i just entered the bank (at around 11 hours btw) and i'm having a lot of fun. The powers feel really good and i do actually enjoy the regenerating mana bar a lot, because in Dishonored i always played very thoughtful of my resources, mainly the mana. in this game i feel invited to just use the powers as often as i see fit and that is a lot of fun. not having OP powers like bend time or domino also makes it a tough decision on how to get through a given situation. like when i had to cross the bank plaza without being noticed. now thankfully i did get the black bonecharm that said wolfhounds can't smell me, because that takes away semblence's only weakness but it was still interesting to find out where to snatch a guard and use semblence on him and close enough to the plaza so my mana wouldn't run out before reaching the bank. i even managed to get the barkeeper out of the eyeless bar without anyone noticing or killing anyone (it's all about the bottles!) which took a lot of time to experiment but worked fine in the end.
Now one thing i don't get is how Rosari.. i mean Billie gets her powers. Do they come from the Outsider after all (because he appears, does something to you and then you have them)? Because the game and media (like this review) tell you they aren't actually void powers. and why the look with the red eye and robot-arm on the game cover when it is never explained? i know Billie still experiences visions from the alternate reality where she lost her arm and eye (much like a lot of enemies in Bioshock Infinite do in the Finkton area), but i don't get that whole process about her aquiring her powers and it is never explained.
Also bonecharms are random as usual, but does anyone know if the bonecharm, that is supposed to be the price for beating the "black-magic brute" is always the same? because i got agility which is the level 1 upgrade from the main game and needless to say is crazily powerful compared to the other bonecharms, meaning again for me that i can perform drop assassinations from ground level or a low wall (very handy with leaning or sitting enemies, which are sometimes very finnicky to assassinate from behind).
@altairdarius: well i sort of agree with you. sequels should definitely show progress and try new things, even if they turn out bad (e.g. dark souls 2, may not be well received by a lot of fans, but was an incredibly important entry for the series, because it tried so many new things while leaving the core gameplay the same). changing things like camera perspective and even going from 3rd to 1st person view is developing naturally and as i said i don't mind re7 being a FPS. i think i'm missing the connection to the other RE-games, the 1st 3 were about raccoon city and established favourite characters and then re5 and 6 were story-wise a logical development from the 1st game. 1st a virus outbreak in a small town, later over the whole world, more villanous people try to take advantage of virusses, and the main characters develop understandingly as well, forming alliances like the BSAA for example, which makes sense within that world. as much as anyone can call this a bullshit story, at least it makes sense as a narrative and drive for the characters you play. i think this is the reason, why i haven't played re7 yet, i just don't care about the story/characters enough, because from what i know it's very loosely connected to the other parts of the series. even a game like ORC, which many thought was a bad game, i found intriguing, because it offered to see the events of raccoon city from a different perspective.
@mighty-lu-bu: RE5 and 6 Chris looked the same. You can't say they looked different, just that the 6 one was a bit more graphically enhanced. He was clearly build after the RE5-Chris. And Claire did look a bit different in Revelations 2, didn't she? She is older there of course.
@depman1972: yeah, given the succes of this they could've started a new IP if they'd given it another name. depends on how much the name resident evil had to do with its success though. i'm a diehard RE-fan, i even loved the hated ORC and played pretty much all RE games, but i still haven't gotten myself to buy/play RE7. And it's not that i think it looks bad or that the gameplay doesn't interest me, i simply didn't feel the need to play it yet. I guess i subconsciously don't see it as a Resident Evil game. And i don't mean to bash it in any way, i even play other first-person games, like Bioshock or Dishonored, so that's not automatically a turn-off for me. i don't know, gold edition maybe?
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