RE7 has good atmosphere.

But when you play Dark Souls and you see a huge monster, do you get frightened? Intimidated by the monster's size, or the amount of swords it has? I mean why wouldn't you, Dark Souls has great artstyle and it wants you to feel that way sometimes.
I personally don't, I like seeing monsters as challenges, as targets. But even still you appreciate the effort and quality of the artstyle.

Not with RE7 tho.


The whole game takes place in 2 different environments, gross and decayed house in the swamps, and a very small section on a ship.
The Entire game has literally 1 monster, the Mold. Sure the Boss fight looks a bit different each time, like the spider one is pretty gross and spooky I will give it that. But every single monster spread around the world is either a Standing Mold or a Crouching Crawling Mold or a One Armed Mold. Or that Fat Mold you fight once.
Compare that with something like Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space, where there's dozens of different necromorphs with hundred different animations and dozens of ways to kill them. Villagers, Zombie Dogs, Chainsaw Guys, Church Dudes, Machine Gun guys, Machete Guys. Those games have variety.


RE7 also has an insanely limited amount of weapons too, you get different handguns and even a flamethrower and things like that, but they play exactly the same, the gameplay never changes in the entire game.
You see a monster; you shoot it dead. You see a Boss; you shoot it dead.
Again, look at RE4 or Dead Space, you gotta dismember the monsters to deal more damage and prevent them from advancing, you gotta hit the legs of the villagers to make them fall down then use your knife on them to preserve ammo, you gotta shoot the heads of dudes and then OH SHIT [spoiler thing] HAPPENS. And Boss fights that require you to do specific things with the environment , not just [Shoot].

Re7 versus RE4 or Dead Space is like comparing HellBlade's combat with Dark Souls. Sure Hellblade had sick animations, but the combat was the exact same throughout the whole game, you hit dudes with your blade. Dark Souls, you know how in depth it is.

And I know some people will say "Oh but the game is not about combat" and I will say I know, I wasn't finished.


The game's story seemed promising but it ended in a complete disappointment.
 [Spoilers ahead]
The demo hinted at the Bakers being watched by Umbrella for some reason and it seemed interesting, yet the actual story disbands that, the Bakers were literally just some random group of people living in a random area of the world where random ship containing spooky shit crashed nearby and conveniently turned the Bakers into monsters. The End.

Not even the main character you play as has any significance, you literally just stumble into it like a bad straight to dvd Slasher movie.
Even the Bakers themselves are uninteresting and unoriginal, they all have the same motives or personalities "Gross decayed monster people that think they are living a normal life and want the main character to join them" , you fight the bakers like 5 times over and over like a bad straight to dvd slasher movie.

The game introduces 1 extra character in the mix (Aside from the character's wife) and that character has so little dialogue and so little screen time it barely registers at anyone at all, and the game even has the gall to try to gain some emotional value from it, by putting the character and the main character's wife on a "PICK WHICH ONE YOU CHOSE, MAKE YOUR DECISION" sequence, it was the weakest and most bland attempt at trying to make the player care for the story/game/characters in a long while, like a rookie version of what all those story heavy games been doing for years (Telltale, Witcher).

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TL;DR
Here's the whole RE7 experience in one short summary.
You start the game in a spooky house, you explore it.
You find Mold monsters and the Bakers.
You shoot the gun.
You walk around and find items, then kill more Mold monsters and fight the Bakers.
The game ends.

I don't think a first person Resident Evil is a bad idea at all, but the game just didn't have enough content. Sure it can be spooky, specially in VR, but how many times do you have to see the same exact monster before your fear vanishes? How many times that one Baker has to show up before you start wondering if you are watching "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday"? The Demo was a frail attempt at recreating PT:Silent Hills. Every "puzzle" and locked door just makes you wish you were playing Resident Evil 4 instead.
Every player has the right to play what ever game they want and like what ever game they like, but I would personally recommend Dead Space or Alien Isolation or RE4.