Pleasantly great. It has that old RE1 vibe in terms of exploration, awkward key-finding for specific doors and some puzzles here and there, albeit the later weren't really frequent at all. Madhouse should have been present from the very start, since the manual saving adds an extra layer of atmosphere (that being said, the game is really generous with it, and even grants you powerful weaponry much earlier than in the standard difficulty).
Would have love to see more of the Baker family. Despite them being very great, there's actually not much screen time for each one of the family (heck, you're even denied a combat against Lucas). Ethan on the other hand was a very bland, boring protagonist. It's funny because Clancy (the guy from the demo, Happy Birthday and certain DLCs), and all the other playable characters such as Mia, Joe, Chris and Zoe are far more charming than Ethan is in the entirety of the game. It didn't detract from the game, but I just wish he would do something other than telling Jack "that isn't groovy" with such a casual tone you'd think they're drinking beer together.
Pretty much it's a combination of great elements. If I had to sum up what I didn't like, it would be:
- Almost no enemy variety. Seriously, outside bosses, you have three types of Molded (plus an arm-variant of one of them) and that's it. One of these types only show up three times in the game.
- Terrible, terrible final boss battle despite how cool it looks.
- Stupid binary choice that makes little sense and changes basically almost nothing, other than potentially screwing a certain character.
- Ethan and Zoe's exchanges. Don't get me wrong, this kicks you directly into playing more without having to deal with much conversation, and that's great. But I could never gather much sense to what you were doing. You need a serum, which I kinda guess makes sense, but then you have to look for the ingredients and Ethan is like "k an arm". The fact that Ethan blindly trusts Zoe despite having deceiving people in the family like Lucas is yet another indication of how bland Ethan is. Some plot details are iffy, as well, and pretty confusing.
- Ethan's hand and leg. I mean, they simply brush this aside, but it never stopped bothering me to no end.
Outside these elements, the game was damn great. I greatly encourage people to play the DLCs, they're awesome as well.
