So despite what I said before, out of boredom, I did the second run with Claire, and finished the game again in about 4 hours.
Firstly, I was kind of impressed with how they remixed the police station despite not having much genuinely new content. The non-nonchalant early Mr. X drop was especially cool, and overall I felt much more scrambly and pressured, rushing through ****, leaning on defense items, giving up on routes (who needs the machine gun, anyway), and just trying to stay viable through an ad hoc "optimized run". I think I enjoyed this sequence the most of any part of the two runs.
But then the second half of the game happens. The Sherry bit is definitely more conceptually interesting than the dumb Ada Prime sequence from Leon's run, but it's very short, and plunks you back into the shitty sewer, which plays out mostly the same. As does the lab. Both felt like especial slogs the second time around. The train elevator Birkin fight was better than the Mr. X fight for Leon, but the "true ending" train bit was super brief and lame, which maybe it was in the first place, but I found it very anti-climactic this time around.
If I were in charge, I would have either had completely different paths to the lab for Leon and Claire, or axed the sewer altogether and made the lab a more in-depth second location (more like the Arctic in Code Veronica) that could've had a much better remixed B run.
-It's super dumb that they recycle the Mr. X lifts up the helicopter thing in the second run. Like, how much budget would it have taken to do a different bit?
-Maybe the spark shot is good in some context, but it sucks to use and takes some of the fun out of the late stage Claire run.
-I was happy not to do the jail block stuff again, but the Claire run is really missing some similarly tense equivalent.
-Overall I'd put this above the Revelations games, 0, 5, 6, and 7, but don't think it quite makes it over the line in the way it initially seems to promise. A 3make doesn't seem like a particularly interesting prospect.