A game about what happens when you watch too much [adult swim].

A solid JRPG at the end of the day. Was probably a mistake to play this right after Persona 5 Royal. Gameplay was definitely more basic by comparison, story is good but I don't know if I'd call it stronger. P5R benefitted from the life sim portion always keeping pace with when the action would start up again. P4G runs into pacing issues in the life sim part because it literally is structured without urgency much of the time. You'll beat a boss or a cutscene will happen and then it prompts you with "welp, guess we'll just have to wait and see until something happens again". Leaving you to just mindlessly get through days until said event occurs on whatever given date.

Unlike P5R the Velvet Room and Igor are just kinda...there? I did follow the romance path with Marie and it was interesting but it didn't amount to much in the main plot. I will admit I did get an "early bad ending", so I'll see if I can pick up at a reasonable point to see how and if Velvet Room stuff unfolds.

Also, lite homophobia/heteronormalization was an issue in P5R but I feel like it might be worse here? Kanji is closeted-coded and like it's cool that he gets to be a main protag in the group but the way everyone else always seems to make fun of him (for likely being gay) is kinda lame.

Very surprised how much more I enjoyed this. Definitely better than the original as I thought that threw too many enemies at once for it. Also, maybe either I got used to Ada's voice direction in the DLC, but I thought she was better here than the main game. More screen time with sexy man Luis Sera. Some unanswered questions brought to our attention since the game came out, like where was the 2nd Verdugo monster from Leon's campaign. Content that was originally scrapped in the remake was brought back here which I was happy about, along with new content not even seen in the original RE4. Probably my favorite DLC in an RE game, although not as visually striking as Shadows of Rose or a love-letter to survival horror like Lost in Nightmares. However, I was reminded why Resident Evil 4 Remake was my GOTY, the game just feels soo fun to play. Unfortunately, even with the DLC, it will be dethroned as my GOTY because of a certain RPG last month.