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Resident Evil 4 is a third person shooter where player character Leon Kennedy has been tasked with rescuing Ashley Graham, daughter of the American President, from a cult who plan to infect her with a biological weapon. Meanwhile, Ada Wong has to perform her own secret mission, which is playable in the Separate Ways DLC.

Gameplay

• Fight against a wide variety of enemies including cultists armed with axe, crossbow, chainsaw or shield, plaga parasites which erupt from cultists’ heads on death, mutant dogs, spiders, giant flying insects, living suits of armour, and huge bosses.
• Wield several different weapons including knife, pistol, shotgun, SMG, sniper rifle, magnum, bolt thrower, and frag/flash grenades.
• Find hidden treasures, sell them to the merchant, and buy upgrades to weapon damage, clip size, fire rate and reload speed.
• There are some optional side quests which will reward you with extra treasures to trade with the merchant for special items, but they feel repetitive and out of place. (Mostly shoot some blue medals hanging in the environment, or kill some rats).
• RE4 feels more like an action game instead of survival horror. Whilst you do have to manage limited ammunition, healing items, and inventory space, and your movement speed is quite slow, you’ll regularly have to fight against large groups of 15-20 enemies, usually in small rooms or areas with no way to retreat to a better tactical position. These sections don’t really feel like Resident Evil to me. (Although I suppose this is probably what the remakes of RE5 and 6 will be like too).
• The most frustrating sections of gameplay also have the added complication of needing to protect Ashley, whose AI is really dumb. Absolutely no sense of self preservation whatsoever. Whilst I’m busy getting swarmed by cultists, Ashley will always get grabbed by the one guy who aggros on her, and even after I put myself at risk to shoot that guy, Ashley will just stay crouched on the ground waiting to get grabbed again. And of course, even though she gets kidnapped about five times during cutscenes and the story continues, if she gets kidnapped during gameplay, its an instant game over.
• Thankfully, the gameplay during Ada’s DLC campaign is closer to my preferred survival horror experience, so at least my playthrough finished on a more positive note.
• The other significant addition for Ada is a grappling hook which she can use to reach some high ledges, allowing you to quickly evade some enemies. You can also pull yourself closer to stunned enemies to perform a melee attack, and the merchant sells a charm which allows the grapple to disarm shield wielding cultists.

Story

• I didn’t like the original version of the story because there were far too many cringey lines of dialogue, and its comedic tone was totally out of place in a horror game. This reworked story’s darker and more serious tone is a massive improvement.
• There are several interesting characters including Leon and Ada, Luis, the villains seem to have more depth and backstory, and even Ashley, despite my frustrations with her during gameplay, I did like her personality and interactions with Leon in cutscenes.
• Voice acting is mostly good.

Technical

• At 24 hours for the main story, plus 7 hours for Separate Ways, RE4 is one of the longest Resident Evil games.
• This is a rare 2023 release which has flawless technical performance. I had no problems with crashes, bugs or framerate.
• Graphics are obviously a big improvement over the original version.
• Controls are mostly rebindable and work great with mouse and keyboard. My only complaint is the mouse scroll wheel only goes through 4 of the 8 weapon slots, which seem to be designed with a gamepad in mind.
• I wish I could manually control when to use the flashlight instead of the game deciding when Leon would use it (which is less often than I would like).

Recommendation

While this remake of Resident Evil 4 is definitely better than the original version, I’d still rank it lower than several other games in the franchise because of its focus on action instead of survival horror. I was going to say wait for a sale but I noticed Capcom just reduced the default price anyway to an amount I’d consider good value.