The zapping system is used more extensively than that. There are several pathways you can open or close in Claire's campaign that will affect the route Barry takes. And if you defeat Mutant Pedro as Claire, instead of running away, Barry won't have to defeat him and instead will gain access to hidden areas.
Visually, the game looks about as good as the mainline installments. (The texture work actually holds up better than RE6, on the whole, although RE6 has better lighting.) And the main characters look fantastic, so I really don't get your uncanny valley complaint.
And the crafting system? How is it limited in any way? It has similar complexity and range to the one in TLoU, which was an obvious inspiration. How would you have wanted it to be more involving? It seemed perfectly balanced.
I don't doubt that RER2 had a much smaller budget, but I also don't see how the budget limited the game's potential in any way. The game has a more intimate scope and delivers fully within it.
I was just never impressed by it. There were times where I totally saw the potential like in Episode 4 and opening the dam to change the path Barry and Natalia take or having more or less hazards depending on your actions, it just never felt like a fully fleshed out and complete feature. It's a nice addition, but nothing game changing like it could be if they had more time to work with it.
Visually I give RE 6 more of a pass since it covers 20 to 25 hours of campaign across basically every horror environment you can think of (college campus, several cities, subway, underground lair, underwater lair, cemetery, catacombs, "center of the Earth", skyscrapers, streets, cabins, caves, mountains, and so on) plus Coop, multiple multiplayer modes, and Mercs. It's actually rather impressive how much Capcom put in content wise. Revelations 2 has no where near that kind of scope with the first half of Barry's episode being a repeat of Claire and Moira's for Episodes 1 - 3 (the design necessitates this, but it's not like Barry and Natalia get a ton of content for themselves outside of Episode 4). And even so, the character models most certainly don't hold a candle to RE 5 or 6. It's certainly a cosmetic issue and not a make or break issue, though.
I meant the Item Upgrade Custom Parts. It just really doesn't feel needed in the main campaign. In Raid Mode it's awesome and rather in depth with what you can do with it. Honestly, Raid Mode seems like it had a lot of effort put into it and outside of a few balance issues (Weapons Master breaks the shit out of the difficulty curve, especially the Shotgun Mastery) I'm rather impressed with it.
I'm not saying I don't like the game. The puzzles are fun, the atmosphere is great, and the characters are fun as well. I just feel the game could have been much more fully realized. I'm hoping Revelations 3 takes these ideas and expands on them.
