The best way to play RE7 is to go in without knowing anything about the game except that its a first-person horror game. Not even that its a part of the RE franchise because there is hardly anything in this game which would remind you of the previous entries in the long-running series. The premise is set up in the first 5 mins of the campaign where you learn that you are on the search for your missing wife Mia who has alerted you of her distress via a video message. And you, Ethan, cannot take this casually and must go the location where the message came from, thereby bringing you to the front doors of the ominous house that you will be seeing on the marketing material of this video game. And that's it. There are no backstories or characters you have to know. There aren't returning characters or villains from the previous games (for the most part). This is a stand-alone offshoot from the main series with a new story and new characters, and that is where its strengths lie.
This game completely takes away from the action elements of previous tiles of the RE franchise and makes the gunplay intense, frantic, and fun. That is because the entire story unfolds in front of you as it does for Ethan who is a common man looking for his wife. The creepiness of the setting freaks him out as it does to you and the horrors slowly unveil themselves slowly the deeper you get into the house and its many mysteries. Common RE mechanics like inventory management does return in this game as you will always have to keep an eye out for what you are carrying because you only have a certain number of empty slots to fill but otherwise the gameplay is new and refreshing if that is an adjective that can be used for a game oozing with grossness and disgusting details in every corner.
The presentation being top-notch, even if the interface isn't, the gory and gruesome details of the story are in the forefront as the Baker family will do everything to get in your way literally and figuratively from reaching Mia whose presence will seem more and more mysterious as you progress further into the 8-or-so hour-long story campaign. But the best part of the story here is, that it has a wonderful payoff. RE has a reputation for having stories which aren't what they seem in the beginning and it lives up to that impression here as well. The final act of the campaign is brilliantly different and the exposition comes in so late that you would have probably made peace with the unknown by then. A horror story having earned its bread by scares through blood, grime, gore and frights suddenly become a story having a moral ground, with bigger powers at play with an emotional aspect to it as you uncover secrets about people you thought you knew.
While the first act sets up the atmosphere brilliantly by slowly peeling away from the shroud of darkness around the house by revealing a much deadlier adversity, the second act is all about finding your footing around the house and gathering resources to ensure your survival before finding a way out. The third act is a sudden escape from the usual horror and into a much more RE type setting story-wise as the game welcomes itself onto the main cannon by introducing ideas more familiar to us. All this is possible because of the excellent pacing of the game which never slacks and constant introduction to new areas with different types of enemies and environmental settings which do a good job keeping the fright factor always on a high. Eventually, you'll get the hang of things and find its a familiar RE game just in first-person, and step by step you have to overcome bosses as you reach the end goal. It is a reskinning of an old franchise done brilliantly and deserves the rating by bringing back survival horror into a franchise which was beginning to lose its footing.
There arent really negatives to be taken from the experience as a whole, but there are minor puzzles which feel like they were put in there half-heartedly. The basic types of enemies aren't really scary visually and they don't react in a way to frighten you either, by simply staggering forward and eating bullets. This takes a great deal of the fright away from these firefights as all encounters with the Bakers are frenetic, horrifying and fun in comparison. And lastly what the game does the best is stay its welcome. The length is perfect, even including the fun mini levels where you get to play as other characters Ethan is viewing on a VCR, so the ending comes at a point where you are ready for the game to end. The dlcs are not necessary even though they do further the story and should be played by anyone who finds the new setting appreciably novel and refreshing in a series this old.
All in all, this is a very welcome addition to the series and creates its own space by introducing the first-person format and reintroducing the horror elements. The Evil in Resident Evil 7 is well earned by bullets, scares, gore and grime.