The police station & church are, well, ALMOST identical in layout
I think I read this someplace.
Might have been an Edge Time Extend. Same layout, but it's flipped. You first encounter the Licker in the "same" corridor as you encounter the dogs in RE1, but you're on the opposite side of the building, in a sequence which is very similar.
Edge wrote:It’s no coincidence that one of RE2’s first great moments, the entrance of the licker, happens in a long windowed corridor that turns at 90 degrees, a mirror image of the mansion’s corridor where dogs burst through glass to attack you. The designers trust you to notice these quiet nods, even while building a new sense of foreboding around them: before meeting the licker you’ve seen something quickly pass across the window of the previous room, and on entering the corridor the glass is already broken through, a headless corpse lying on the floor.
RE4 is the only RE I've ever actually finished, which rather makes it my favorite by default, but it's hard not to appreciate the craftsmanship in the older games, even if I've never seen ALL of them.