If you like Resident Evil games or action survival horror as a genre, I couldn't recommend this game enough. Resident Evil 4 was always one of my favorite entries in this genre and in this franchise but this remake truly outdid itself.
Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil 4 will always be the protag I want to listen to for hours. Ashley is more fleshed out of a character than ever. If you have never played the original RE4, I will say that it is a fantastic experience imo. If you HAVE played the original version of RE4 back in the day, they really made some sections everything they both could have as well as SHOULD have been back then. It breathes life into a truly beloved title for me. I have 47 hours on record at the time of writing this and can't wait to have many more. Especially as I pick up the rest of the DLC over time.
There is gore, there are truly brutal moments as well as pure wonderful moments of laughter, wholesomeness to enjoy as well as some holes you enjoy putting into others. But nothing there not to enjoy if you give it a chance.
This Game may contain content not appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work: Frequent Violence or Gore, General Mature Content
(May I also just say that playing Fashion RE4R using the extra outfits/accessories throughout my playthrough was such a truly delightful idea. I can't recommend enough if you enjoy that type of thing hahaha.)
❥ Accessibility
The accessibility in this game is amazing! There are presets for motion sickness, autitory accessibility, and visual accessibility. There's a great amount of customization of audio and video settings, and comprehensive key rebinding as one would hope for with a game of this calibur.
There are recaps of where you are when you load into a save from the main menu so you remember what was going on without having to reread any notes or anything. It's glorious!
❥ Audience/Difficulty
☑ Assisted - Easier enemy encounters, more ammo and health regain items
☑ Standard - Balanced, good starting point for most players, is how the game was primarily designed for.
☑ Hardcore - A greater challenge in that there's less ammo and increased enemy health, speed, and damage.
☑ Professional - Most challenging in that there are no autosaves, even less ammo, and even faster enemies who do even higher damage.
❥ Bugs
☑ No bugs encountered
No bugs in any of my playthroughs yet.
❥ Graphics (Accounting for different art styles)
☑ An actual masterpiece
The art is horrific and beautiful, detailed and yet very well balanced for the types of places you were in. Nothing felt out of place that wasn't meant to be mentally jarring atmospheric design.
❥ Gameplay
☑ Brutal
☑ Fun
☑ Action Packed
☑ Challenging
❥ Game time / Length
☑ Average (15-20 hours [if you focus on the main story])
☑ Long (30-40 hours [if you complete everything])
It took me about 30-ish hours in my first playthrough and almost 22 in my second playthrough still exploring and enjoying, but I could see it taking way less time if people were more driven to just plow through it - especially if you aren't also streaming and dealing with distractions.
❥ Music
☑ Other
There's amazing sound design
❥ Price / Quality $
☑ Worth full price
No notes. Just was worth it.
❥ Story
☑ Story-Rich
☑ Masterpiece
☑ Great balance of story and other gameplay
Hi all!
I have no expectations of anyone at all. But if anybody is a Twitch Sub, you have Discounts available to you that will auto apply at checkout. If you're a Hearth Regular or Friendly Neighborhood Cultist here you also have promos as a thank you for your support here - especially if it's how you'd prefer to support instead of Twitch subs. They also auto apply at checkout.
You're all very lovely and kind.
Thanks for everything along the way so far.
- Fiery
Hey everyone!
Who What Now, Gaming interviewed me as a guest!! I'm so excited to have been interviewed by Josh. It went really well and hopefully I'll be a guest another time in the future. You can definitely hear how nervous I was, but it was so fun. He's a wonderful interviewer!
We talked about all sorts of great topics and vibed so well.
If you watch it on YouTube or listen to it anywhere podcasts are available, I hope you enjoy!
This game was wild. I really enjoyed it so much. I finally played the full game all the way through in December of 2023 after playing the prologue like 2 years ago. I have so many regrets... about not playing it sooner! The permadeath is so intense that while I'm very glad about all 4 difficulty levels available and I know I could have played it easier if I wanted, I was freaking out playing it on its "intended" settings! 😱It was awesome!
❥ Accessibility
While this game doesn't have any warnings when you first open or on the Steam store page where I know they could have used some, let's talk about what it does have.
Good independent volume sliders as always, subtitles of course but also font sizes to pick from, highlighting hotspots, visual cues when listening for those who are HoH/Deaf/have audio processing issues/etc., vibration for important moments that you can turn on (which really helped me notice a couple things I may have missed or died from if I was any later)
❥ Audience/Difficulty
☑ Story Mode - "E.T.A. Hoffmann"
☑ Novice - "M.R. James"
☑ Intermediate - "The Original Experience" (exactly as it was envisioned by the devs) - "Edgar Allan Poe"
☑ Seeking a Challenge - Harder Than Harder (absolutely unrelenting) - "H.P. Lovecraft"
☑ Varied - Customizable/Good selection of Difficulty Options
This game is CHALLENGING. Also, I love that they used authors as the difficulty names as someone who has enjoyed the work of all four of them so I understand exactly WHY they used these four for these levels but I think it's very important that you can cover over all of them to see all the details of what you're signing up for. All difficulties have permadeath other than the "Just the story, please" of E.T.A. Hoffmann. You do have to unlock Lovecraft difficulty by beating the game on one of the difficulties with permadeath. But I think playing it on Edgar Allan Poe gave me a really great view of what the developers saw when they envisioned this project even though I felt no obligation to not switch to James or even potentially Hoffmann when all my characters were starting to get picked off haha.
❥ Bugs
☑ No bugs encountered
Bestieeesss, when I tell you that this game was flawless. It was fantastic.
❥ Graphics (Accounting for different art styles)
☑ An actual masterpiece
The art is horrific and stunning, beautiful, warm, terrifying, detailed, subtle when needed, it was a lovely movie I played haha.
❥ Gameplay
☑ Brutal
☑ Fun
☑ Action Packed
☑ Challenging
Even the slower moments felt tense and dripped with anticipation as you'd wait with bated breathe to see what might lurk around any corner, behind every door, inside any object, or even in the floors and walls themselves. The sound design married with the graphics, and the way the game play worked was devasting in a way that will haunt me until I play it again. It was very reminiscent of many older horror games it pays an homage to from chapter to chapter, but it felt so fresh anyway. It was like playing an old fixed camera view horror classic like the early Resident Evils or Silent Hills, or Fatal Frame. It took me back 20 years to being a scared youth in front of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (sans the 4th Wall being Kool-Aid Man'd constantly haha.) I want something to make me feel this way again.
❥ Game time / Length
☑ Average (10 - 25 hours [if you focus on the main story])
☑ Long (25-40 hours [if you complete everything])
It took me about 27 hours, but I could see it taking way less time if people were more driven to just plow through it - especially if you aren't also streaming and dealing with distractions.
❥ Music
☑ Other
There isn't really.... music? There's amazing sound design but you're never really in a place to hear music except for the music box at the heart of the story and related music you hear in key plot moments I won't spoil. But the music box's song is haunting (in a way I like.)
❥ Price / Quality $
☑ Worth full price
No notes. Just was worth it.
❥ Story
☑ Story-Rich
☑ Masterpiece
☑ Great balance of story and other gameplay
It is an incredibly story rich game that has little lore drops between all the big lore moments, massive cutscenes and sequences, but it is so far from a walking simulator. When the action is there - OH BOY IS IT THERE.
Over all, I think if you like games that are more of the defensive style of horror with a fixed camera and limited ways to protect yourself... if you like the idea of permadeath being on the table but the ability to just consume the story with reduced danger... if you want to see how so many lives can be impacted by even one person's mistakes... play it
