This was my only real experience with Resident Evil. It... wasn't great.
At first, the game was great. That first mission may be ugly, but man, it was doing things no other game was doing at the time.
Unfortunately, my interest didn't last. The inventory system was horrible. Worse, the combat scheme. I get it, if it's a third person shooter it's less scary, so you had to limited, but it got frustrating for me. I watched a roommate play the whole way through, and the plot also went too off the rails for me.
I did play RE5 all the way, though. Similar issues, but it was co-op, so...