first of all, this analysis is NOT very well written.

so i'm sorry for the grammar mistakes, formatting problems, inconsistent punctuation (tbh the lower case letters after periods are on purpose) and word repetition because i did not revise this text to correct all these things. don't expect too much i'm just gabbling about my feelings on this game.
english isn't my native language so keep that in mind…

INTRODUCTION

yeah, it's real. RE4Remake exists. Shout out to my last review: i know a lot of folks went like "huh so RE4R will UPDATE and REPLACE the original one because now we have free flowing camera, rotational movement, strafing and RE Engine"

yeah, i was right. lot of people don't even know why the combat would be better than the original, but they feel that way, they'll talk that way. i like people who argue with me; even if they're limited or unambiguously wrong. A friend of mine thinks RE4R is just as strategic than RE4OG and I think this take is dumb as fuck. But at least he has an opinion, I guess?

I don't know. We kind of choose what we want to think, to like, to interpret. But we don't choose what or how to feel, that's the magic of art. But in videogames - this is taken to another level - the level of being able to choose how to experience, literally. Movies are 1:1, yeah, i know, we still have different experiences based on different sensations, but the movie will always start, progress and end in the same (diegetic) way. In videogames, the player takes an active role of interpretation, in other words, you are the one who makes the game start, progress and end.

i'm saying that because a lot of people will gabble about "so what about ashley being a good character in remake?" "wow they really did Luis well this time" "oh fuck the villains are soulless now" and the famous "the feeling man… it's still RE4, i can feel it!" and i'm not talking about those things in a negative way because i agree with everything here and i can see why it's important to talk about non-mechanical stuff in videogames.

But keep in mind that most of my concerns about this game are the opposite  -  I feel that a lot of the discourse around videogame critique and reviews are based on pure sensory construction (what I feel, how I feel and how I interpret my feelings) without the good sense looking for the REASONS WHY you're feeling those things in the first place. Personal and thematic interpretations are SUPER important - but why 80% of RE4R reviews are talking about it being a great remake because it respects and preserves the FEELING of the original, and only 20% of these reviewers are actually giving a shit about the reasons why the feeling is (or isn't) preserved? BOTH of these kinds of reviewers (the HOW one and the WHY one) are equally important to keep the critical discussion going on; and of course, there are reviewers who are both at the same time! (look at my moon review; it's written in portuguese (my native language) but it's the closest I get to express my feelings without getting away from the internal discussion of game design. Here is the link: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Lenz/review/640506/). It really depends on your taste and what kind of GAMER you are or your perspective on videogames as an art form - and videogame IS an art form, this shit is factual - fuck the 80 ~ 20, let's find the 50 ~ 50 balance here!

Here are my first impressions  -  or essay, i'll say  -  nah this is not an essay, this is me being annoying about the combat  -  i'll say some things here that may change with replays and more deep information about the game's mechanics
i'll also structure this text topic-by-topic, element-by-element. I know a lot of people don't like this kind of review, and I understand that, but with time I realized that this is actually a good way to organize my thoughts.

first of all, this game is the game of butts. Ironically, this is the game where they nerfed Leon's butt and cut out that stupid joke about Ashley (thank god). Sorry for the pun, but I can explain: for every positive element here, there'll always be a side effect, so, you'll have to read a lot of "YES, but…" or "yeah, BUT…"

keep that in mind.

starting with the basics: things that I don't care that much

1. Soundtrack

I feel that is better than in the original, that's it.

2. SFX/Sound Design

Guns feel more janky and worse now (still good), kick is better, voice acting is worse (still good…), hm…

I think there are some horror segments that feel very immersive and sound effects are important there, so, i'll give the game that credit.

3. Menu/HUD

Def worse than OG. Less iconic, more "minimalist", but UX feels better somehow. I don't like the "panic red" blinking around the screen when Leon is low-HP.

4. Writing

the writing is great, i'm sorry. I like the original, but it feels very half-baked and sometimes it's just… there, apathetically existing. Remake gave me reasons to care about what's happening even if it's still not excellent enough to impress me. Leon and Ashley have a much more coherent and dynamic relationship, Luis unironically the best character for real, Ada feels more important now but… merchant is annoying as fuck. the villains are worse, i don't know but why the hell Salazar is now Ramon and why he appears, like, 3 times with no audio call with Leon? Krauser still ballin though.

Narrative progression overall is better because now it makes sense why Leon is in Y place going to X place and the game really wants to do something to show the player why this is important. The structure, some specific moments, and how it's integrated to the rest of the game? Neat as fuck. I also think it's a great reinterpretation of the original, like how Leon was making dumb jokes for the sake of being cool in the original and now, in RE4R, he's doing jokes because he is fucked and he knows it; that's his coping mechanism.

5. (Visual) Art Direction

Holy shit, the environment. The village is cool and all but the "low-poly" feeling of the original is still unbeatable. The castle and island, though? Impressive as fuck. But…

2nd half of the castle is pretty uninspired, they cut a lot of the underground stuff, and the mine… well, it's not good.

The laboratory part is one of my favorites in RE4OG and now it's a bootleg BioShock, there is even an identical hacking minigame, lmao. It lacks the grayish, unpolished design and it's too spacious in comparison, but at least the darkness and scary regenerators are still there.

Enemies, bosses, design of the villains… I think I still like the original ones better.

6. MECHANICS!!! FINALLY!!!

yoooo we'll talk about the gameplay now!

so, WHERE exactly do I start? I won't make subtopics because it's hard to separate those things (specially in a game like this one) but it's also hard to organize my feelings in such a general way, so…

the subtopics will be subtle, fuck the reader.

NOT-A-SUBTOPIC-ONE: okay let's talk about the combat principles: aim first, shoot later, THEN you'll start to think about it.

It's basically the same feeling as the original one: it's an action game, but holy shit you have resource management!!! but it's still an action game… but wait, i'm very limited here - it's not a fast-paced action game.
10 enemies approaching you and you can not run very fast, jump, double jump or strafe like doom or slide like vanquish or or or or or or… yeah Resident Evil 4 is very tactical, and so is its remake.

Big difference is that now you have dual analog. Then, you can move Leon sideways and aim while moving. Then, you can strafe. Because of this, enemies are more mobile, aggressive and deal more damage, so, you can't strafe properly. But now you have a parry mechanic! They can be more aggressive but you're invencible with a knife in your hand. Unfortunately, there are moves that can't be parried, like grabs, unavoidable attacks and finishers. But hey, you can just shoot them, right? Yeah but now the enemy stagger system is completely revamped. At least, the aim system is more "complex" because of the crosshair, creating an interesting decision window… right?……Right? We'll see.

So now we understand how Resident Evil 4 (2005) is the Jenga of action games. One decision can change a lot of things, and the domino effect of "modernizing" Leon controls is a hard thing to deal with, so I can respect Capcom for at least trying to do something different.

The first thing I noticed in RE4R  -  actually, the second, let's talk a bit about Leon movement first.

Okay, so, what's up, Capcom? Why does everything in RE Engine have to be photorealistic? You guys dumbed down Jump Cancel in DMC5 by having a specific animation (with… delay) for it, and now you are shitting on Leon movement?????????

Jokes aside, I obviously miss the arcade movement Leon had in RE4OG because now we have all those micro-animations for each frame transition and at the beginning of the game it annoyed me as fuck for being very unintuitive and bad (in terms of… FEELING!) to control.

Yes, now Leon can move the camera in 360 degrees and move sideways and mechanically speaking this is a HUGE game changer. But I don't think it justifies the lack of precise controls for the sake of realism.

Anyway, back to…

The second thing I noticed in RE4R is how they fucked up with enemy stagger behavior. Apparently, (i'm sorry i don't have database or source code) it takes 1~2 shots (in standard) to stagger an enemy with a headshot, and enemies have three stagger states:

1. You shoot, he staggers, that's it.
2. You shoot, he staggers, you can kick him!
3. You shoot, he staggers, you can stab him!!!

I don't fucking know the exact percentage of each stagger state rate but keep in mind that it's purely luck-based with fews nuances interacting with other systems:

First, the damage. Yeah a lot of it seems to be based on your gun's damage and I really don't know how to feel about it. The very first gun I sold in this game was the base shotgun: god damn awful weapon. They nerfed A LOT of the AoE damage in this game because now we have more precise hitboxes, parry is meant to be more reliable and now Leon can move with more freedom so that's it. I'm not 100% sure but you can't kick after hit with the shotgun: the enemy will either die or fall after the shot. Or their head will explode and you'll have to shoot again with the shotgun because now it is what it is: the DAMAGE and BURST machine! It's not a bad gun in terms of power but yeah… very uninteresting.

Second, the aim system. Now that we have the crosshair (only handguns, magnums and machineguns), the more you move, the less accurate your aim will be. If you stand still and aim, it will start to close and you'll be able to shoot with more accuracy, increasing the chance to stagger enemies. On paper, it looks neat as fuck, allowing the player to expanding his decision-making window with questions like "should I stand still and aim for more reliability on stagger the enemy? But this will make Leon more vulnerable to attacks… fuck it, i'll use the shotgun" or "yeah i can take the risk and try the headshot from here or wait for the parry window; the latter will break my knife so I think the former is the best option here" and some stuff like this but well… the more I play the less I care about this system.

The problem is that the risk is mid and the reward is also mid. Feels balanced, but i'll never be in danger situations by just stand still because the levels feels way wider and less dense (we'll get there, relax), and at the same time, i'll never know if my shoot will stagger the enemy or not because it's never 100% accurate. It feels cheap, and somehow, it makes the "gameplan playstyle" and tactical play, worse. BUT it's also one of the best ways to play this game, just keep your handgun up, find a blind spot, stand still, aim, run towards the enemy, kick, take a few steps back, do the same with the other enemies until all of them are dead in this loop. If everything goes wrong (impossible), just wait for the parry. The risk is conflicted by the parry (stand still in this game is NOT risky as it was in RE4OG, and even if I didn't compare it to another game, it's still safe enough) and the reward is conflicted by the enemy stagger system (if you stand still and shoot but the enemy doesn't react, i'm sorry mate, but this is NOT a reward lol).

The third one is the perfectionist hitbox of this game. Apparently shots in the middle of an enemy's face have more chance of stagger than grazing shots around his hair or shooting below his mouth. Another example is that the game separates thighs from knees for different hitboxes, and knees have more chance of stagger than thighs. I think this is the most interesting feature here but it's still… in the "but" level. Because, again, it's shallow as fuck: going from 70% chance to stagger to 90% is not interesting at all, it invalidate part of the player's merits for having a good aim and it turns into a dice game where you'll never be 100% sure if your play was good or in vain. It would be fine in a game with a high APM level where chaos reigns over everything, but RE4R, despite being a bit more fast-paced than RE4OG, it's still a tactical shooter.

One thing I found kind of interesting is how you can delimb enemies. If you shoot an enemy in the arm or parry him barefists, there is a chance of cutting it off, depending on your damage and, yeah, obviously, luck. Heads and legs being cut off are hit-kill iirc. But the thing about cutting an arm is that you can use it to your advantage because the enemy loses his weapon and you can leave him alive for free iframes. It's not very complex or well thought but it's a cool detail I wanted to talk about.

Back to the enemy stagger system, I do think it's cool that "one shot = one stagger, one kick, iframe, AoE" thing is gone because now we have a very powerful defensive mechanic (parry) and we don't have to rely on kicks anymore but why the fuck did they make this luck-based? "It's good because it makes you lose part of enemy manipulation, putting you in risky situations" yeah but the systems that interact with this aren't very interesting or deep to put the player in open and interesting situations, there is not a lot to do with it. It's almost like an extended rock-paper-scissors where you're not exactly making decisions, but interacting with pre-existing ones.

https://prnt.sc/YWV2HNJqhmX-

this ugly infographic summarizes how the stagger system works and my thoughts about it, and while I do think it works well, it doesn't have a strong dynamic with other systems and maneuvers of the game; besides, everything here is result of specific percentages, high percentages, sure, but it sucks when you're trying to play strategically without the guarantee that you'll stagger the enemy. Sure, after a few hits the 100% comes, but it doesn't help much since it encourages even more DPS-based combat.

"Okay but imagine that, you shoot the enemy, he doesn't stagger, so you have to think in other ways to deal with him. It encourages improvisation! It takes you out of the comfort you had in the original!"  -  some random guy  -  no, it doesn't. It only encourages more ammo spending (DPS) and the most interesting mechanics here (aiming stand still and caring about hitboxes) don't even give you 100% accuracy to stagger the enemy. The risk is very inconsistent and the reward is also very inconsistent, not to mention the parry mechanic (yet).

update:

i'm too lazy to rewrite this entire topic and this is just my first impressions, so yeah, it's not a very good text overall. but i want to add an info: if you shoot an enemy in the head right after a shot in his chest, it's 100% stagger. This kind of thing is neat and it adds more interactions and nuances around the stagger system, but i don't know if there's enough of this stuff to preserve the longevity and depth of the game. Maybe there are more maneuvers, techs or something that I haven't discovered yet, or maybe i'm right, it's just my first impressions after all…

in general, the stagger system itself isn't a bad idea and it's pretty decently executed, my problem is that it messes up with some stuff in the balance of the game and the fact that most of the weapons have a fire power exclusive upgrade… the kick is more powerful damage-wise but it has less crowd control and iframes… i don't know, i don't think that -> Maybe there are more maneuvers, techs or something that I haven't discovered yet <-  i think the game is just not as tactical as the original RE4. This is not a problem per se but it feels more like a failed attempt of the devs to make an "aim, shoot, pew pew + oh yeah resource management… let's be careful and strategical" without losing directions - they tried to make things different in some sense but they didn't had sensibility enough to do it flawlessly. i think there is a problem with the rules: re4r is a tactical-shooter based on melee/ranged back-and-forth to manipulate enemies and control the space (that's the idea) but a shallow and uninteresting stagger system kinda water down all of this; enemies stagger behavior being based on RNG is not exactly bad but the fact that we have so little things to make the % go up to 100 is baffling af. it takes away the control and skill of the player and it loses rewarding gameplay in the process.

a solution: it would be cool if we had a positioning-based system where your stagger rate is (also) affected by how close/distant you are from the enemy. It would depend on the gun, like, if you shoot a distant enemy with the shotgun you obviously wouldn't stagger him. Snipers would do it because of the damage and critical damage, for instance. pistols would be way more balanced. There would have to be several rebalance changes in the game in order to implement this system, of course, but that's not the point. I just think that Capcom deliberately made the game to be less tactical than the original without benefits enough to justify the stagger system.

end of the update

This results in a lot of consequences and the domino effect is very, very, very impactful. Let's finally talk about the knife/parry system: it's the fourth mechanic interacting with enemy hit reactions.

Yeah, in RE4R we have the parry, a mechanic that already existed in the original but now it's systematized with more nuances and complexity. In RE4OG, if the enemy attacks you and you hit him with your knife, it's 100% chance of stagger, it's literally the best way to defeat Krauser, for example. Now, when the enemy attacks you're given a quick input that when you press it, you parry. The stagger depends on your timing with the parry, like, if you get the parry but it's too late, you'll only knockback (basic stagger), but with a better timing you can kick and a perfect timing gives you the right to stab (which I still think it's lame since you don't have a proper fallback if you don't want to spend part of your knife's durability), and oh, durability, right?… the knife has durability now!

I personally think this is cool because you can do a lot of different things with the knife like stealth-kill enemies, counter-attack grabs, kill enemies who are kidnapping Ashley, execute enemies that are about to revive, etc. All of this is well-integrated into a consistent decision window that makes you think in which situations it will be better to spend your knife's durability and which it will be better to save it.

My problem with the durability is that I don't like the fact that the knife is upgradable now; it feels like a cheap way to keep the player caring about the knife and at the same time, it makes it difficult to upgrade the other guns. I'd prefer if the knife had a fixed value of damage and durability that adapts throughout the game. I also dislike how you can repair your knife by just paying the merchant, and the merchant is EVERYWHERE. He is even more present than in the original. I think two knives would be fine, but there are MORE than two, like, who the hell do you think you are, Capcom? Modern Team Ninja? Two knives, a provisional one (Kitchen Knife) and a standard one (Combat Knife) would be enough, more than this is too much.

And I thought it was very generous of the game to inflate the areas with kitchen knives and every time I lost my knife, the next enemy would give me another.

My "perfect imaginary knife system" following what already exists in the game would be this: fixed values, no payable repairs, no upgrades, nerf the kitchen knife, make the combat knife craftable (three kitchen knives = one combat knife would be perfect in my books), that's it. Less is more.
I think this would also solve my problems with the parry system. I don't have any problem with the parry existing, and I think it's good that the game doesn't force you to use everytime. But the way it is, the reward is way higher than the risk and part of it is caused by the generous durability system. It honestly offends me how the only way to guarantee a stagger is through such a binary mechanic (parry), but it is what it is. It would have to rebalance a lot of things to change this kind of shit. At least we're not playing Sekiro, I guess.

What about the GUNS? This is my "first impressions" so I obviously didn't use every weapon in the game. First, let's recap and put together what I said before about enemy reaction:

> Now that we have the crosshair
> perfectionist hitbox of this game

Yeah that's right. The aim system in this game is way more complex than before, the lasersight is gone (partially) and now we have this cross aim for the pistols, magnums and machine guns. Perfect hitboxes means perfect shots as well, since every enemy move now has its own hitbox with perfect tracking (e.g. if you shoot an enemy in his hair but he moves 1 cm away, you'll miss the shot, in OG this kind of thing was way more generous).

Overall I do like the new aim/shot system because it tries to adapt the feeling of RE4OG of being constantly in movement to find blind spots to take advantage. In RE4OG we do this because of the control limitation and lack of defensive options, basically the whole game is designed around this concept (spacial awareness and positioning play), while in RE4R, we move around the encounters because the enemies are more aggressive, thus the aim is less reliable, but if you stand still the aim will close, increasing accuracy. On paper this sounds like a smart move from Capcom but the lack of impressive encounters (we'll get there, I promise!) and interesting dynamism between the game's systems makes some things fall flat.

Anyway, back to the weapons:

SG-08R is great, even better than before, but it needs the lasersight to really shine. Red9 (one of my favorites from the OG), at first, was awful, but then I got the Stock and it became one of the best (story of my life). I didn't test other pistols but apparently Punisher also needs lasersight and Matilda also needs the Stock. Blacktail must be the best choice right there, I swear, man. I never thought I'd be forced to buy accessories to my pistols in RE4 right after beating the game, but here we are, buying stocks and lasers from the merchant.

The first shotgun is bad, really bad. New aim system means less crowd control, less crowd control means more damage = W-870 is the subtraction tool of this game. Its only use is to take enemies HP. Bad crowd control, bad range, bad to no stagger rate, yeah, it's pure damage and i think it's dull. Riot Gun, on the other hand, is pretty cool. I never used it in the OG but I think it's my favorite shotgun of RE4R? The lack of crowd control is natural from the game, so, it didn't nerf too much the Riot here. Good range, good damage, great precision, great rate of fire, excellent weapon. Then we have the Striker, one of the monsters of RE4OG, much worse now, but still a good option (better than W-870 of course), and it's kinda funny that I found Riot to be better but I kept the Striker until the end.

I don't have too much to say about the rifles, I barely used them. SR M1903 (old bolt action rifle) it's the same as before but in a game where enemies are running and attacking all the time, not my cup of tea. Stingray is very good in some situations and the Assault Rifle I found to be shit.

The same goes for submachine guns: I only used LE5 and it was decent.

Broken Butterfly is still nice and Killer7 is EVEN BETTER! The main problem with Killer7 in the original is that BB outscale it in power fire after the exclusive upgrade and Killer7 didn't have an exclusive upgrade. Now, its exclusive is the same as SG-08R (5x more chance of critical damage) and I love it. Besides, it comes with a native lasersight, i.e. you don't need to buy a separate accessory for Killer7.

Bolt Thrower is a new addition here and it's interesting, VERY interesting. It's a creative weapon overshadowed by the game's demands (okay damage, low rate of fire, bad precision) but the attachable mines are a blast (literally). Powerful as fuck, it basically replaces Mine Thrower but now in a more dynamic weapon.

I think I have three main problems with the weapons in this game:

1. the game's balance. they nerfed too much AoE damage and shotgun penetration so the only use for shotguns is pure burst, which is sad. pistols are waaay more powerful but the fact that you're basically forced to buy an accessory to make pistols viable kinda bothers me. This is more of the aim/enemy stagger thing than the efficiency of the weapons per se I think, but still, Red9 is only good when you buy the Stock, SG-08R same thing and probably Matilda and Punisher but I didn't use them in this run. Maybe I'll stick to the Blacktail next time, because it doesn't have any accessories. Submachine guns are pretty the same I think, Rifles now have less firepower but a 3x multiplier against weak points (plagas, headshots, knee-shots, etc) which I think it's pretty cool based on the hitbox nature of the game. But as a whole, it feels like pistols became the "jack-of-all-trades (and less unique)" of the game, Shotguns are lesser, and yeah they went for the route "more is more" I think.

2. Exclusive upgrades! This is part of the game's balance of course, but one thing I noticed is that RE4OG had 7 different exclusive upgrades (+fire power, +critical rate, +ammo capacity, +firing speed, +penetration, unlimited ammo and the shotgun range thing) and RE4R has 5 (+fire power, +critical rate, +ammo capacity, +penetration and unlimited ammo). pistols are basically the same, shotgun only W-870 changed, rifles are less versatile (fire power, fire power, fire power…), the rest are the same. It doesn't break the game's balance or something, but it says a lot about the DPS-based nature of the game and it's kind of a missed opportunity right here: the idea of having different guns with unique properties which never got outclassed by other weapon (it was a problem with OG killer7) is very cool and while the original isn't perfect about it (it could have way more exclusive upgrades, like, imagine if each gun had its own exclusive upgrade? it would be fantastic), RE4R has EVEN LESS exclusive upgrades and this is very underwhelming.

3. I also think the way they did the upgrade progress was pretty bad in RE4R: we have 3 upgrades for each stat (damage, ammo capacity, reload speed and rate of fire) but when you get to the second encounter with the merchant in the castle, it expands to 6 upgrades for the rest of the game. In the original the merchant was like "yeah check out the LIMITED upgrades we have around here" and after one or two chapters, it unlocks another one. It felt more organic and it encouraged variety of upgrades instead of investing all of your money in a single gun.

Overall the arsenal is still great in a vacuum but I think they overpowered pistols and nerfed shotguns a bit too much for the sake of DPS-based combat, I don't know how to feel about the game forcing you to buy an accessory because of the pistols, upgrade system felt very unrewarding because of the lack of locked upgrades and variety of exclusives. You could say the weapons now are "more balanced" than in the original (shotguns being less OP, rifles now with an exclusive gimmick instead of great fire power, more skillful aim system) but I found the arsenal in RE4OG to be more interesting and creative, like, "fuck it, now this weapon deals the same amount of damage at any range" and "yeah whatever put 100 ammo capacity for 60k, that's a good deal! - merchant" are far from being the best example of balancing but they are much more appealing to me than "lower base damage, higher scaling, higher base damage, lower scaling" (the ammo capacity thing of Striker still exists but now it's less than half of 100 ammo lol).

In RE4OG I found myself swapping guns way more than in Remake; it's pretty much the same thing: pistols for stagger and mid-range battles, shotguns for crowd control and close-range skirmishes, sniper for distant enemies and weak-points (Shout out to my best friends Regenerators), magnums for skip-fights and the ecstasy of Killer7 being the best gun ever made, and TMP for damage per second and holy-shit-i'm-out-of-ammo. Now stagger is way more crucial, crowd control is weaker, sniping enemies is harder since they're much more mobile and hitboxes are more precise, automatic guns are the same thing except that enemies are more spongy (and WHY DOES THE ASSAULT RIFLE USE SNIPER AMMO???), killer7 still insanely good just as the insanely difficulty of having magnum ammo (it goes for both games ofc but i think that they lowered the drop rate of every ammo for the sake of the balance and crafting system, this is not a problem though), and oh there is the Bolt Thrower, yes, this is a good one! As I said before it replaces the Mine Thrower but it's way more manageable and flexible.

So, I don't think the arsenal in this game is a huge step down from the OG but I feel like they went too much into "finding a good balance" and "obey the demands" instead of "let's be different and creative" which I think it's way more interesting than the former.

Anyway let's FINALLY hit the next topic.

NOT-A-SUBTOPIC-TWO: Progression!!! I promise (i don't) this will be a short one but let's talk about the way the game progresses over the areas, encounters, bossfights, checkpoints and how the learning curve and pacing affected my experience.

I already covered the upgrade progression so let's skip that one.

1. SIDEQUESTS. Oh fuck the miserable AAA-gamey trend that literally RUINED my game… Ok, being honest, I really think the sidequest thing is a bad idea and the way the original handled the treasures was much much much better, now it's just "more is more" thing over and over. Yes, I know, we still have treasures hidden over the areas but my problem is the ADDITION of sidequests. I like the idea of spinel being a kind of currency but the way you get them? Awful. Backtrack all the way around to kill three rats, then return to the merchant to claim your reward. This is something I'd imagine myself doing in Elden Ring, not in fucking Resident Evil 4 Remake. It's forced backtracking, literally grind shit and some of the rewards are essential (lasersight, stocks, maps) so it can't be ignored.

2. TREASURES. Yes, the treasure system per se. The way you combine gems with treasures to make them more valuable - fantastic. Satisfactory, flexible and creative system, basically an evolution of what it was in the original.

3. AREAS. Village, castle, island.

3.1 -  Village was cool, and I felt it lasted longer too. Some good twists here and there, fun encounters, spookier environment, better narrative pacing - in general my feelings about the village are the same as in the OG, it's the most consistent area as a whole but the highs aren't that jaw-dropping. And it's still inferior than the original in some aspects: the lack of impressive encounters gradually progressing throughout creative ways around its design may be a macro-design problem and not a village problem per se, but instead of creating 100% brand new encounters the village either tries to entirely subvert expectations (gotcha moments) or twisting some details of the encounters to make them feel different and special. It's more of a nitpick but it's also one of the reasons I like the castle more (again). Ironically, the valley, my favorite encounter in the original village, is one of the main victims of this remake. They flipped the entire layout of this encounter just to surprise the player without thinking about the quality of it; it's just uninteresting now. And my favorite encounter of the village in the remake was the cabin one: "twisting some details…" yeah it's a great one, honestly, but the OG is the same level.

Another problem of the village is one aspect of the areas that persists throughout the entire game: hubworld. The original Resident Evil 4 was the peak of linear progression in any action-focused game, and RE4R tried to be different: it tries to expand the areas around a main hub to create a better sense of emergent progression, probably trying to simulate a classic resident evil (i actually only played 4 and 4, that's why the 'probably' lol), and I respect a lot this idea but I have my problems with it.

In the village, after you beat Del Lago, you need to find your way to the church and then, momentum is killed. No more encounter-by-encounter progression, because now the game is an action-ADVENTURE and you need to solve some puzzles and backtrack some rivers to find the church insignia. While this might sound cool to some, the execution is not really good. "Hey but you can get to every point of the village just by riding the boat" neat, i get it, but the main task (get to the church) is underwhelming, because every mini-island I go to, it's a cool encounter that ends with a puzzle and a dead-end. I'd like much more if those mini islands were somehow interconnected, at least between each other, with more encounters alongside the puzzles.

Besides all of that and some great parts they cut off, like the two paths decision and the waterfall encounter (that was a GREAT one), I think the village is still really solid; its pacing is more constant with "piss breaks" than the progressive roller-coaster it was in the original, and the exploration focus can make up for those who don't like the overwhelming encounter-by-encounter pacing of the original. If you ask me, no, I don't think it tops the original village.

3.2  -  Castle

This one was my favorite, and it's still my favorite area in the remake. It's more problematic than the village but the exploration-focused pacing of the game is way better done here: probably it's more about the nature of the castle being a cobweb while the village is just a linear path with some side branches around the lake. It flows a lot better and it was basically where I stopped to think about the original and started to appreciate it as "its own thing"; but that was before chapter 10. The 1st half of the castle has some specific lows (just encounters and pacing i think), like, how they removed the invisible novistadors encounter, dumbed down the chimera enigma, how they didn't understand why water hall encounter worked so well in the OG, the giant "setpiece" being just annoying, cage with garrador fight turned into a cutscene, etc. but the 2nd half (everything after ashley section) is straight up a disappointing.

first things first, the first half: i have my gripes but overall it was a great and refreshing area after the village. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 are amazingly well done: the cannon sequence (better than the OG), the water hall (disappointing but still good as always), the labyrinth, the dungeon section (ok i kinda missed the density of enemies in the yellow-doors part but it's good), the armor knights encounter, and my favorite thing about this part is how they handled the red-dressed cultists in this game. That encounter in the original where you have to chase him and if you don't get him in time he comes back with a fucking machine gun? One of my favorites of all time, it's genius as fuck. In the remake they removed this encounter and changed how the red-dressed enemy works: now, he has an unique ability to stun everyone around him (including enemies), growing parasites in the enemies heads and making Leon dizzy, fucking up with his aim. This wouldn't work very well in the original because that game was way more tight and restricted in controls. But the OG version of these cultists wouldn't work in the remake as well, because how easy (and uninteresting) it would be to chase them to death before they do anything. The new version isn't the best thing in the world but it's a good example of how inventive and different from the original this game could be without losing its roots. The "GLORY A LAS PLAGAS" encounter and the red carpet one are two of the best fights in this game.

The Ashley chapter was a big surprise for me since I really didn't get it in the original: it wasn't bad, just anticlimactic. In the remake I like it way more since it fits better with the mood of the game, and it legit gave me goosebumps this time. The puzzles are very cool and running away from the Armaduras has never been so much fun. When I finally get to play as Leon again I thought "yeah, ashley part was great and all but i want my action back!" and oh, man… chapter 10 onwards is where the game started to crumble.

The novistador encounter (the circular area of the castle where everything is destroyed) in the remake is just bad. In the original there was a lot of those fucking mosquitos attacking you all the time and in RE4R… they spawn a few at a time. It's more of a resistance and reactivity test than the good old strategical action gameplay. You kill 5 novistador, 10 seconds pass, then you have to kill more 5 novistadors. In the OG you'd have to deal with 20 novistadors all at once. "But they're different gam-" fuck it, it's uninteresting encounter design: circular area, 5 enemies at a time, with the RE4R controls, parry on demand but stagger system still fucked up and low crowd control… hm… yeah there is a lot of bad things going on. Not easy, but not hard either, not interesting enough to make me care about the action, not very strategic, uhhhh yeah… this encounter is bad.

The duo garrador encounter is not very good as well (i still like it, not gonna lie), but i won't talk about this for now. Then we have the cave with camouflaged novistadors, which is cool, and Verdugo fight, which is… pretty much the same thing as in the original. I'm not going to list all of the encounters of the castle but after Verdugo most of them are really samey with few changes (bad changes) and unfortunately bad cuts too (where is the underground dungeon? where is the SALAZAR STATUE ENCOUNTER??????? stupid ass game)

I'm not really sure if i'm being clear with my problems here but after Ashley segment the game really lost me in terms of "this is a reimagining of the original game and you should treat as such" because I felt like the rest of the game was straight up WORSE than the original instead of just "oh, it's not better but at least it's different"… and the whole discourse around "hey you should stop to compare it with the original all the time" is useless here because i know when the game stops clicking with me.

Anyway, I think it was cool we get to play with Luis as a companion and the Krauser fight was very nice but overall the 2nd half of the castle (everything after chapter 9, being honest) is really underwhelming and it left me with the impression of "eh… it's decent i guess" and holy shit there is the island, we're all doomed

3.3  -  Island

in the entire game, 90% of the enemies are "oh, they were in the original, so i guess if we cut or change them a lot, the public will be mad at us!" but in the island this problem is even worse since the enemies are much less varied and gimmicky than before, especially considering that the gameplay is much different now and most of the changes in the enemies are "speed up this shit, add a grab, tracking attacks, that's it. RE-INTERPRETATION, BOYS!" and that's exactly why I praised the red-dressed cultist of the castle so much. Ironically, regenerators are the same thing as in the original but they work better in the remake somehow.

anyway let's talk about the island itself. the game is still good unfortunately, but this area is the worst part of the game by far. in the original everybody talked about how bad it was and i think it was a fantastic area overshadowed by two other more fantastic ones.

before the island, everything is just "the same thing, but worse" and it feels rushed af, it's bland and uninteresting. then there is the lab which is more well-done and different overall but it's still weak. the hubworld is just BAD like, i get the village, and the castle is excellent, but the exploration in island is just there if you want to do boring sidequests, it feels like a development problem.

The lab was less immersive than in the OG in my experience, but still good, regenerators are better here due to the nature of the aim system and the bioshock hacking puzzles are funny. the waste disposal is probably my favorite part of the island but it's too short and the encounter where you have to order Ashley to raise the bridge for you is awful. the wrecking ball fight is super cool but i'd like it better if the area wasn't that flat and wide. The WAR encounter is more creative now since you actually do something to help Mike instead of just sprinting through the enemies, the military territory is okay but it lacks creative progression and the most important, it lacks J.J. the island also lacks U-3. and where is the truck segment? shit this game is the definition of small dick energy

My general impressions sound nicer than I expected but the truth is that Island is still good. My problem is that the "good" is "yeah, it works" and not "yeah, it's really fun", let alone "yeah, it's really impressive".

4. GENSHIN IMPACT. Yes, the shooting range minigame - the minigame itself is fun as fuck, the aim-based gimmicks are a good way to improves the player precision and the "ranking system" is super rewarding but holy shit

WHY THE REWARDS ARE SO FUCKING LUCK-BASED?????? this is a gacha game. exploratory. predatory. fucking unfair. the charm system is awful. that's it.

5. LEARNING CURVE. The first parry of the game is a cutscene. The knife system is only explained in chapter 2. The game itself doesn't do a great job at teaching the player, but the progression overall is good.

I stopped to play like RE4OG at the castle and the game started to flow way better for me, and I had a similar feeling in the original because there I was hooked way more into the gameplay than in the entire village. The learning curve is good to make me want to aim better, shoot better, positioning myself better and all of this stuff, but at the same time it feels more like "ok, you played well. but next time, try to play better" instead of the "try to play different" feeling of the original. the RNG-based nature of the game doesn't help at all since stagger, kicks and stabs are not well integrated into your skill-decisive gameplay.

6. DIFFICULTY MODES. i only played in standard so i have nothing to say here lol

anyway in general i think the game has a lot of progression problems, some of them are consequences of the mechanical problem, some of them are consequences of the game trying to be different and some of them are the game trying to be exactly like the original and failing. but overall i felt very engaged in my first run and i'm kinda excited to play in hardcore mode.

NOT-A-SUBTOPIC-THREE: Enemies. Enemy design, whatever. Most of the enemies of the original haven't changed shit in this game: and that alone makes most of them logically worse than in the RE4OG.

The axe-thrower enemy in the original was a great one because of how encouraging it was to play around positioning gameplay. When the enemy throws the axe at you, your only options to avoid it are: shoot/kill him before. shoot the axe mid-air. flash-grenade him. or, the only way to avoid it without spending resources, just walk away from the axe. This promotes positioning and space awareness, the skillful meaning of manipulating the camera while you walk from point X to Y, while taking the risk of being more close to the enemy, or being close to another enemy, or being too distant for a guaranteed kick, etc. This kind of micro decision is enough to sustain a 10-hours campaign.

In the remake, the axe-thrower ganado is basically the same thing, but now you have more options to avoid the axe: shoot, parry, block, crouch, run away, etc. It loses the meaning of space control and enemy manipulation for the sake of being "faithful" to the original. But what's new about the enemies?

> "speed up this shit, add a grab, tracking attacks, that's it. RE-INTERPRETATION, BOYS!"

i said this before and it's pretty much like this for the entire game. The enemies are more aggressive, they attack off-screen and run towards Leon more often, they grab A LOT and they have tracking attacks that you can't avoid unless you shoot or parry them. I think the only enemies that they changed a lot were the Novistadors and Regenerators. And oh, there is a new enemy, the minotaur! i'll talk a bit about the enemies here

1. Actually 2, the first one was the axe-thrower. Let's talk about the CULTISTS!

2.1  -  the reapers. I find it very funny that some enemies of the game have a QTE to avoid low and high attacks that can't be parried. This isn't problematic enough to annoy me but… in addition to prompt-based parries, now we have prompt-based dodges too? Okay, Capcom…

2.2 -  the helmet ones. they're the same thing as before, but way easier to deal with. in the original they were thoughtfully designed because if you can't shoot an enemy in the head, you lose the kick, without the kick you lose iframes and crowd control, thus you have to shoot them in the knee which is way more difficult and suplex is worse than kick in everything but damage. In RE4R they're only there because yes, they're functional but less interesting than before. you can kick them after a good parry and they're waaaaaaay weaker in terms of HP

2.3  -  the bald ones. they were cool as fuck in the original, holy shit, is kinda subtle but here we go: For being bald, his head is way more noticeable than other enemies, but if you explode his head, it will grow a plaga. BUT! if you explode his head with a kick, the plaga won't grow and this is very neat. You don't know if your headshot will explode his head, but you take the risk to guarantee a kick, otherwise you can spend more ammo shooting in his knee and rest of the body to prevent the plaga from growing.

in the remake they… the plaga will grow even if you kill him without exploding his head, let alone the kick mechanic: if you explode his head with a kick, the plaga will grow
anyway… now he's just a generic and "just there" enemy, fuck.

2.4  -  the shield ones. THEY'RE LAUGHABLE. In RE4OG their uniqueness is kinda obvious: you can't strafe, so these enemies will stand up in front of you blocking with a shield. You can either position the camera to shoot their heads/feets or you can just break their shields, spending more ammo. In RE4R you can easily circle-strafe them, they didn't even add a proper behavior to prevent this: okay, i know, they'll turn to you if you do that but Leon is faster so whatever.

2.5  -  the red-dressed ones. I already talked about them and yeah, it's one of my favorites in this game because they actually bring something different and interesting to the table. nice touch, indeed.

3 -  novistadors… the cool invisible/not invisible mosquito of the original game now is a dark souls enemy with high-telegraphed tracking attacks and… SUPERARMOR, OF COURSE!

i don't have much to say about them, honestly, i just think they're worse here.

4 - minotaurs. The bullet sponge of this game, a DPS test to make you run out of ammo, i like them overall but eh i'm not really impressed.

5 -  Garradores. The blind enemies, designed around the restricted movement of Leon in the original game, pointless in the remake. They're functional and cool because they're still blind after all but now they hear enemies attacks and fire friend is on for some odd reason. You can circle-strafe them, parry them, QTE-dodge them, and they're obviously balanced to be just difficult as in the original but they're clearly less interesting now. It's still a good enemy but only because they were excellent in the original.

6 - i'll skip the island enemies because i don't think they're different and interesting enough to talk about but the Regenerators, though? somehow they're better in the remake, probably because of the new hitbox and aim system. They're still the same bullet sponge enemy with a cool gimmick to deal with, and the gameplay of the remake magically solves the problem of they being "the same enemy for the sake of being faithful to the original"

what about the bosses?

i know i sound like a hater right now but most of them are worse in the remake as well…

1. del lago is the same shit

2. el gigante is the same thing but faster, instead of walking from X to Y to avoid his attacks you have to run away and aim better

3. Bitores Mendez first phase is better now, but the second is worse. Instead of vertically climbing over the wooden pillars of the area, now he just throws barrels at you.

4. Armored El Gigante is terrible, i won't elaborate

5. Verdugo is the same shit as before but now instead of throwing nitrogen tanks at him you have to press some buttons

6. Twin Gigantes fight is unironically amazing? ok the original gimmick was better ofc but now we have Luis as companion, the music is great and the way you kill the second giant is cool as fuck!

7. The first Krauser fight is very nice since in the original this scene was a quick time event segment. Not really challenging, but it's fun.

8. Salazar… hm… i don't know how to feel about him because i found him to be worse in the original, now he's more interesting since his moveset interacts very well with the aim system of the game but i don't know… the oil and hit kill attacks were super annoying in my experience

9. Krauser (again) -> the best fight in the game. i know i'm in the minority but i still prefer the original as it's more skill-based and dynamic than cinematic. it's a great climax overall

10. New Saddler is disappointing, now instead of promoting good positioning he promote reactive combat because of the fucking spam of novistadors in the middle of the fight, and the fact that you're forced to use the rocket launcher to kill him is kinda weird but ok

Back to the enemies, my overall feelings are: most of the enemies that are good are only good because in the original they were excellent, while some uninteresting enemies are only uninteresting because they don't work creatively enough with the combat of RE4R. And while Regenerators and Staff Cultists (the red dressed one) are exceptions, to this rule, the enemy design of RE4R overall is good… because it is based on a great foundation which did way better than its remake.

ok, i'm almost done, let's go:

NOT-A-SUBTOPIC-FOUR: Enemy Encounter Design: hah, what a nerd i am… i just invented these words, nobody would talk about this in a game like Resident Evil 4!

this is where I get super annoying: RE4OG the best encounter design of all time. NO game can top it. Hell, not even Ninja Gaiden 2 and Devil May Cry 3, two of my favorites, have the same density, ingenuity and consistency of RE4OG; this is the closest I can think of a game that blows my mind in every fucking encounter. of course it has its lows and all but, like, this game has A LOT of enemy encounters, and if there are 100 of them, 95 are at least good, 5 are bad and in the midst of "at least good", 80 of these 95 encounters makes me wonder why I still play action games if no other game will match RE4 enemy encounter design. This last sentence was the only that I was truly exaggerating, the rest are literally my feelings about RE4OG.

So, can you imagine HOW DIFFICULT it would be for Capcom to remake this kind of magic? A game that 85% of the good encounters are absolutely mindblowing?

(and probably better than all of the RE4R encounters)

Anyway, I think y'all know if I prefer RE4OG encounters or RE4R encounters but let's do the same proportion I did before:

if RE4R has 100 encounters, 15 of them are bad, 85 are good and 20 of these good are actually fascinating. It seems odd to you? In RE4OG the good encounters and impressive encounters are almost equal, while in RE4R the impressive encounters are less than 50%. Let's investigate, in depth, the reasons why RE4R encounters aren't impactful enough to match the original.

1. enemy design - yeah I already talked about this before. enemies are 1:1 of the original game but rebalanced to make sense with the new gameplay - faster and more aggressive because of the controls, they grab more because of the parry. So if your enemies aren't interesting enough to interact well with the combat system, the encounters will suffer the consequences.

enemy positioning - the lack of a clever spawn system is baffling. that encounter right after the tunnel in the village where everyone tries to explode you: it's cool and all, but the enemies are lined up vertically instead of trying to corner you.

in the mines there is the encounter where you have to explode your way out with a dynamite: in the original you come from a tunnel and the first thing you notice is that you're above your enemies, shooting from a rail, but any time you'll need to go down and kill everyone in order to get the dynamite. after the second lever, there is a cutscene where a wild Dr Salvador appears, it's a good fucking "GOTCHA" moment and you have to go back and kill him to take the dynamite. In the remake this area is inverted and you come from the opposite side of the rails and instead of being a cool encounter with 2 phases, Dr Salvador (plus a bella sister) is there from the beginning.

the INFAMOUS water hall encounter where there are a lot of enemies lined up horizontally with some other cultists coming from below all the fucking time - you're fucked, and at the same time, you have to take care of ashley - is my favorite encounter of RE4OG and one of my favorites in gaming overall. In the remake it's just a fun encounter with some archers above you (similar to the Tower Knight bossfight from Demon's Souls), bald and shielded guys in front of you, reapers below you and that's it.

After killing everyone, you have the same "minigame" from the original where Ashley goes up to pull some levers and you have to kill enemies trying to kidnap her while dealing with enemies trying to kill you.

the first part is straight up a worsened version of the original encounter, and the second part is the same thing but you have more control of the camera, aim and movement so it's very easier. overall i found this fight to be fun but i finished it with the feeling of "WHERE'S EVERYONE GOING??? BINGO?" and I don't know if this is because of the lack of adaptive difficulty or they simply thought that "enemies deals more damage, they're faster, more aggressive and merciless, so let's lower the density of the encounters to balance that", which honestly i don't think it's a good decision. Maybe I can change my mind after play hardcore/profissional mode but i'm not very optimistic about it. it's just worse

I talked about three specific encounters to exemplify my thoughts and i could do this for hours but yeah i don't think Capcom had the knowledge of why enemy spawn/positioning works so well in RE4OG.

3. spatial awareness and level design - i know they had to change it in order to adapt the encounters for the new combat/controls but i don't think they did it very well in some of them. i should've put this on enemy positioning but there are some encounters with unreachable enemies shooting and throwing fire/grenades at you. these encounters have no way to go up to kill those enemies face to face. why? - that encounter in the valley, one of the worst in the remake, why is it so small and restricted compared to the original? it doesn't add anything of value to the encounter.

there is the opposite as well: some restricted encounters being wide as fuck in the remake. some of them work really well like the first village encounter (the BINGO one), but some of them are just worse. Most of my problem here is more about the dynamism between the combat and the encounters than the encounters per se. I know that the focus of the combat now is to stay in constant movement while looking for the best spot to aim but that's the idea, not the execution. The lack of cool interactions to make up for a great idea being greatly executed is what breaks me: moving around the encounters in RE4R is more of a defensive option to avoid projectiles/homing attacks and control the camera/aim than moving for deliberately find a good place to take the risk of being attacked but being rewarded if you played well enough.

i discovered 70% of the area of both garrador encounters (the first and the duo one) AFTER finished the fight because i found to be more useful if I just stood still waiting for parry, dodge and if i fucked up i could just run away while control the camera to dodge them with strafe or something. the duo garrador fight specifically was funny because of the fire friend behavior. I shot the enemies, the enemies shot back and one of the garradors turned his agro to them for some reason.

there are five other (negative) examples i want to talk about. first, the water hall, AGAIN.

the Water Hall in the original RE4 reminds me a lot of a chessboard: it's a large, grid layout that can't be freely crossed by the pieces. Moveset wise Ashley is the king, Leon is the queen - the enemies are the rest of the pieces. every move you make can decide the course of the fight, if you're gonna die, lose more ammo, lose more health, lose Ashley, etc. In RE4R this chessboard is modified, there are less pieces, the Queen can make every kind of move, the layout doesn't matter anymore, etc.

second example: the novistadors ballroom. In the original you were easily cornered by them and you had to make your way to kill them through positioning play. Now you have to kill them one by one and you move to find more of them instead of move to play strategically. You can't even destroy their nests. Very disappointing encounter.

third example: Mine Cart Ride: that's just sad, honestly. in the others examples you could say "it's more shooter than tactical" and i'd understand but this encounter is straight up a scripted one - in order to make the game feel more like an Uncharted or something. Very cinematic Capcom, very cinematic…

the worst part is that this encounter was legit one of my favorites in the original, the intensity of being constantly surrounded by enemies in the other wagons of your minecart???? fucking amazing. it was a masterclass of how to do a great setpiece without restricting the player from basic mechanics. In the RE4R i thought i was playing a Uncharted game made by Platinum, holy shit, you're limited to using a single pistol with infinite ammo and the rest of it is just an uncanny rail-shooter.

fourth example: wrecking ball. oh this one is good but it proves my point that the remake lost a lot of that tactical feeling of the original to focus on the shooter part. the original one was a small, circular area with some enemies and you had to destroy a wall with the wrecking ball and you could choose who would operate the wrecking ball (Leon or Ashley). it was exploitable as fuck but very remarkable. Now it's a open, flat and wide area where Ashley controls the wrecking ball and you have to deal with the problems around. It's still pretty fun and challenging, the enemy mixing was a good surprise since it spawns a good variety of enemies - soldiers (shield, rocket launcher, baton ones), minotaurs and parasites. Neat encounter overall.

last example: the military territory. spacious as fuck, the progression is not very enjoyable, there are novistadors without any good reason, and the most important: it lacks J.J. The original encounter was one of my favorites of the island. i don't have too much to say about it but the soldier enemies being worse in the remake (baton ones are harmless now, the BIG one… i don't remember him being in the remake? what the fuck… J.J. is gone, the archers and rocket launcher ones feel less dangerous and the shield one is actually good!). I think this problem could be explained in the same way I explain why the axe-thrower ganado works better in the original. The soldiers are a CTRL C + CTRL V of the original but now in a game that demands much more of action and control of your shots than the unsafe, risky, tactical gameplay of the original. I think that's why the soldiers feel so generic now.

There are some good examples of the encounters being well thought out in terms of spatial awareness: cabin fight, duo bella sisters, regenerators in the body bags, glory a las plagas fight, red-carpet fight, the labyrinth. These are most of the excellent encounters of the remake.

4. less interactive environment – lame as fuck. there are less ladders to be kicked, less enemies to be knockbacked by doors, less barrels to explode, less covers to make use of, remember that part of the island where there is an automatic gate that closes whenever you get close? it's gone. the Salazar's tower encounter now has Sen's Fortress rolling boulders instead of breakable barrels, that's just sad, man.

5. encounters in comparison to the original re4 – i talked about this before, that there are some encounters with the layout inverted, some "gotcha" moments to keep the player out of the comfort zone, some brand new encounters and some samey encounters with some tweaks (or not). There is no problem with that, this is actually healthful to this game as a remake – but i don't think they managed to do something really impressive with the game's new design, mechanics and somewhat pacing.

before we get to the BAD examples let's start with the good ones:

the village encounters – some of them, at least. Something interesting I found about the village is that a lot of encounters have some upper platforms to add verticality to the fight. I think this works better than in the original because of the new combat mechanics and that's one of the main reasons that the valley encounter disappointed me a lot – it's one of the most up-and-down fights of the original and now is super bland.

the castle encounters. the first one (the fireball reverse tower defense one) it's super cool and i think i prefer it over the original since you have a proper vision of what's happening and you can use the cannon against the enemies as well. I already talked about those but the two encounters with the staff cultist are amazing too.

the island encounters: the wrecking ball one makes a great use of movement and positioning since Ashley is vulnerable and there are a lot of enemies around her, the War one is the same thing and now you have a cool dynamic with Mike instead of just speedrun over the area while he is shooting the enemies, and there is the body bags regenerators where you have to carefully crouch (a mechanic that didn't exist in the original) through the body bags to progress, or you can just trigger them to loot treasures – it's a cool risk/reward thing that make use of a unique mechanic of the remake.

ok, the not-so-good examples: some of them I already explained before so i'll skip them (Water Hall, Duo Garrador, Valley Fight, the first mine encounter, Novistadors Ballroom)
the new ones: first, the Salazar Tower fight… everything before the elevator is a big downgrade, Ramon's Statue doesn't even make sense to be there, the big balls replacing the wooden barrels, and the rest of the fight is just great because it doesn't change anything from the original.

the Novistadors Cave is also bad now since you don't have to enter the mini-caves to progress through the encounter and the nest is pretty pointless besides the dumb sidequest they did to destroy it.

there are the first two great encounters of the island – the same thing but worse? the first one they added those machine guns detectors (cool idea tbh) but they deleted J.J. and added the minotaur… and the second one is literally the same thing – my favorite aspect of the island is that it was a fully action area (with some horror sections) in a tactical action game – now it's a fully action area in a less tactical and more action game. and the fact that they didn't even change the enemies' moveset to begin with… it annoys me. the encounter I was talking about is that one between caves and the part outside the caves – it's a great one in the original and now is the same thing in a different game.

6. cut content, the encounters – waterfall encounter, the cover-based one before el gigante, two-paths thing, the GONDOLA RIDE… oh shit… the invisible novistadors in the sewage, the multiple-towers encounter before Verdugo – they replaced with that shitty giant setpiece. there is no more dragon room, they COMPLETELY deleted the underground part of the castle, the cage fight with garrador now is a cutscene (without the garrador), Salazar's Statue (that one before the quick time event) is also inexistent in the remake (and they had the audacity of put the statue in salazar's tower, wtf), U-3 is gone, the iron door encounter of the island is also gone, etc.

i'm probably missing something but these are the good/excellent encounters that they legit cut off in the remake (or somehow worsened like the tower(s) segment)

I'M-DONE-WITH-NOT-SUBTOPICS: My verdict.

sorry for being too negative in the final subtopic or if I compared the game a lot with the original but here are my overall feelings about Resident Evil 4 Remake…

(think that maybe if I played this one first i'd like it more? but my opinions and arguments about the problems of the game are still valid)

This game is a good game as a whole and a great reinterpretation of the original – the campy and waa hoo funny leon moments now is a true horror story (ok let's not exaggerate) with more spooky and serious vibes and I can respect that. The restricted and perfectly designed gameplay of the original now is "modernized" to keep the demanding realistic and "free" combat of nowadays, ironically with less freedom and depth than the restricted, tightly-tied combat of the original RE4. It's still a tactical shooter, but less tactical and more shooter, it's still slow-paced, but more reactive and less proactive, it's still a game that demands you to think carefully, but it demands you to think with your fingers instead of your mind – what was once focused on cognitive skills around specific, different situations to keep improvising and thinking about your gameplan, now is a shooter focused on motor skills, focused on "what's happening" instead of "what are you making happen" and while this isn't a problem per se, the game is not very good in integrate its mechanics into a deep ecosystem, at least not good enough to make me think this game is excellent, with or without the existence of the original Resident Evil 4. And the changes aren't relevant enough to make me think "oOooOh, It's a DIFFERENT game, not a WORSE one" since I already covered all the mechanical differences of this remake and why they aren't interesting enough in its own – Resident Evil 4 Remake it's a great game because is still Resident Evil 4, and at its best moments, is an amazing game that can show its qualities regardless of the existence of the original game, and at its worst moments is a decent game that it's only decent because is based on a perfect foundation – and thus it's the tangible proof of why the original Resident Evil 4 is a game that cannot be replaced.

These are my first impressions.

(i still don't fucking know if i give this game a 3/5 or 4/5)