduring basekit just to be lore accurate 😎
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There is a thing called balance. Similarly, look how puuny Jill and Leon is. They are such a small shadow of their capabilities in Resident Evil. Nothing was brought over.
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But look at Myers. He's not at all as strong as he is in the Halloween series, but he's undeniably faithful--The fact survivors need to constantly be watching for him in the background, the way he can erupt into violence and lethality at a moment's notice after being completely unseen, how he needs to spend time watching survivors rather than blindly going full-force into an offensive? It's an amazing adaptation even if he's weak. This is also true of, say, old Freddy--It perfectly encapsulated the feeling of isolating a survivor into his world, even if it wasn't as strong as he actually is in his home series.
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Completely agree. Nemesis feels absolutely nothing like he should. There is 0 reason they shouldn't have given him his flamethrower. Just give Survivors a 'pat out the fire' animation similar to the Artist's crows.. He feels so lame without a weapon... If I was Capcom, I would've forced them to include it or at least have him whip out a rocket launcher for his mori, but they didn't even do that right..
No flamethrower..
No rocket launcher..
No tentacle through the head mori..
No auto immune to pallet stuns during specific part of his power..
No Survivors turning into zombies once they die..
AND STILL NO ZOMBIES THAT ACTUALLY FREAKING DO SOMETHING...
This chapter was a huge fail for them in my books.. It isn't surprising honestly. It may be coincidental, but the more a chapter has riding on it, the easier it is for them to screw it up big time, and they def did during one of DBDs most important chapters to date. That was our biggest influx of players ever, especially on steam. Not only did it fall flat for DBD fans, but Resident Evil fans as well unfortunately.
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I don't even think he had to use one of his larger weapons to get the idea across, give him a bomb he could set, or something, I dunno. They didn't need to deliver a Call of Duty character but they could have included anything. At all. Let him actually set up an ambush to cut off survivors' routes preemptively, that thing he does literally all of the time.
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I agree that Myers was well adapted but he is far from weak. Insta-shot, insta-kill, are very difficult to counter.
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I'm gonna be honest, I've always thought Myers without tombstone was massively underrated. He's at least miles better than Ghostface, so the fact people always say GF is better Myers is baffling.
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They could've done it but apparently they had nobody in the studio raise their hand to bring up this very obvious idea. This character that has guns damn near every minute he is onscreen needs to be transferred over with the guns included. You don't make a successful adaptation of such a character WITHOUT including one of its most prolific signatures.. It still boggles my mind that they didn't include it in the mori..
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my thoughts on nemesis is that he was first killer to introduce AI to the game however the dev were scared that AI would be too strong, so they went extremely safe with his kit to not make nemesis too strong. Too strong killer for survivor mains is to unfun to face.
In RE3R, we see the Nemesis mutate common zombies to pose a greater threat to Jill. Even just something like this not only makes zombies less of an afterthought, but gives the Nemesis more room to use the Nemesis-alpha parasite's mutations and more importantly to strategize.
I believe his gameplay was suppose to be that you infect survivors and funnel survivors into zombie AI that chase survivor down, Similar to Knight except AI is more random. A lot of survivor dislike Knight and his gameplay but I think Knight gameplay is perfect encapsulation of what Nemesis gameplay was suppose to be like. So in many ways, that description is following what lore is meant to be representing. it is just nemesis kit is chronically under-powered. every part of his kit is under tuned from his nemesis mutation levels giving irrelevant bonuses that could be base-kit, zombies being almost irrelevant beyond tracking and infection 3rd health-state system.
I am sure BVHR want to rework Nemesis and likely will rework nemesis in 2 years however they first need to rework twins and freddy. While nemesis is weak, he's not chronically ineffective/unfun like other two killers.
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Just an fyi the mori is similar to one of kill animation in resident evil 3.
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Funneling the player into zombies is more of an RE2 remake Tyrant thing, Nemesis barely interacts with them and is usually not on screen if standard enemies are on screen. A proper adaptation of Nemesis would have him as a fast melee bruiser, like Oni without the instadown, who occasionally gets to break out the big guns (literal guns), not a guy who slaps you with a tentacle from across a pallet or cooperates with zombies.
My guess is that they figured this was the only RE chapter they were getting (Chris and Claire wouldn't have been legendaries otherwise, they would have saved them for Project W) and they decided they wanted zombies in their sole RE chapter.
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It's odd how they haven't even had zombies interact with the T Virus as a mechanic, either. They don't better track infected survivors, or chase them any faster, or passively move towards them after a while, or give Killer Instinct when they start chasing them or literally anything at all. They're a completely empty system like everything else in his kit.
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Let us interact with the zombies as the Killer besides just hitting them. Make it to where we can put the parasite on the zombies heads to make them more lethal for awhile or something. He does that in RE3 remake if I'm not mistaken.
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I agree. an empty kit full of placeholders. Out of killers in dbd, Nemesis strikes me as beta-killer. He has design but none of his design is fleshed out. Just skeleton and bones. 90% of his add-on make no sense either. Likely a killer that was rushed in development. Lack of time to develop the killer.
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I feel like out of all the licenses killers, Nemesis is the most 'just kinda there' character out of the whole lot. He really doesn't do anything that's all that interesting or blood pumping as a killer. I think he should do something like a slice and dice sort of dash to damage survivors. In the original RE3, Nemesis would bolt towards you at Mach 5 after stumbling upon you, that combined with his size made for some absolutely blood pumping encounters. I wish Nemesis came with that and mayyyybe a teensy little rocket launcher. Keep the zombies too cause why not and I think he'd be infinitely more faithful and menacing.
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They could have put his rocket launcher and flamethrower in the game, and balanced around them. They could have designed him to sprint at and bust through walls. They could have given him a special mori for death hook survivors, like Pyramid Head, and raised them as zombies. They could have given us his Brad Vickers signature mori.
They could have done ALOT of awesome things with Nemesis, but they did not. Maybe 1 out of every 10 updates will I find more positives than negatives. It's BHVR, you just have to lower your standards. If your standards are already on the ground, they aren't low enough.
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I will say, I don't really want him to be some high-grade explosives character. I can cope with them deciding his weapons are tonally dissonant with the game! My problem is that they added nothing else in his power, and also that some killers have equally tonally inappropriate things. He doesn't have an information power, or anything, he can't request/receive information or assistance from Umbrella, he can't even just move fast. He does nothing!
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It’s Alien
…just imo
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The Xenomorph doesn't have EVERYTHING, sure, but you can't say it has nothing, not at all. It has that sort of skulking, omnipresent vibe, it does have the spirit of turning a mostly familiar environment into somewhere a hostile presence could be anywhere. It has elements of the Xenomorph beyond the surface level.
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Heeey RE resistance is my favorite game! He's so scary in that game I love it. I was always Valerie and he'd chase me haha good times.
In this game he seems like a big doofus, and yeah he's not scary, he's silly to me. But I'm glad he's at least in dbd :)
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I'm glad he's here, I just wish he felt like himself... Also hope he gets more skins. Like, I may prefer his modern design but they GOTTA add his classic design, right?
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I understand he was toned down quite a bit for balance but I wish he had a second really long cooldown ability like a rush or a single use rocket launcher. It could shoot more concussive rockets but again I get it.
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To be constructive, rather than just complaining, I'd like to suggest adding three mechanics--I know that sounds like a lot--to the power, without actually removing anything.
1)Give the Nemesis a second form of special attack, the Tentacle Scythe--as it appears in REsistance--which is targeted not unlike Cenobite's chain or Nurse's blink, attacking at a distance of 10-16 meters. This specific range makes it so survivors can't just mindlessly take any escape route they're presented, and instead need to operate closer than they would like, sort of referencing Nemesis' constant targeting of Jill's escape routes.
2)Allow Nemesis to empower zombies for 60 seconds, giving them a much better attack range. Simultaneously, make zombies more capable of tracking infected survivors and chase them faster.
3)Give the T-Virus a sort of progression system. After 40 seconds, infected survivors are intermittently inflicted with the exhausted status, and after 60 seconds, they're oblivious for similar intermittent periods. Also, allow him to kill infected survivors by his own hand if they're on death hook. Mostly for flavor.
Spitballing. I'd frankly rather he be totally reworked. But, I like to think this would be... Better. Not perfect, but better.
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Yeah, for sure you’re not wrong
Just could’ve been sooo much better
…annnd I LOVE realms n maps more than anything, and the Nostromo Wreckage is absolute trash (again, imo). Give us the whole ship w/o the bland outdoor garbage area. Even a separate area, or entire map of the alien planet and the egg chamber, etc.
The decisions of the flamethrowers, actual Alien character/ power design and Rip not looking like Rip are huge misses.
Jonsey may be the best part of the chapter🐈🫶🏽
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I could think of two things to make it better to start off with that would be fairly reasonable changes. Have the zombies grab you instead of slapping and be pulled into the arrow minigame. You fail, they munch on you and take a health state along with infecting. They're slow so it won't be the worst thing in the world. Nemesis, he personally should have a rush ability with a leap to get in front of them. Imagine someone's running to an exit gate and you leap to get inbetween the door and them. That would be sick.
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I mean yeah its pretty telling when most people play Wesker over Nemesis even ignoring how strong wesker is he was just implemented far FAR better than "oh hit people with tentacle over window/pallet drop thats it!" I have to agree with another poster out of every licensed killer he's by far the most bland
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Since the OC Singularity can destroy the pallets that hit it, it would be good for Nemesis to do the same.
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I like the zombies latching onto Survivors idea. It's funny how many avenues they could take to add some type of flare to this Killer specifically. Hopefully Nemesis gets some type of rework in the future. I think Freddy needs it more, but you know, whatever..
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If you think Nostromo Wreckage is trash, then i guarantee you that a Nostromo only map would be an even worse map to play on for multiple reasons.
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It would be cool if Nemesis got some buffs as a secondary reward for increasing his Mutation level, like some extra stun resistance and vault speed.
All these thoughts would be good additions too. Zombies detect infected survivors better, chase them faster, something.
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Yeah, agree. Maybe even make leveling up Mutation slightly more difficult, but make him feels really scary and unstoppable in tier 3.
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