I agree

Most of it is subjective of course, but for me the remake is better because:

-it’s more challenging
-has a darker storyline
-has better characterisation
-has better horror
-has better resource management
-has better level design
-has more variety
-has better pacing
-has better shooting
-has a better treasure system
-has the parry mechanic
-has better art (less brown)
-Ramon’s boss is no longer garbage
-Saddler’s boss is no longer a disappointing anti-climax
-has a way better Separate Ways
-No cutscene QTEs
-has a bunch of QoL improvements like weapon hot keys inventory checking etc
-you can thank the dog

This is just my opinion so feel free to disagree with any of those. People can prefer which ever version they want or even hate both, just play the games you enjoy.

Guy that hasn't played the game in full wants to question people that have. The absolute state of 2026 gaming. lol

Also, an 8.5 allegedly isn't a great game. Just strange stuff.

Originally posted by Sovereign:

This is just my opinion so feel free to disagree with any of those. People can prefer which ever version they want or even hate both, just play the games you enjoy.

I'm still going through the remake, so I haven't gotten to Ramon's boss fight yet. I just got past the house fight with Luis. I shot Luis in the back with a shotgun by mistake & was surprised he didn't kill Leon like he would have in the original RE4.

They got rid of cutscene QTE's but there's still a ton of QTE's in the game. The parry & dodges are still QTE's basically.

The treasure system I think is both better & worse, since half the treasures are locked behind a $4 paywall. IDK if not having to buy the map from the trader is better or worse. It also adds a lot of back tracking with requiring keys now, but at least it's done well where it doesn't feel like a waste of time.

I haven't played the new Seperate Ways yet, but if Ada's VA is as bad in that as she is in the main game I don't know if I'll like it or not. I've seen clips of new Ada's lines & jeez, some of them sound like she's swallowing snot as she's talking.

Better art is subjective, I think the art in the original looked great. How textures are based on RL photographs that were taken in actual Spanish villages & castles, they really went out of their way for RE4 in the original. Where as RE4R, while it still looks good, i don't understand some design choices. Like, why is there fog on the ground inside the first insignia door room? And a lot of things were apparently asset flipped from RE8, or bought assets off a website from what I'm told for the remake. And seeing blood text on the wall in comic sans was just kind of weird... It was designed to 'look' scary but none of it is actually scary, so saying it has 'better horror' is also kind of subjective.

I will say the enemies are definitely scarier, tho, but that's partly because they are all bullet sponges now. Even the regular villagers take way too many shots before they seem to go down & when they do there's a chance they'll just get back up again, wasting even more ammo. I'd like to use my knife more but then I'm afraid i won't have anything to parry with because knives break so easily now.

Weapon hotkeys are nice to have now, I will agree with that. I still find it annoying that when I go into the menu to use healing items that it doesn't put me right into my inventory. Having to tab over twice to get into it is just extra steps. It's like they fixed one problem but made another one for no real reason.

Thanking the dog, yes. That was definitely a needed addition to the game. Best boi's need to know & be told they are best boi's.

As for the rest, I think I need to play the game more before passing judgement on level design, pacing & the overall story.

Originally posted by Underdog:

Guy that hasn't played the game in full wants to question people that have. The absolute state of 2026 gaming. lol

Also, an 8.5 allegedly isn't a great game. Just strange stuff.

I'm questioning it based on my experience with it so far based on my experience with the original, which I have played over a dozen times on 5 different systems.

Since when is 8.5 not a great game? Anything above an 8 is great, above 9 is amazing but so far RE4R is not all that amazing to me, but it's still pretty great so that's why I'm saying it's an 8.5 so far.

Originally posted by King of Evil:

Originally posted by Sovereign:

This is just my opinion so feel free to disagree with any of those. People can prefer which ever version they want or even hate both, just play the games you enjoy.

I'm still going through the remake, so I haven't gotten to Ramon's boss fight yet. I just got past the house fight with Luis. I shot Luis in the back with a shotgun by mistake & was surprised he didn't kill Leon like he would have in the original RE4.

They got rid of cutscene QTE's but there's still a ton of QTE's in the game. The parry & dodges are still QTE's basically.

The treasure system I think is both better & worse, since half the treasures are locked behind a $4 paywall. IDK if not having to buy the map from the trader is better or worse. It also adds a lot of back tracking with requiring keys now, but at least it's done well where it doesn't feel like a waste of time.

I haven't played the new Seperate Ways yet, but if Ada's VA is as bad in that as she is in the main game I don't know if I'll like it or not. I've seen clips of new Ada's lines & jeez, some of them sound like she's swallowing snot as she's talking.

Better art is subjective, I think the art in the original looked great. How textures are based on RL photographs that were taken in actual Spanish villages & castles, they really went out of their way for RE4 in the original. Where as RE4R, while it still looks good, i don't understand some design choices. Like, why is there fog on the ground inside the first insignia door room? And a lot of things were apparently asset flipped from RE8, or bought assets off a website from what I'm told for the remake. And seeing blood text on the wall in comic sans was just kind of weird... It was designed to 'look' scary but none of it is actually scary, so saying it has 'better horror' is also kind of subjective.

I will say the enemies are definitely scarier, tho, but that's partly because they are all bullet sponges now. Even the regular villagers take way too many shots before they seem to go down & when they do there's a chance they'll just get back up again, wasting even more ammo. I'd like to use my knife more but then I'm afraid i won't have anything to parry with because knives break so easily now.

Weapon hotkeys are nice to have now, I will agree with that. I still find it annoying that when I go into the menu to use healing items that it doesn't put me right into my inventory. Having to tab over twice to get into it is just extra steps. It's like they fixed one problem but made another one for no real reason.

Thanking the dog, yes. That was definitely a needed addition to the game. Best boi's need to know & be told they are best boi's.

As for the rest, I think I need to play the game more before passing judgement on level design, pacing & the overall story.

Parrying and dodging are not QTEs, they are just parrying and dodging. QTEs, going by the Shenmue definition, are when you are in the middle of a cutscene or scripted sequence and have to press sudden button prompts or you have to start the scene over again. "Press X to not die" and all that.

The DLC treasure map is nowhere near half of the game's treasure, it honestly doesn't make that much of a difference on how much money you get outside of the one extra crown. Backtracking around the map after finding keys is a pretty standard part of Resident Evil and survival horror games in general. The OG RE4 mostly lacking that was not a good thing imho.

Never had a problem with Ada's VA to be honest, she's not the best VA in the game but she sounds fine most of the time. SW in the remake is still way better regardless, it's a proper meaty story expansion this time instead of just a lazy rehash of base game encounters with next to no plot designed to force people to buy the game again on a PS2.

RE4R doesn't use pre bought assets and while most RE engine games do reuse assets for efficiency's sake it it's mostly just some background probs. I've played through both RE4R and 8 many times and haven't really noticed anything outside of Maybe some generic furniture here and there.

Yes "better horror" is subjective, this is all subjective, there is no such thing as an objective opinion. I just enjoy the darker atmosphere and more threatening monster's more then the OG's Saturday morning cartoon shtick.

Most enemies actually have less health then their OG counterparts. Though they are harder to stagger, something that was way too easy in the OG. Managing your ammo and other supplies is a core part of the appeal of survival horror games, weighing up whether you should use knife durability or ammo to deal with a threat is good thing.

There is a dedicated inventory button that takes you straight there. I forget what it is on keyboard but on a Xbox gamepad it's the Y button.

Originally posted by Sovereign:

[Everything this guy just said is excellent... except Ada's VA, nah Lily Gao blows lol]

I also like the darker atmosphere, in fact went a bit further and modded out the camera backlight. Only thing I really prefer from the og is Leon, aesthetically. He looks a little too shounen in the remake vs. his ikemen build in the og which we don't see again until Requiem.

Originally posted by Tenshu:

Originally posted by Sovereign:

[Everything this guy just said is excellent... except Ada's VA, nah Lily Gao blows lol]

I also like the darker atmosphere, in fact went a bit further and modded out the camera backlight. Only thing I really prefer from the og is Leon, aesthetically. He looks a little too shounen in the remake vs. his ikemen build in the og which we don't see again until Requiem.

In all fairness to Lily Gao she isn't a voice actor, which is a very different skill set then on-screen acting. I still think she did fine.

From my understanding they dropped the RE2R VA after she went union and got Gao to do it instead because she was already around playing Ada in a live action thing. I've seen her in other stuff like the Expanse and she was good there. I have also definitely heard far, far worse VA in my 30 years of gaming.

Originally posted by Sovereign:

Originally posted by Tenshu:

I also like the darker atmosphere, in fact went a bit further and modded out the camera backlight. Only thing I really prefer from the og is Leon, aesthetically. He looks a little too shounen in the remake vs. his ikemen build in the og which we don't see again until Requiem.

In all fairness to Lily Gao she isn't a voice actor, which is a very different skill set then on-screen acting.

From my understanding they dropped the RE2R VA after she went union and got Gao to do it instead because she was already around playing Ada in a live action thing. I've seen her in other stuff like the Expanse and she was good there. I have also definitely heard far, far worse VA in my 30 years of gaming.

Dynasty Warriors I think is intentionally bad.
Chaos Wars was literally the dev teams relatives lmao
Martian Gothic
Harvester...

Originally posted by Tenshu:

Originally posted by Sovereign:

In all fairness to Lily Gao she isn't a voice actor, which is a very different skill set then on-screen acting.

From my understanding they dropped the RE2R VA after she went union and got Gao to do it instead because she was already around playing Ada in a live action thing. I've seen her in other stuff like the Expanse and she was good there. I have also definitely heard far, far worse VA in my 30 years of gaming.

Dynasty Warriors I think is intentionally bad.
Chaos Wars was literally the dev teams relatives lmao
Martian Gothic
Harvester...

RE1 and House of the Dead 2 are probably my favourites for funny bad VA.

Originally posted by Sovereign:

Originally posted by Tenshu:

Dynasty Warriors I think is intentionally bad.
Chaos Wars was literally the dev teams relatives lmao
Martian Gothic
Harvester...

RE1 and House of the Dead 2 are probably my favourites for funny bad VA.

HM HM HM HM HM
People of the AMS
I am Goldmaaan

honestly i think ada's VA did a fine job. I honestly think someone scuffed the audio mixing for her lines though. the delivery is fine but it's how it sounds in engine seems off. Most of seperate ways sounded better when outside of shared scenes between both story modes. I honestly think it's a sound mixing issue personally.

The answer is simple. RE4 Remake is a great standalone game. It borders on being JUST ENOUGH in all aspects of what modern day “gamers” expect from a high budget AAA game.

Systematically, mechanically, and in overall art direction, it is the exact same copy pasted formula used in quite literally every other game in the same field for the past 10 or so years. It does not innovate on anything, it does not show any real creative or artistic expression. It is merely just safe. Gameplay wise, you can barely point out a meaningful difference between RE4R and TLOU or anything similar. They are both packed full of cheap thrills and constant stimulation, just enough to keep short attention spans occupied until the next objective. It is overall very simplistic and easy to digest for someone who just wants to boot up a game and be thrown into a mind numbing activity.

The reason you don't feel it's on par with the original is because, in many ways, it simply is not. The few aspects it improves upon are practically unrelated to what made the original RE4 so charming in the first place, and the rest has been flat out replaced.

-The original challenge has been replaced by an artificial one. You have far less control over your gameplay now. There is little to no calculation involved in moment to moment decisions and it has mostly been replaced by automated RNG. Laser accurate shots have been turned into random bloom that forces you to miss even when you're dead on target. The new reticle system gatekeeps DPS by locking it behind a "full focus" state, which takes too long mid combat and feels weird. Couple that with the one thing they didn't make realistically, the fire rate, you now have less combat agency than you had in the OG where you had to station yourself to shoot. Also, enemies now have RNG based stagger resist as well, which prevents calculated combat strategy while making them overall more spongy and frustrating to deal with. Movement is no longer sharp and responsive. It is sluggish, slow, and inertia heavy, all because of modernized “realistic” animations trend that further remove player agency.

-In an attempt to darken the story, they have effectively ruined the backbone of the original charm. Instead of carefully weaving darker elements into it, they replaced the entire identity of RE4 with it. The characters have been drastically overhauled and, in many cases, heavily censored into completely different people wearing the faces of the originals. Many of them have been dragged down from a larger than life heroic presence into some average everyday person. The playful comedic Hero vs Villain banter between Leon and Ramon or Saddler is gone.
They've removed Ashley's reliant and feminine attitude, originally intended as a simple anime damsel stereotype, because it made her seem too weak or overly dependent. Same with any hint of seduction factor from Ada due to censorships that abide by modern standards. Leon, Luis, and Krauser have been neutered, disallowing them to be edgy or cool, which naturally comes with a masculine, physically imposing character. All in order to serve modern audiences and be "realistic." But most importantly safe. And then STILL failing to introduce any effective horror factor.

-The parry system is one of the most out of place and poorly integrated additions to the game, rather than it being a natural extension of RE4. Not because the concept itself is inherently bad, but because it was clearly added for the simple fact of following a trend to appeal to broader audiences. Except it's so fundamentally disruptive that multiple foundational aspects of the game had to be changed just to support it. Such as the loss of some crucial iframes, which leads to situations like stun lock chains where you take multiple hits with no chance to recover. This hurts consistency and even negatively impacts high level play like speedruns. Or the fact that the Krauser fight got gutted and redesigned into a silly Walmart Sekiro boss fight imitation, but with a clunky mess of a combat mechanic that clearly wasn't thought through properly.

-Withholding content is another issue. Features that were standard in the original were missing at launch. Mercenaries mode was later added as free DLC with no prerequisite gameplay progression tied to it. Separate Ways returned as a paid DLC under the excuse of modernization, while Assignment Ada was removed entirely. This is the direct result of exploiting the trend of monetization practices that prioritize profit over substance.

All in all, the remakes are evidently more like an easy cash grab project deliberately designed to please everyone, specifically mainstream consumers. This is why you see the scores being too high than they realistically should be, and why any opposing criticism, no matter how true, is immediately met with feral behavior from this very vocal portion of the community.

But the reality is, people enjoyed the originals precisely because of what they were, and the numbers quietly reflect that despite how the remakes are presented. On the surface, they're framed as the “better” versions, but when you actually look at engagement, discussions, like to dislike ratios, and what people consistently go back to, you can see the truth of it.

Even the way people interact with the remakes says a lot. A huge portion of players use remakes as a mere fidelity upgrade stepping stone to then mod and restore elements from the original games back into them. It's pretty obvious what people actually value. For example, in RE9, one of the most popular mods is one that replaces Grace with Leon in her segments in order to access the combat system that more closely resemble RE6 and RE REV2. Games that were “apparently” some of the most disliked at the time, but I guess that suddenly doesn’t matter when it’s made in the RE Engine.

For those tired of their ears bleeding, this mod replaces Lily Gao’s VA with Jolene Andersen from RE2R.

https://youtu.be/Hk-DFdLBs-0?si=ApT1YBjugduEm29l

Originally posted by Ada Wrong:

For those tired of their ears bleeding, this mod replaces Lily Gao’s VA with Jolene Andersen from RE2R.

https://youtu.be/Hk-DFdLBs-0?si=ApT1YBjugduEm29l

I've have actually downloaded that mod out of curiosity and I honestly don't think it's very good. You can very obviously tell it's AI generated, audio quality and emotional tone are kinda all over the place and it even changes a lot of the dialogue in SW. I uninstalled it after a single SW playthrough.