This is a review written after completing the game multiple times and tackling most in-game challenges.
This contains no major spoilers, just minor ones that are marked as such.

The gunplay is satisfying and feels much better than in previous recent entries. The animation work of the player has weight to it, with every shot not sounding like a pea shooter anymore, while the enemies have varied responses upon impact ranging from gore decals, staggers to even dismemberment. Weapon recoil drives the point home, but also requires getting used to.

The burning desire to know about the game's duration and the amount of retained content is likely going to be an unavoidable topic, so I'm going to mention that I've spent 28 hours during my first playthrough on Standard difficulty. That's thorough exploration with all the treasures, challenge completion, with occasional restarts and whatnot. If you're going in without guides, then you're likely to get similar times, granted I did do some sightseeing during the scenic parts.

The game has been re-imagined, so familiar areas are likely to have entirely different layouts and connect in unexpected ways. The nonsensical filler parts have been merged into other areas, some segments are expanded, and the progression is made slightly more linear so that constant tiresome backtracking is not a necessity. Speaking of tiresome, the challenging areas are still present, but feel less of a chore to get through, and this kind of design philosophy is applied throughout the whole game. There is occasional objective branching that can be tackled in any order, along with optional surprises and treasure hunt, in case I made it sound too linear.

Minor Ashley spoilers.
Throwing Ashley into a dumpster is no longer a necessity anymore, because not only there are no empty dumpsters around, but the Remake Ashley ain't a bratty damsel in distress to begin with.
Ashley is more versatile and can actively avoid enemies to a degree. It's up to you if you want her to follow you closely or try avoiding the battle. The latter is not a magic bullet, as corridors and lots of enemies can still corner her.
It's not possible to accidentally harm other characters outside of battles, but that doesn't mean that you can be careless. The system reminds me of Revelations 2, because when she receives damage, it incapacitates and requires you to pick her up again. That doesn't mean that you can throw grenades or use piercing guns through her, though, as strong attacks like that will cause an immediate game over.

The player animation system is placed somewhere in between being responsive and preferring animations to inputs. Actions have momentum and velocity to them, even bringing your gun up takes time, so some players might call these controls "heavy". Contrary to that, the parry system is immediate and can be initiated even from an aiming stance. It's a concept similar to Resident Evil 6, where pressing action right before being hit executes a devastating counter-attack, but rather than doing damage, a perfect parry staggers an enemy and a more loose-timed parry is essentially a block. It'll take time to figure out and master parrying, since the timing window varies per each attack, but on regular difficulties it's possible to mash the button with only a slight possibility of it not working. After a couple of playthroughs you're likely to develop muscle memory for it and start using it without thinking.

There are a few notable ways of avoiding enemy attacks: attacking in hopes to cancel or stagger, parrying, running away, ducking, and dodging.
Evasion by ducking was the most difficult tactic to master, as enemy grabs cannot be parried, a charging enemy can really catch you off guard if you're not prepared or used to it, especially since ducking takes time, and you cannot attack from this position.

Climbing animations are no longer the go-to cheese strategy, as in RE4R the enemies are no longer shy to Sparta kick you down the ladder, thus causing some unintentional comedy in my case. Well, not literal Sparta kicks, but gone are the days of safe ladders against bosses, and it's best to make sure that your destination won't greet you with force.

My issue with the parry system is that pressing it almost during impact is a bit too late, and there were times when I felt that my perfect parry input was "eaten" by the game. Because of that, I think RE6's counter system is more snappy.

The same button that is used for ducking is also your dedicated dodge button, a direct replacement for the QTEs that appeared during very specific enemy attacks. My biggest gripe with the dodging is that certain player actions, like being in the middle of a knife slash, prevent dodging altogether, and even though there's a prompt for it and the button is pressed, absolutely nothing happens, and you get obliterated by the attack, which is definitely bound to cause frustration. I think that a dodging prompt should take priority no matter what the player is currently doing.

Uncertainty is a great element of horror, something that I really like about the original Resident Evil. RE4R, on the other hand, tries real hard to over-explain absolutely everything that is happening in the game. The documents scattered throughout the game give little to no headroom for any speculation or headcanon. It's definitely exciting to have more backstory, but the amount and placement of it could have been better.

Aiming for the highest ranking rewards, but don't vibe with rushing through the whole game? Sucks to be you, 'cause the time limits here are worse than in RE2R. Be prepared to run past enemies, skip all side events, and not bother with some of the items or treasures. Best part? You can't use a New Game+ save, so no upgraded gear to help you rip through enemies faster.

A non-story, previously unannounced side content spoiler.
Not only the rewards of the shooting range have changed, but so did the range itself. More challenges, more gun variety and if you're going for a perfect round, the difficulty is likely going to frustrate. The courses are designed to be tackled in a very particular pattern, with little wiggle room to begin with. Trial and error it is, with the added variable of your weapons having randomized bullet spread, a few gotchas of hidden bonuses, fast-disappearing targets and now the original shooting range looks like a walk in the park.
However, if you're going "just" for completion, then you're not required to do perfect rounds, as achieving S rank is enough. It's impossible to get all the rewards within one playthrough and, luckily, collecting all of them is not necessary for completion anyway.

Good stability, no crashes, adequate performance even on an GTX1070, considering the visuals the game is pushing.
FSR2 is recommended, you can push most settings mid-high with 1080p60 in most areas, while there's only two notable areas that go below 60 throughout the whole game.
Sadly, there seems to be traversal stutter.

I like Resident Evil 4 Remake because it refined the parts of the original that aged the worst. The combat is on par with the best action-oriented survival horror titles, the QTEs are eradicated, Ashley is better than ever, the presentation is more down to earth, tedious sections have been appropriately handled, all that while this being the longest RE Remake title by far.
The duration should satisfy anyone who was concerned about it to begin with, and the game remains fresh throughout thanks to the location variety. The ranking system is one of the few things that could have been better, as not everyone wants to be forced in that kind of play style.
In the end, most of the game is preserved and feels complete.

Review copy provided by Capcom Co., Ltd.

Written after 100%-ing Survive by seeing all endings and doing all optional challenges.
No story spoilers, but game mechanic and New Game+ elements are mentioned.

It's easy to get into the game if you enjoy both visual novels and Digimon. The sRPG aspect of the title might be intimidating at first for those that aren't into the genre, but it's made to be accessible even for first-time players. The game allows you to cancel your selected unit movement if you change your mind. Whenever a target is selected, a preview of the calculated chances for your attacks is shown, so there's detailed explanations of most of the key variables.

RPGs are known for their length, so a fusion of one with a novel adds up the hour count. It's a double-edged sword that depends on the player's preferences of completion and engagement goals. To check out all the story branching, you'd need to play 4 times, half of that if you're interested in just the important one. If you're not an avid reader or a fan of Digimon, then the amount of text might be off-putting and make you lose interest over time. That's why it's best to enjoy the story with occasional breaks. Reaching the true route is highly recommended, as it has the most significant differences in comparison to other regular endings.

New Game+ transfers all the player's progress, except for character affinity: all befriended Digimon and partners retain their levels and stats, all consumable items, collected attachments and library entries that count towards completion are included as well. Personally, it's a rare sight to have a jRPG that allows this degree of progress transfer, so it felt more motivating to see what the other endings and challenges would be about.

Battle quality of life settings are especially useful during consecutive playthroughs. At some point story battles can become trivial, so speed adjustment, animation skip and Auto-Battle are welcome options that severely cut down on time and tedium. I can only complain that there's no evolution skip toggle or an option for the Auto-Battle to target treasure chests, as that's the only element that requires manual intervention.

The combat features a familiar rock-paper-scissors (RPS) system paired with a list of elemental weaknesses. You can level up your partner, assign two attachments, apply permanent stat boosts and each individual Digimon has its own perk. There isn't much one can do to change a Digimon's behavior aside from assigning an extra attack or a buff/heal.

My combat experience on Hard difficulty usually had two outcomes: either the opponents get steamrolled, or the team can barely land a single hit. A well-balanced fight was a rare sight and was usually observed during earlier boss fights. As a result, the combat feels more shallow than it should, and it raises another question: does the RPS system even matter?

NG+ cycle opens up optional battles that go way above the story difficulty, a place to flex your power. The problem here is that no matter how excellent your tactics are, if your stats are too low, the chance of winning is nonexistent. If you distribute stat boosts evenly across your favorite 6 Digimon, then you'll have an overall weak team. If you do decide to gamble everything on one particular Digimon, then the RPS system might as well be thrown out the window.

Optional battles put the player in a funny predicament: to complete the final challenges one would need to grind extensively for stat boosting items, but by the time one gets there, there's nothing in the game that would stand a chance against your team. So what's the point of the final reward item to begin with, aside from bragging rights?

The branching of the story results in characters having similar dialogues that often times are 1:1 to each other, aside from a few additional or changed sentences. Unfortunately, the text is duplicated rather than referenced, so the automatic skip option cannot help you weed out the unnecessary re-reading. It's less of an issue in the beginning chapters, but gets more prominent around the end of the game.

Translation quality suffers from signs of being machine translated with varying levels of quality and attention. It's one of my biggest complaints about the game, since it's a case of a variety of small issues piling up one on top of another and compromising the overall experience.

The main, unmissable story script is the most refined part of the game, while anything optional or secondary is more prone to errors, feels stiff, and as a result, is less engaging to read.

A major problem with the secondary interactions is a feeling of severe disconnect between the main events of the story and isolated conversations. Consequently, it feels that whatever you do, whatever choices you make, ultimately, they have little to no impact at all, not even a hint of illusion that choices matter.

The story itself centers around emotionally-draining conversations, where you, as the leader, or rather, the main babysitter, is the one who tries to exorcise each friend's inner demons and clean out their closets from skeletons. Except, you get to keep sprinkling around reassurance against angst until the end of the game, so you're greeted with repeating, never-ending problems over and over again. The disconnect is especially noticeable when there's a feeling that the mood is improving, just to see the entire crew be a mess during the next main scene.

It's impossible to witness all interactions & conversations within one playthrough by design due to the limited amount of "actions" you can take before the story automatically proceeds further. You're supposed to play the story multiple times, which means you get to do at least partial babysitting over and over again. Depending on your goals, you can opt in to do bare minimum only, but even then the process is tiring.

The most appalling example of secondary script "quality" is when characters parrot the same statement word for word multiple times within the same conversation, this happens multiple times throughout the game.

Survive often times uses gendered pronouns to address Digimon partners and the thing falls flat on its face by outright contradicting itself multiple times throughout the story, a purely unintentional inconsistency that is the direct result of lack of proofreading.

There are typos, capitalization errors, punctuation errors, wrong characters being addressed, text overflowing off of the screen and even a case where developer text (notes from the scriptwriters that are supposed to be commented out and not available for the end user) is exposed.

Due to the sheer volume of this game's text, the grammatical issues described above are <1% of the total script, but they definitely stand out, even if you're not actively looking for them.

The most disappointing conclusion to this is that this game is unlikely to receive any official updates beyond this point, and a complete script rewrite would not be justifiable budget-wise. It would be up to the fans to revise the script or do a complete translation from the ground up.

Digimon Survive is a game for the fans of the series that enjoy lengthy novels and approachable combat. Despite my well-documented troubles with the script, I've had fun with the overall experience of befriending the whole roster of Digimon. It was exciting to uncover evolution trees, and building your all-time favorite party was simply satisfying.
The soundtrack is distinct, yet inoffensive, and would have benefitted from more variety. The best tracks are heard throughout the boss battles, with the appropriate dramatic tone to them.
I would recommend checking out the true ending, even if you're not aiming for 100% completion.

Review copy provided by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment.