Spent a lot more time with this game over the last few days. Some more long winded thoughts.
DRAMATIC CAMERA ANGLES
The dramatic camera angles suck. When playing as Chris/Piers and I have to run up the edge of the facility as Haos smashes the ramp, it's a cheap form of difficulty for the camera angle to shift, thereby destroying any sense of the perspective necessary to successfully navigate the obstacles on a single run. There is simply no excuse for this BS, and it's a cheap and artifical form of difficulty.
What they SHOULD have done is allow me to run with the regular camera angle, pressing a button to get a look over my shoulder to see how close he is, and tweaking the time so there is less room for error.
COUNTER-INTUITIVE BOSS BATTLES
There are too many instances where it's simply not clear what you're supposed to do in some boss fights except through trial and error, which is both a pain in the ass and a drain on resources. The final Haos fight and the last Baxter fight are perfect indications of this.
CHEAP AMMO LOSS
Too many times in this game, you're encouraged to shoot at stuff to absolutely no consequence other than to lose ammo. IMO, it's bad game design.
CHARACTER EXCLUSIVE EMBLEMS
There is a Serpent Emblem Chris cannot get in Chapter 2. There is a Serpent Emblem Piers cannot get in Chapter 5 (the very last one). This would not be so bad if the following weren't true.
THE SAVE SYSTEM SUCKS
Give me the opportunity to save any time, anywhere. In this day and age, why does this archaic save system even exist?
SUDDENLY CAN'T WALK
I can't even begin to count how many times I was forced to climb or crawl, or when there was a tremor or altitude shift that, to no added effect whatsoever besides frustrating me as a player, prevented me from walking forward. These kinds of QTEs were irritating in RE 5 but they weren't quite the buzzkill they are here. Capcom got out of hand with this shit.
NARRATIVE FLOW
It sucks that so many key points receive elaboration/explanation in the Serpent Emblem extra notes. There are important things here that, due to clumsy storytelling in the cutscenes, are not clearly indicated.
You find out Chris lost his memory due to head trauma if you read the notes.
Only problem is: how am I, as a person playing this game, supposed to even take that seriously? The dude gets hit by monsters that can throw trucks. He gets slammed into walls all the time. He falls and falls and bounces off the ground. He gets punched in the face by Albert Wesker repeatedly. But now, because the story needs him to have amnesia as a convenient plot device that really doesn't mean anything, he gets pummeled by a monster and his head bounces off the pavement and now he can't remember?
I get it. Capcom wanted Chris to hate 'Ada' because that creates conflict and tension between Chris and Leon. But there are better ways to create that type of tension. Like, I don't know, maybe having Chris learn that 'Ada' is responsible for his men dying in Edonia only AFTER the present moment? And instead of having him be a drunk, fallen hero in a European dive, have him over there undercover, researching leads and actively pursuing the culprit?
UNANSWERED QUESIONS:
Who the fuck:
This question is never answered or explained in any of the four storylines, at least as far as I can tell.
It looks like they're implying that
but it doesn't seem like the story clearly explains who the individual is or why they do what they do.
If this answer is anywhere in the cutscenes that serve as the main presentation for the narrative, I haven't seen it.
The game badly needs a director's cut already. Not only to fix the many issues the game has but also to fix the presentation and create a better narrative flow.
