When you have a series of games, it's expected that they're going to be compared to each other. I myself have compared games in this very series (
Resident Evil 4). While there is some merit in this, this often leads to expectations surrounding a franchise that might not have garnered attention otherwise. No franchise experiences this more then the resident evil franchise. Anytime a new RE comes out, it garners the question: does this "feel" like a Resident Evil game? What that means is a different thing to many people, for some,
Resident Evil: Revelations [バイオハザード リベレーションズ] was a return to horror for the franchise, to others
Resident Evil 2 was a bastardization of survival horror.
While this can be used to judge one's preferences, it also means one's ideological stance on a Resident Evil game prohibits a level of critique for some players who may think one entry is to actiony or to others who are bothered by the classic camera angles.
I think Resident Evil 5 suffered from these expectations more then any other RE game. Some would argue 6 experienced this judgement more, but RE5 disappointed both fans of 4 looking for a sequel, and fans of survival horror playing an action game.
While there's something to be said about both of those, often what is missed in critiques of RE5 is that this is just a really solid action horror game. While this game is rarely scary, it is tense and achieves the same feeling as RE4 being
God Hand [ゴッドハンド] with a gun. Many of the levels expand and add new ideas to this sort of gameplay system. The new co op mechanics expand on these systems, and most of the new enemies (barring the guys with guns in the late game) are a welcome edition to this game.
It's also probably still the best co-op campaign you can play, creating many unique scenarios where one player does one task and the other does another. The first chainsaw man sequence has one player being forced to fight them alone while the other player can either shoot from a distance, or try to get in there and help. This is fairly simple but it creates tension for both players in different ways. It's creating a shared experience of two different events. Not many other co-op games can say this, as great as they may be. I do want to mention that this game is drastically worse with an AI co op partner, but I feel co op should basically be mandatory for this game.
Since gameplay tends to be very frantic, the new inventory system (while restricting and less creative then RE4) fits the game pretty well.
This game still looks gorgeous, MT Framework was a hell of an engine and there's a real harsh, bright, atmosphere this game has which fails on the horror side of things, but looks pretty great. Of course, like with every resident evil game the atmosphere contrasts the campy story, which leads to this game being one of RE's most absurd, over the top action hero stories the franchise ever saw. From villains injecting themselves with life altering viruses to the boat level (really creative level) being taken completely seriously, it's hard not to grin when playing this game.
And of course the game's got so much other great bonus content. Mercenaries gets bigger, better, and has co op added. Lost in nightmares is a complete tonal shift that changes how you play the game. There's an insane amount of new game plus content. And there's also one of the worst DLCs I've ever played!
It's not all better of course, there's a few areas that aren't particularly interesting, the on rails shooter section is mindless, chapter 5-2 is a mess, and the weapon balancing isn't nearly as well thought out as RE4 (there are multiple obvious best guns).
It's hard not to compare a game to it's predecessors (I did it multiple times in this review), but if you can look past it, I think you'll find a game much better then you remember. I predict when the RE5 remake comes out in a couple of years, you'll see the score on this site bump up quite dramatically (its already gone from a 2.92 to 2.99 in the course of about a year, memories will only grow fonder).
I almost don't even mind some of the bosses being bullet sponges because of how hilariously dumb it feels to just unload your ENTIRE arsenal every couple chapters or so lol.
obviously playing RE with a friend is fun, and this has the same gameplay style as RE4, which makes it even better. but then the level design is incredibly annoying sometimes and the bosses are easy and boring.