This game is my prison. As a huge fan of the franchise I've been playing it nearly daily since early 2020 and spent more money on it than I'd like to admit. I'm really torn on what to rate it because while the storytelling, characters, art and music have been consistently great and improving over the years, the gameplay has become disappointingly unfun and frustrating. The recent stories are incredible (especially the Arcana Arcadia arc) and I think it's worth checking out just for that, but you can also read them elsewhere. The meta has been an unbalanced mess for a while but the power creep has become so bad it sucked every last bit of fun out of this game. I used to love coming up with strats for both pvp and pve game modes but it's all pointless now unless you pull every new card. also the gacha ruined my life

RE4 is the best video game remake ever.

It perfectly balances staying true to it's origins while implementing smart tweaks to it's well-known formula. Even small changes like having you go through areas you're familar with from orginal RE4 backwards or combining set pieces or expanding areas with more verticality feel impactful. The knife parry is something I never thought I needed in a Resident Evil game but now I can't imagine playing one without it. The merchant quests, flexibility with treasure combinations, ammo crafting, the list of goes on and on. All of the changes fit so snuggly in RE4's already existing mechanics.

I also want to point out I love how much more character development we get with Luis, Ashley, Ada and Krauser. The entire cast feels more fleshed out even though some of them are still those 2005 archetypes.

Lastly, everything they cut from the original makes this remake a much tighter, well-paced experience. Sure I would have liked to have seen a modern take on the U-3 fight from the original but its placement in the original also makes little to no sense.

How Capcom managed this is abslotuely a mystery to me but they fucking did it.