Resident Evil: 10 Reasons It's The Best Horror Franchise Of All Time
5. Constant Reinvention & Experimentation
While Resident Evil didn't invent the survival horror genre, it arguably perfected it to the point that it inspired other games to follow its lead. But Capcom wasn't about to rest on their laurels with the hit they had.
Constant reinvention has been at the core of Resident Evil since the very first game and its Director's Cut. The second game was famously trashed three-quarters of the way through and a whole new version put together. The fourth numbered game went through several mostly complete designs before Resident Evil 4 was released, with one of those designs becoming the basis for the first Devil May Cry.
While most fans felt they'd gotten stuck too far into the action-horror genre by the time of Resident Evil 6, nobody expected the return to a more pure horror experience with Resident Evil 7.
Across 24 years and 26 games the series has reinvented itself countless times, experimenting with genres from on-rail shooters, to multiplayer co-op, to light gun shooters, to competitive multiplayer battles, and coming full circle to a welcome modernization of their original style with the REmake games.