I'll quote myself from a post I made in early 2016 at another forum
"Recently I finished RE 4 and honestly... It was an ok game. some parts were alright, others were hilariously bad. All in all an ok game and I shook my head several times wondering why this game is so beloved.
The story of the "old" games was never something really groundbreaking and was never THE most important part of the games.
But as much as I can accept a little clichee and goofiness in the plot, RE 4s Story was compete nonsense.
Just to name a few points..
Ashley, the presidents daughter gets kidnapped and injected, basically to extend the influence of the bad guys in their Masterplan of world domination.
The little guy (forgot his name) with his fancy castle and the giant walking robot in the form of himself.
The guy who sells you weapons makes no sense at all.
Yeah, let's do an escape sequence, where Ashley drives and operates a giant bulldozer with claws in front to destroy walls and doors and stuff.
Jeez...
Also, as much as I (and probably most players) welcomed the better gunplay, aiming and controls all together, the amount of shooting was insane for an Resident Evil game. Yeah, I know... They can alter the formula when they want to and it's ok to have a little more action here and there, but that was ridiculous.
Sometimes it felt more like an ammunition collectathon than a horror survival action game.
The levels were alright, I guess. The beginning in the village was awesome and some of the bosses were memorable, but especially some of the later parts felt a little lazy and seemed only to be there to give me a little arena to fight two waves of infected people in it.
The riddles and stuff were all in all maybe the laziest of the series. And that's saying something coming from games where you mostly put things you found in holes in the walls.
There were one or two funny or challenging ones but most of the time you saw something, your mind started to think about a solution only to remember yourself "oh right, it's RE4, so it's always the most simple one."
The only part I really liked besides the beginning was when you come to the inevitable laboratory area and these things with the parasites on their bodies attack you. That was fun, sometimes intense and one of the very few parts of the game that created some kind of atmosphere.
Honestly... I didn't hate the game and I get why it was so well received at the time of its release. It was a new approach to a series many felt to have reached a point where it had to develop.
But the way Capcom choose was just not the right one in my opinion.
It has better controls, is obviously better on the technical side and has better boss fights than older titles.
But besides this, the game doesn't come close being the best in the series.
I would place it below RE 1-3 and Code Veronica."
btw.. RE6 was complete trash from beginning to end.