I put this game off for a while despite recently falling in love with the Resident Evil franchise because I was truly afraid of the tank controls that made this game so iconic. While they definitely take some getting used to, after an hour it was only a minor annoyance to a great initial entry into the RE storyline. I really love the atmosphere of Spencer Mansion and the HD Remaster looks phenomenal for how the game looked initially. I was worried not only about movement, but combat especially, and that ended up being more of a backseat compared to the puzzles, which I really enjoyed. The game felt exactly the right length and many cues I now understand were taken in future games, especially the structure of RE7. REmake's second half is definitely stronger, more enemy variety, better puzzles, and new environments. The first half gets unfortunately stale quickly due to the sheer amount of doors you need to enter and backtracking through the same halls all the time. It got tiresome and it broke the thrilling, tense atmosphere and instead left me bored and confused. Also worth mentioning is the harsh inventory system. Coming off of most of the rest of the RE games, entries vary on how tightly they lean into the survival element, but REmake gets cutthroat in how it manages items. Key items are not separated from weapons and you cannot combine new pickups if your inventory is full. Later games would fix this, but it made going back to this game more challenging, but not in a satisfying way. Running back to one of TWO item boxes in the entire mansion was somewhat ridiculous, and it could have helped to have even just one more in the main hall of the mansion. Overall, I'm happy I didn't put this one aside and I'm excited for whatever else I can get my hands on with this amazing franchise.