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⠀⠀⠀ 96% - Masterpiece
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Short review:

Pro:
- Breathtakingly beautiful graphics.
- Great implementation of new sidequests.
- Quicktime events are gone.
- Strong emphasis on new knife gameplay.
- Shooting Range.
- Exceptional music delivery.
- Ambient sound.
- Detailed and rich animations.
- Convincing voice acting, believable conversations.
- The user interface is well thought out and has a modern, crisp
look to it.
- More screentime for important characters.
- Vastly improved storytelling/narrative.
- One-liners and goofy humor.

Cons:
- Dog's got bad AI.
- Missing a boss.
- Awesome Remake but nevertheless, still just a Remake.

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Full review:

Pro:
- Breathtakingly beautiful graphics. I stopped many many times
to enjoy the view and take tons of screenshots during my first
playthrough.

- Great implementation of new sidequests. They are refreshing,
quickly done and usually do not require any backtracking at all.

- Quicktime events are gone. I'm happy about this hange,
because I usually am against OTE's and they don't really
contribute to better gameplay. The only QTE I was missing is
when Leon falls into the water during a certain fight in the
original and tries to swim back tothe boat to stay alive.

- Strong emphasis on knife gameplay. This is the biggest
changeto the original RE4 (2005), Capcom went high risk
and high reward and guess what, they nailed it. Parry,
perfect-parry, break out of grab, stealth kills, durability on main
knives, consumable little knives, two different knife attacks.
I love how the entire game is designed around this mechanic
and it carries an even bigger impact on higher difficulties if
you're not using special weapons, that is.

- Shooting Range. The shooting range is still in the game and
as fun as it was in the original game. This is so freaking cool,
it is insane, an absolute loveletter for RE4 fans (thx Capcom
<3). We are facing pirates and sailors instead of Ashley and
villagers this time around. I have to admit that during my
playthrough of the game I had to change to mouse and
keyboard to get S ranks, all skulls and 3 additional stars in all
of them. It would have been impossible to get those stats with
my PS5 dualsense controller. It was very well balanced for
mouse and keyboard and very enjoyable. I don't know how I'd
think about this when I was stuck on a console with a controller
as my only input device and no options to use mouse and
keyboard. It might have been a rather miserable experience
since keep in mind, you are not just getting bottle cups and
pesetas as rewards, you're getting game altering attachments
for the main game. Attachments such as better healing, higher
selling values, cheaper tuning and even +8% movement speed
with the Striker attachments. So yeah, in my book the shooting
range is a huge plus but I can understand people disliking it for
being brutally difficult with controllers.

- Exceptional music delivery, always fits and strengthens the
atmosphere the game is trying to deliver to the player.

- Ambient sound. Sound effects are easily distinguishable. I got
15 out of 16 Clockwork Castellians during my first playthrough
by just listening to the ambient noises. Amazing gun sounds,
as someone who has heard many actual guns get fired in real
life, oh boy, they've out-done themselves with this one.
Directional audio is also amazing, you can hear snakes rattle
or fish swim exactly where they are located during that time.

- Detailed and rich animations. Every encounter has great
fluidity and is very responsive, which adds up to every second
of fights being fun and not feeling repetitive or boring at all.
The way enemies lose their arms, legs head and even get cut
in half looks great.

- Convincing voice acting, believable conversations.

- The user interface is well thought out and has a modern, crisp
look to it. The UI gives you all the information you need on a
surface level but if you need more, you can deep dive to
check for exact weapon stats and descriptions, for example.
It is not overloaded at all. The attention and love they've shown
to detail is fascinating. Or another minor thing, when you buy a
weapon but have to re-arrange your inventory to make space
for it, you just simply press the auto-sort button and the
weapon moves from the side window directly into your
inventory. Love it.

- More screentime for important characters.

- Vastly improved storytelling/narrative.
(won't spoil anything here ofc)

- One-liners and goofy humor. I'm glad they've kept this in the
game. It is not over the top and doesn't appear neither too
frequently nor too infrequently. Perfectly balanced if you ask me.

Con:
- Dog's got bad AI, makes it not as impactful and
fulfilling/challenging as it could have been. For example,
villagers are faster, smarter, charge quickly towards you in
Hardcore/Professional mode. Dogs are the same on all
difficulties, just with a tiny bit more HP it seems.

- Missing a boss. I actually enjoyed this boss fight in the original
game a lot and was wondering in what shape or form they
could have changed this one to make it more enjoyable. It is a
bummer, BUT it doesn't take too much from the overall
presentation of the game.

- Awesome Remake but nevertheless, still just a Remake.

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Final thoughts:

RE4 (2005) came out 18 freaking years ago and was state
of the art back then. The current version is state of the art in
2023 and definitely not a cashgrab by Capcom. It totally
deserves to ask for full price or for more if you purchase a
deluxe edition to further support these Remakes. If you'd give
me RE4 (2005) and the Remake today, somehow erase all my
memory related to RE4 and tell me to play both for the first
time and then judge which one is better, it would obviously be
the Remake. It is not a perfect Remake, but it is definitely the
better experience nowadays, by a lot. Nevertheless, I judge
the games I have played for the time they are being released
and never changing that score. RE4 (2005) remains to be,
my 4th best gaming experience I have had in my entire life,
with a score of 99%. The Remake is a masterpiece through
and through with 96% but it has not impacted me as much
as the original game.

Thank you Capcom soooo much for delivering another
remake worthy of being called a masterpiece after RE1
Remake for the Gamecube and RE2 Remake in 2019.

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This game is simply amazing and one of the best games I've played.

Every RPG fan should give it a try, it is free to play without any p2w elements.