Beat the game twice; did the speedrun challenge the second time. On my Insanity playthrough now.
The care facility section as Grace is SO GOOD. There are so many cool little touches going on. (Very light spoilers for this section just highlighting how much I enjoy the attention to detail):
- Enemies can enter some save rooms. It really feels like nowhere is fully safe.
[*]If you don't take care of Chunk, you constantly have to worry about him in the East Wing. Choosing whether to let him live or expend resources to kill him is great.
[*]Zombies can interact with each other and even fight each other.
[*]So much detail goes into the first section with The Girl. You can move the cart in the nurse's station super slowly and nothing falls off it of, thus not alerting The Girl.
[*]The Parlor and the antique coins are a fun upgrade system.
[*]Choosing if you want to craft max health boosts or firepower boosts feels like a meaningful choice.
[*]I love that the game brings back some of the old-school adventure game elements, like interacting with items you pick up, rotating them, looking for hidden latches, etc. I also love the new twists, like using the pencil to shade in the notepad with the symbols on it.
[*]The giant chef patrolling the West Wing is great.
[*]Worrying which zombies will turn into Blister Heads and making strategic use of the item that one-shots them is a great nod to the classic Crimson Heads.
[*]
A lot of these things feel like meaningful evolutions of classic Resident Evil. It's obvious a lot of love and care went into it, and I can see myself replaying this section a lot over the years.
I can only describe the second half of the game as a poor man's attempt at recreating RE4, but without the level design, visuals, enemy design, enemy variety, or interesting character progression to back it up. I wonder if this is really what the team wanted to do, or if the first half of the game just took too much time and too many resources to replicate across the back half.