I mean, I don't hate RE4, but that's definitely when the series changed. I prefer the creepier, earlier games. But that's just me. I think RE4 got to be so overrated. Although I still think it's the best action based RE game, and the RE4 remake is the best RE Engine remake, while RE 2002 still remains the best remake overall.
Replying to this again but ı found this interview:
This lengthy RE4 interview with producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi (who also worked as a programmer on the earlier games) was originally featured in Nintendo Dream.
shmuplations.com
" When the Resident Evil remake for GameCube game out, director Shinji Mikami talked about how important it was that the game felt "live." Does that apply to RE4 as well...?
Kobayashi: More than "live" or "real-time", I'd say that "reality" was our watchword here. However, our biggest goal with RE4 was ensuring that it was a fun game. Not a "fun Resident Evil game", but a fun game more generally… a top-class, mainstream entertainment experience. "
" —Yeah, I can see how there'd be a lot of things to get hung up on.
Kobayashi: If not for that, I think we'd have finished a lot sooner. On the other hand, in a way all that conflict served the purpose of raising the quality of the game. And doing a "full model change" was one of our development premises for RE4.
While it didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped, once we brought Mikami in as a director, that was when I felt the design overhaul really came together. "
" —Since Mikami was one of the original creators, it must have been tough for those who were tasked with succeeding him. You can tell them, "hey, we're changing everything", but there's got to be a lot of stuff they don't feel comfortable changing.
Kobayashi: That was definitely part of it. Too much change is bad, but so is too little. "
" —By the way, why *did* you decide to change everything?
Kobayashi: We'd been making Resident Evil games for so long, part of it is just avoiding boredom. That said, we want this franchise to continue long into the future, so we decided this was a good point to make a fresh start, and if we just kept doing the same thing over and over it threatens to make the experience stale. Also, Resident Evil has always been a very intense, shocking game—the first game stunned players. In the same sense, we needed something like that in RE4 or people would think we're just copying a formula. It is true, though, that established series don't usually take big gambles like this. (laughs) "
These are the parts ı found the most interesting. I miss kobayashi personally, his absence is one of the many reasons why the games released after re6 arent as enjoyable to me though re2-4r felt similar to re6 in regards to gameplay.