[Long post warning]
I will never understand how people can say this game is better than RE4, especially 'in every possible way.'
It's the equivalent of tracing over the prior's meticulously designed encounters and missing the most important details while tacking on poorly implemented features of its own.
Let's talk about the game's biggest issue. The combat loop was broken. They took RE4 basic design, added more enemies on screen, strafing, more automatic weapons and then apparently made the AI DUMBER. The enemy AI is dumber and slower at attacking on a per enemy basis I'm guessing to make up for their higher numbers (or they just couldn't recreate the magic). This is despite the fact they added strafing and more crowd control weapons and another character to aid
you.
The removal of the dodging mechanic I think is felt in the way many of the AI runs up to you and does nothing for two to three seconds. RE4 did this behavior as well but not to the extent this game does. It also constantly has enemies attacking from behind but gives you no good tools to counter this seeing as your aiming speed is still relatively slow, there's no dodging, and environments allow them to surround you easier. I guess a human coop partner was supposed to help this? I found most of the encounters involved a few enemies running up to you from multiple angles and stopping for 2 seconds which only gives you enough time to take care of one or two of them, then you get grabbed. So I had to attack one of them and then attempt to run forward past them spin around and repeat. In RE4, you usually could manage the direction enemies attacked from especially since they were less and the level design allowed you to funnel easier.
The coop implementation is pervasive and not very well done. If it weren't for the shoehorned in "both characters must activate switch on opposite sides of door to progress in every god damn map" there would be zero reason for the additional character to exist throughout most of the game (other than the annoying cavern torchlight section and... TURRET sections!). This fact makes it all the more frustrating when you realise how much better the game would be if they just removed the other character during single player. I also hated situations where I should have died and been punished for playing bad but then the AI partner comes and saves me, or the inconsistency with the opposite happening. Also made ammo management more cumbersome...
The treasure and weapon upgrade system was shoehorned into the end of levels and generally is not as balanced or interesting as RE4s implementation.
Turret sections.
Shit bosses.
Piss filter.
Terrible attempt at cover shooting.
Turret section boss fights against shit bosses.
That's my spiel on RE5. Make no mistake there is some fun to be had and I'm sure it's much better in coop but I still find most of these issues irredeemable. I've yet to replay it since my initial go.
