The original Resident Evil 4 was, I believe, the first to change up the format from the fixed camera, among other things it shook up. RE4 and RE4R are very similar games, while the remakes of RE2 and RE3 are pretty different from their originals.

I don’t think it was very challenging, but the game played without trying to collect everything is around 30 hours, which doesn’t seem short to me.

I’ve only played FF7 for the first time recently. I’m in the process of playing FF8 right now and honestly, I care about the story and characters more in the latter. I don’t know if it’s an age thing, or having been spoiled for so long on FF7 plot beats but not FF8, or what. 8 seems to be striking more chords for me.