Yeah, my final criticisms:
Stomp stomp stomp: Mr X is just annoying. Simple as that. He was MEGA annoying my first run as Leon, then when I knew the layout of everything, what to do, and when he would show up, I made sure to kill everything along the way and board up a bunch of windows so my paths would be clear for him. This made him much more manageable, but still nothing but an annoyance. Needing to manage him and not take the time to kill everything will make speedruns an absolute pain in the ass. This guy in himself drops the game from a 10 to an 8 for me because his presence maximizes the effect of what could have been considered minor flaws.
Undead and practically indestructible: The zombies take too many hits. Now after playing on Normal I have played half the game on Assisted to compare and this is really how it should be. They take less bullets overall, crit explode more often, and if you combo with knife you can save a lot of ammo. They aren't pushovers if you let them get near you, but you don't have to keep at them for so long. That's a Resident Evil game. In fact, the Assisted aiming felt more like original RE2 since the fixed perspectives in that game meant general direction = hit.
Combat peanut brittle: My first playthrough I was so struck by how quickly the knife broke that I was afraid to use it. Now as Claire I know you get them often enough for it to not be a problem, especially if you equip grenades where you might get caught out to expend those as counters, but now when one gets low on damage I think okay this one is about to break but I'll still want one so I'll have two inventory slots taken by knives for now. Neither of these should be the case. Just like with BotW, knives breaking after 4 uses doesn't make any sense at all. Yes I have already gone to the trouble of unlocking the unbreakable knife, but I shouldn't have to bother. It was a poor choice that doesn't make it harder or scarier, but just adds a layer of annoyance and makes it less like any other Resident Evil in existence.
Survival-Troller: At first it seems like it'll be just like RE2 in balancing the choice to shoot down or avoid enemies, but Mr X quickly destroys this notion as you're forced to run through packed areas and later you see the same with other enemies being extremely hard to go around or at times even to get away from by leaving. In the original RE2, it was like everything was intentionally designed to be able to get past it well as an option. Zombies, dogs, lickers, mutants. The only thing that seemed like it always got a hit in were the birds (where did they go BTW?). This way great for speedruns, but with this remake everything seems way more likely to hit or grab you. So it starts out feeling like it'll be RE2 but then you realize you have to play it like RE4 with more limited inventory. Rather than balance as a mix between survival-style RE and action-style RE, it makes the game not feel scary because you can and optimally do kill everything, but the thing meant to make it scary (limited inventory) actually just becomes a layer of annoyance in this task.
So I gotta say right now it's seeming RE2 > REmake > RE4 > RE5 > RE Revelations > RE2 Remake.
Still a great game, 8/10, but with Mr X there it reshapes the way you play the entire game and therein makes the game not really know what it is. It could have been a true survival game of deliberate pacing and choices that you play out with careful execution, even adding higher difficulty levels, but he holds it back and pigeonholes how the game is to be played. I don't need a specific kind of game to think the most highly of it, but I do need it to know what it wants to be and make design choices in line with that.
