Resident Evil 4

Playtime: 69.6 Hours

This is my favorite Resident Evil game.

I have played REmake 1, REmake 2, REmake 3, RE4 (2005) & REmake 4.

From this list. This game is the most fun to play. I must have at least 8 different playthroughs of this game. a few more playing through the Seperate Ways DLC.

This is the best Resident Evil game I have played.

It strikes a great balance in terms of combat and gameplay. I praised RE2 & RE3's gameplay before where you had to explore if you wanted to find better items. In this one, it forces the player to explore in order to get better items from the merchant. The merchant has all these items, and your playthrough can be entirely different depending on which weapons you decide to upgrade.

There are a lot of interesting areas to explore, the highlight in my opinion being the castle. Exploring the castle and then fighting zombies that are wearing freakin suits of armor is really cool.

This Resident Evil feels like how Resident Evil 3 should have been. It's a lot of going from Point A to Point B, but there is a lot of areas to explore to your hearts content. I also really like the chapter-based system, and hope subsequent Resident Evil remakes use it as well.

Having played Resident Evil 4 (2005) before, I must admit that the story and characters have gotten both better and worse. Ashley is definitely an improvement, and I enjoyed everytime Luis was on screen, but certain dialogue was changed to made characters like Leon a lot less charming.

Here's an example with Luis and Leon at the start of the game:

RE4 - (2005):
"I have a very important question. Do you got a smoke?"
"I got gum."

RE4 - Remake:
"I have a very important question. Do you got a smoke?"
"You know those things will kill you."

Admittedly, the character makes more sense coming from RE2 Remake to RE4 Remake but the problem is it makes the character less interesting. Ada is also a downgrade, a large part being that the voice actress doesn't give as strong of a performance that she did in RE2. It just feels the slightest bit wooden and it's disappointing.

The game also isn't as scary either, with some sections of the game being cut entirely.

However, make no mistake this is the definitive way to play RE4. It offers the best balance between gameplay, story & combat. I had a lot of fun 100%'ing it as well, even if it was very hard at times.

I highly recommend giving this game a shot if you have the chance. It's a very well made game.