Overseer have you played the game yet? What did you make of it?
I haven't personally played it fully due to the motion sickness and nausea, but had friends of mine play it instead while I watched. I was kind of bored, I don't normally fall asleep but I did during one section of the first playthrough (Lucas area).
To me it's not very memorable and because I also collect other certain survival horror games (especially those with stalking/chasing enemies and when you're left without weapons, needing to hide and so-on) to me there wasn't anything that made it stand out and scream Bio/RE at me. Lots of throwbacks to Bio/RE, but to also other horror things like movies and so-on which I didn't really feel like were needed and it felt like towards the later sections of the game there's not as much polish which makes the first section of the game (which was used in the trial edition/demo) stand out even more and it just sticks out to me like the focus was on that because of it being presented in press stuff.
Which is funny given the fact that it was repeatedly stated that it wouldn't be used in the final, but here we are.
Like Final Fantasy XV it gives the general feeling of there being a lot of room to eventually rely upon DLC, which from poking around in the trial edition before - I already knew about and expected, but it's still disappointing to see the lack of variety of enemies. I also didn't really like the whole 'ghostly little girl' themes that were present throughout the marketing as it just felt like too many references and/or reliance on outdated and now overused horror tropes of the whole "strange little girl" which effectively doesn't do much in terms of the plot in contrast to the usage of it with Natalia in REV2.
Not to mention that for all the hate that Gaiden got, REV2 had the retread to it and then 7 has in a certain regard too.
Some of the files are okay, but again - there's the gaps.
I'm in agreement about the weapons feeling more or less the same, I noticed the dodgy weapons animations too and also had enemies spawn immediately in front of me in the bind/reference/t-pose too which along with the AI pathing being kind of shit, killed a hell of a lot of any immersion they were going for.
I had a little laugh at some of the remarks Ethan made, but the overall thing is that I don't feel any draw to care about any of the characters within the tile. I feel slightly bad regarding the Bakers, but then you go back to the whole pathogen traits in 7 that makes this more or less effectively not be a thing as well at the same time.
Curious regarding certain files for certain involvement, especially with the Umbrella Corps ties into things but that's something I assume will be handled in DLC, if it's ever even handled.
To me they tried to cover too much in certain directions so it gives me a kind of bland feeling, where it just blends into my mind and I can't really pick out anything because my mind is just responding that it reminds me of certain things like -
1. Certain horror film references visually, or even verbally within the scripting. Like, "Groovy" being used in a certain point as a reference. Though in the same fight, everyone I know was yelling Clock Tower & Scissorman about it.
2. Pathogen is something I've more or less already seen in the Clock Tower series, especially in the effects of it so that stuck to me too.
3. Everyone I know has remarked that another certain fight is basically a mirror to dealing with Alex in REV2, and that they preferred the Alex fight over what happened in 7 though they still found the animations unsettling.
4. I'm not keen on the reasoning for the little girl visuals in general, just throwing it out there because it's something I'd associate with something like say.... F.E.A.R. (and we'll ignore the fact that a writer from the F.E.A.R.S. series was behind the character script localization to sound correct to the region).
5. I didn't like the replay of the opening section in the later/end section of the game, felt kind of cheap and that if things were properly explained in terms of files in the same fashion to how it's always been done in the series that it wouldn't need t be shoved in the players faces and still have a number of players still completely confused about what just happened.
Poor story usage and to me it kind of says a lot in the fact that I've been playing Final Fantasy XV that's suffered the same thing, but the difference was that I actually felt drawn to have an interest in some of the characters in XV (namely, Ignis) but the overall impression I got with 7 in the same vein as Umbrella Corps is just - disposable.
6. Some of the soundtrack was fine, but the tracks are very short and the only one that really stuck out to memory is the Go Tell Aunt Rhody, but that's a given from the sheer amount of usage of it in the marketing.
7. Also wasn't particularly impressed that they basically reused shots from the marketing to do the credit roll sequence either, or vice-versa. Wasn't really needed when they could've just stuck to the usual credit sequence? Hell, even animation cycles in the same fashion to the original Bio would've been more fun in that regard, especially if they've been focused on showing off technical capabilities and so-on with the stated focus on the visuals.
Like REV2 wasn't entirely new and it was very clear with the CODE: Veronica callbacks (which would've been even more blatant prior to the cuts made to the earlier version), but it still had it's memorable moments to me. 6 had it's moments too, even though I don't really like it purely due to story content and that I'm not particularly a fan of certain characters in it but the gameplay was fun, even if I barely remember most of it from being drunk each time I've played it. 7 initially has a slight atmosphere, but the longer I played or watched it being played it wasn't really all that interesting or memorable to me because it just kind of blurred together for me and the atmosphere or polish of it declines the moment you leave certain areas or leave interacting with certain characters. Like it felt similar in regard to say, DEMENTO having main stalker characters and then you have random Homunculi and crap to deal with - the difference being that Fiona didn't have many weapons, had to actually hide instead of going to another area or only being able to crouch behind a box or something and the reliance on Hewie and his AI added more tension to it whereas this is negated by going back to the usual weapons.
8. To the difficulty and the weaponry - if you play it like a classic game (or try and make it more difficult on madhouse/arrange) and don't blow all your ammo on the obvious sponge enemies, it's not difficult at all. Though I may perhaps be biased as I usually hang with classic speedrunners and no one I know had any difficulty beyond the game crashing continually as they had saved their ammo because as per the series standard: the knives are stronger than they would seem.
Overall, to me I wouldn't have a problem with it if it had been branded as another Demento/Haunting Ground sort of title instead of a Biohazard/Resident Evil title, because my mind goes back to more of the first rather than the latter which is something I don't really like. Which is pretty bad, considering that this is literally my sort of thing to pull from a box in my room:
So, naturally people would've assumed that I liked it, but not really.
The TL;DR is that I like my CT/HG to not be in my Bio, but if it has to be - I actually prefer being able to hide in things like the bins or the lockers in 6, Outbreak and so-on as just crouching or standing behind boxes feels kind of cheap to me, among other things.
I'd also expect something first person and with VR capabilities to not have muddy textures, pop-in going on and more refined animations, as well as not seeing anything getting spawned in front of me. Especially not in a bind pose!
It's also only really getting speedrun at the moment because it's the new game, but there's weird programming for how the game handles the timers and there's certain things that are scripted that a lot of the speedrunners dislike so the general consensus has been from them that it's not worth it to dedicate their time to trying to route something beyond doing out of bounds glitches to exploit to get faster times. And that it's looking like they won't get a perfect timer for it either because of how the game has been programmed, which has kind of further killed some interest in it too. The point that one of the runners I know that does both Bio, CT and so-on has only done it once and said they won't be doing it again.
So for me, there's currently nothing encouraging me to suffer the motion sickness I get to play through it fully by myself.