So after playing this game numerous times, and getting every challenge complete...I feel confident in saying that this game...isn't that great sadly.
To give an idea of where I'm coming from, I've loved the RE series since I first saw Resident Evil 2 being played at a friends house during a gaming party, and I became a huge fan ever since. Yes, you can say the "the story doesn't matter" all you want, but I feel like for the most part...they at least made sense.
Even the so called "worst" main RE game, Resident Evil 6, after having played that again recently, the story in that game at least makes more sense then this one.
A lot of the ideas in this game really felt pulled out of no where, like the t-virus infection of Leon and Sherry's. As it is, Sherry is supposed to be super girl who can heal from a wound like Wolverine. She shouldn't have been part of that plot point. Also kinda feel like it's lame to shove her behind a desk in this game when I was just kicking ass as her in RE6 before.
I don't know if a lot of the plot points in this game are meant to be...addressed in a sequel or DLC, but most RE games at least feel like complete narratives with not many loose ends. This game's story feels full of loose ends. I am still fucking confused as hell what the little girls flash back has to do with anything! And why the fuck Zeno thought that Grace was the "original" whatever when she wasn't even born before 1990, and he showed her footage from a clone girl in 1990. Why that part needed to be playable also is so damn confusing to me, because every replay I did, I hated going through that section.
I don't hate Grace as a character, but her inception just seems ill thought out. Like...okay, I'm fine having a girl lead character whose a complete chicken shit, and is terrified of all the things happening around her....but why make her an FBI agent? that plot point makes her behavior so much harder to swallow. They could have just had her be kidnapped, and she could've been...just some girl that works at Starbucks or something. who cares. Instead, the game constantly makes me wonder...how this girl passed FBI training or enlisting in any way with her meekness, and her inability to even speak properly.
The villains also are just....so forgettable. They're going after something they think is a big bioweapon, and spend decades trying to get it, but don't even know what it really is. Also...who the fuck is Zeno? Where did he come from? Why does he look and sound like Wesker? Why does he seem like he has resources? It's just all so flimsy. Victor could've been more interesting, but he feels wasted too, and at the end, he's just a raving monster man. It's just so stupid.
I wanna repeat, I don't care for the excuses that "resident evil stories have always been stupid"....because after playing the games for decades, I feel they haven't been THIS stupid, or poorly thought out. Even if the motivations of the villains were just to spread chaos and end the world shit...or even the stupid motivation for Miranda in RE village...I at least understood what they were going for. I don't know what they thought they were going to get from Elpis, why they thought Grace was the key, and even if she was who they were looking for, it seems like all they thought she was good for was knowing a password, which I don't know how or why she would know that before she saw the video of Spencer. Don't even get me started on retconning Spencer also. Having to do retcons like that always just seems so lazy to me. We're not stupid. we saw that he was still mad with power up until his death in RE5....but instead they had to twist the narrative to fit what they wanted so they could bring Umbrella back into it. Screams lazy to me.
Beyond the story missteps though, the more I think about the gameplay...the more it just feels lame to me. The encounters in this game just weren't that fun or exciting to me. There is a severe lack of interesting bosses. There's also a severe lack of enemy variety in general. Grace's sections are actually more fun then Leon's because you have to manage resources a little better I guess...When you do get to play as Leon more though, they don't even try to balance how powerful he is with more challenging enemies, especially once you get to Raccoon City. The section where you get the detonator parts just felt like a drag every single time I played it, because the enemies were not that exciting to fight against.
Some other recent RE games have sections like this too, but I am not a fan of parts in these campaigns which are meant to be action heavy, but are so heavily scripted that it's the same thing every playthrough. Like the motorcycle part....it's basically a turret section, but one that feels impossible to fail. So every time I play it, it's like...here we go again, hold R and just aim. Even on Insanity, this section isn't a challenge. No variation in how it plays out, not even allowed to try and drive and shoot so maybe there's a way to fail.
The final boss feels like such a nothing burger to me also. I felt no excitement, or challenge on my first playthrough, or my last playthrough. It's so mediocre. Shoot the bright spots, and it dies. Super easy to avoid attacks. and then it's over.
Sorry, I know I"m all over the place with this post, but I've had a lot of time to think about this game, and I have a hard time sorting my thoughts. This post is for me to let out some of my grievances more then anything. After playing this though, I really just wanna play a better RE game now, like the original RE4, RE5, or Revelations 2.