Resident Evil Village is a WILD ride of a game almost entirely from front to back. A vast improvement to the good, but dull, RE7. You want more enemies? You got it. You want good FPS survival horror combat that feels satisfying with a large arsenals of tools and weapons at your disposal? Boom, right here.

Honestly, it's a wonder to me why RE4 is apparently even getting a remake. Because the spirit and gameplay of Village feels a lot like just a successor to what they did in RE4. Village feels like if you took a lot of the premise of RE4, but actually made it scary and not so ridiculously comedic in tone.

Combat is A LOT more action oriented than 7, or even the classic trilogy. But it still retains a lot of what you would hope for in a RE game. Combat feels tense, but also not so tense that it feels like a last resort. It feels good shooting lycans and various other enemies in this game, and you'll still have to make good use of exploring and observing your environments in order to to scrounge up ammo and resources. You'll definitely be using a larger arsenal of weapons in this game, but you never feel like you have enough ammunition to just carelessly blast away. Despite the action elements being more apparent, the game is still quite frightful at times. No spoilers, but there is a section in this game that I think is perhaps the scariest moment in RE. It genuinely shook me to my core unlike any other game in the franchise.

Despite those survival elements still being retained, there are classic elements of RE that are not here this time around. Namely, that being the lack of the Item Box and any real inventory management. There was never a moment in this game when my storage was completely full. Key Items and Treasures don't take up inventory space, either. They definitely dumbed down the inventory system in this game and that kind of sucked because I think it's a major part of the survival horror. You never have to consider that you may need to hold on to a limited amount of weapons and ammo in order to have a good amount of storage for other stuff throughout your adventure. At the same time, though, RE4 also ditched a lot of the inventory management. The game incentivizes action and wide-spread exploration so it would have probably been hard to make item management a thing here without it being incredibly annoying.

In terms of story, Village is surprisingly decent. Especially for RE standards. It is A LOT more enjoyable this time around compared to RE7. It feels a lot less "stupid" than other RE games. There's a surprising amount of heart in the narrative. For as generic as the "angry father trying to save child" narrative is, I think it's handled fine here, and it has an enjoyable amount of revelations that will make you want to unravel the mystery of the village and what is going on. Ethan Winters returns, and he's quite improved compared to his first appearance. He has a lot more personality this time around, showing a wide array of emotions throughout the game. Todd Soley did a great job performing as the character.

The environments all feel like they had a lot of thought and care put into them. There's a lot of personality and detail that you can appreciate as you walk around the village. But beyond just the environments feeling great, you also have a pretty solid cast of antagonists who all feel different from one another and add their own respectable amount of personal terror into the DNA of Village.

For the most part, I don't have a crazy amount of things to complain about. However, I will say that there is a section near the end of the game that I rather disliked. It just felt out of place, generic, and goes on far too long. You can the feel the absence of creativity in this section compared to the others. It's actually kind of funny, because Ethan makes comments throughout this level about how much it drags on. Which was about the same time that I started thinking the same thing. That being said, I feel this game still has the RE issue of the intro being the best section, but for Village it doesn't feel like such a sharp decline in comparison to something like RE7. The first half is extremely great, and the second half is still great but just slightly lesser. It's probably one of the more consistently well-rounded RE games in terms of levels.

For RE fans, I feel the consensus is gonna be a mixed bag similar to the reception of RE4 because, like I said, it's practically a spiritual successor to it. If you hate RE4 and everything afterwards and much prefer the more survival-heavy aspects of the classic trilogy, then you're probably gonna dislike this game. But if you like survival horror with more of an emphasis on action and gunplay - like RE4, Dead Space, and The Evil Within - then I think you're going to REALLY like this game.

this is one of the most befuddling games I've honestly played in a while.

heisenberg sounded like snagglepuss.

the tall lady was barely in it (thank GOD)

that one fight with the propeller guy looked like a boss from Saw: The Video Game seriously what the hell was that

this ending absolutely implies the continuation of the Resident Evil Cycle and RE9 is 100% going to have double jumps and wall running

After Resident Evil 7 in 2017 i had been looking forward to the future of the series, the reamkes of 2 and 3 made me look forward to it slightly less but i was nontheless very excited going into Resident Evil 8.

Most of the meat of horror games, and a lot of first-person games in general, is atmosphere. Immersion is the elusive aspect of video games that might as well no exist sometimes. When you’re going on 10+ mainline games you kind of have to try and focus on certain improvements per game, keep things the same in other areas. Basically what i’m trying to say with my nonsensical jabberwock is that Resident Evil 8 is a game built on small improvements from the first.

In contrast to 7’s unique setting of rural US horror Resident Evil 8 focuses on the terror of a rural european village. It’s an equally well-crafted setting that just feels dead in all the right ways, and every differet way that it opens up and lets you explore the sub-areas of the boss fights just flows together so well.

Speaking of the boss fights, they absolutely carry the game, they just have so much personality that they stand out from the moment they have their Mega Man-esque introduction. It’s a shame that they’re so mixed with the actual boss fights. RE8 has a problem with how some of the bosses are so inredibly unique and unlike anything that’s ever been done in the series, and some of them are just big monsters without particularly memorable designs.

The set pieces are the same way, some of them are one of a kind, some of them are forgettable. The whole game is a great experience desite feeling as if the typical Resident Evil formula is becoming a bit stale. The move towards action is nice as it feels like the series has finally found that sweet spot between action and horror, but i feel like the next RE game is going to need to do something really different if it wants to finally come out with a perfect 10.

I think that this game has some pretty bad balancing issues even starting on Hardcore. It's the norm to have over 100+ rounds for your weapons which lowers any sense of "survival horror" for me since I knew I had plenty of ammo to deal with any encounter that could pop up. This extends into the worst section of the game, the "factory" area is just a revamped version of the ship in RE7 but worse in every aspect constant encounters with multiple enemies to build "tension" just fell flat on me and annoyed me rather than keeping the tension where it needed to be considering the plot development that happens there. Overall the Doll area of the game was the best zone in the whole game while being the shortest.

Also the FOV on console was a bit too low for me along with some bad FPS drops with RT on made me turn off the feature right away.

Resident Evil Village leaves you begging for more.

It's June 2020 and I'm watching the Sony internet totally-not E3 event with a couple of friends. One of the best parts of doing these watch-a-longs is playing into the marketing machine and guessing what a game could be before we see a title. A snowy village. Werewolves. A familiar voice. It was impossible to place what Resident Evil Village was going to be before we saw the Capcom logo. Even afterwards, I remember being left with this feeling of "what the fuck was that?" before I ever felt any sort of fangirl naive excitement. I'm not sure if Capcom likes to leave people confused, but I know that their directors love to leave you wanting more.

Resident Evil has had its ups and its downs. I was alive for most Resident Evil as a franchise, but I wasn't really a human being with thoughts and words until Resident Evil 4. I must've been 8 years old when I first got my eyes on it. My parents didn't really care too much about age ratings or warnings, and so I got to spend most days after school watching my stepdad blast through Ganados in Definitely-Not-Spain. It was really love at first sight. Leon was such a heart throb, and the Saturday Morning Cartoon dialogue and story combined with an ultraviolent romp through a gothic countryside just had me hooked. When I finally had the guts to play it, I almost couldn't handle how stressful it was. Every level had my anxious neurons firing at full speed. Sometimes my hands would actually SHAKE in fear. RE4 was hard to quit though, and over the years it's cemented itself as my favorite Resident Evil game.

What does this have to do with RE:Village? A lot, actually. But before I get to that, I need to briefly talk about RE7. See, I had already been a pretty big fan of Resident Evil moving forward from RE4. As far as I'm concerned, there are almost two different types of Resident Evil. There's the Spencer Mansion, lit dimly by candles as a storm rages outside, as lightning strikes and illuminates the dank dark hallway you're slowly trudging down. Was that a shadow? Or something far more sinister? It's Lisa Trevor, it's the itchy tasty note. It's also GIANT SHARKS, and CONSPIRACY THEORIES, and UNDERGROUND LABS, and HOMOEROTIC KNIFE FIGHTS, and OH MY GOD, WHY DOES CHRIS REDFIELD LOOK LIKE THAT?

Resident Evil is a lot of things, but it's also mostly just two things. And really those two things come together to form a great one thing. That one thing is camp. Resident Evil is so fucking campy. It's like the best of B-horror movies from the 60s seen through the lens of a nation that brought us Kamen Rider and Kaiju movies and ultraviolent torture porn. It's the grotesque and the childish combined to form a wonderfully campy rollercoaster ride.

RE7 is the first in a wave of new Resident Evil. After the tremendous disaster that was Resident Evil 6 said goodbye to the anime influenced action flick cover shooter, Resident Evil 7 said hello to the run-and-hide, first person Amnesia-clones. People were pretty worried by such a massive stylistic change, but I think Capcom was in sort of a great spot after RE6, because RE6 was like going on a reunion tour for that band you really liked when you were 14, like liked so much that you claim they "saved your life", and then they break up and you feel like you lost a loved one, but then years later they get back together, so you buy a ticket and you're so excited to see them play live, and they play all the songs that you loved, but they play em really bad and its mostly because everyone on stage is drunk and old, and you're older now, and it's just, it's just really weird. So you kind of sadly waddle to the merch table and you think about buying a t-shirt, but then you realize the 35 bucks that you'd be spending on just one t-shirt would probably be better spent on a bottle of liquor to just forget the whole mess, and then the car ride home is just sad and weird because you start to think "well maybe they were always that bad, and I was just young, and I liked bad things? or maybe I'm older and I-" and so on and so on, you get the picture. Basically, RE6 was great for Capcom and Resident Evil fans because it forced everyone to want something new. For the most part, RE7 exceeded expectations. It was bound to happen! It had a really weak second half, but most Resident Evil games do, right? So it was what it was. I don't really care for RE7, but I was really surprised at just how sort of well it played those familiar melodies. A giant, creepy house. Puzzles galore! Backtracking! Unlocking things! Looking for clues!

What RE7 really did well for me though, was in recognizing the tropes of genre and the medium of video games. With each member of the Baker family, RE7's experience was about forcing the player through the greatest hits of the horror genre. Take the first section, with Mia. Playing up the possession imagery was weird for Resident Evil! Resident Evil was never about ghosts. And yet it slotted into itself so seamlessly and with such confidence! Then you're treated to Papa Baker and his weird Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre callbacks? I mean, could anyone have called that? It was so -NOT- Resident Evil... and yet it was totally Resident Evil! Resident Evil has always been a love letter to the horror genre! The spooky mansion, the gothic interior design, the grand open foyer of the Spencer Mansion, all of it is evocative of classic genre tropes and tools and the confidence with which Resident Evil delivers this to the player has -always- been its strongest point.

So what happens when Resident Evil writes a love letter to itself? There are two ways to really go about it. You either get RE6, which misses the mark completely thanks to its hyperfixation on branding, or you get Resident Evil Village.

It's no secret to anyone familiar with the Resident Evil franchise that RE4 is the golden child of the series. REmake MIGHT be better, but 4 has always been the shining standard with which to judge the rest of the franchise on. It was a groundbreaking game that, if I wanted to get into it, could merit its own essay and I refuse to write about RE4 right now, because I want to talk about Resident Evil Village. But it feels almost impossible to talk about Resident Evil Village without talking about Resident Evil the FRANCHISE. Because Resident Evil Village is a love letter to everything this franchise has ever stood for, and in doing so, its callbacks and its homages to RE4 are done not out of insecurity on its own part, but of love and reverence for the series it belongs to. It's with that confidence, that sheer swagger that Resident Evil Village manages to deliver the best horror experience in AAA gaming since Amnesia the Dark Descent, an experience that improves tenfold on all of the groundwork that RE7 established as to what the franchise was going to be moving forward, and doubles down on a unique vision for the franchise and for Capcom moving forward.

I simply was not prepared to love Resident Evil Village as much as I did. In fact, for the first hour and the weeks leading up to the game's release, I was prepared to be disappointed. 7 was not my Resident Evil. I didn't hate it, but it's not what I went to the franchise for at all. It had everything, it did everything, and I respect it, but I've never felt like replaying it. It exceeded my expectations, but my expectations were already fairly low. Resident Evil Village absolutely blew me away. I was not expecting to be smiling ear-to-ear for the 15 hours I spent with this game, I was not expecting to finish my playthrough and feel legitimately sad that there wasn't more to come. I was not expecting to boot it up on hardcore immediately after and to discuss Village of Shadows (RE8's insanely difficult post-game unlock mode) techniques with my friends.

Resident Evil Village plays the notes you know so well as a Resident Evil fan but it plays them like a true artist does. RE6 is the Dream Theater of Resident Evil games. All flash, no substance. RE:Village is the Bjork of Resident Evil games. Each note hits different. From the LOUD and ON THE NOSE OH MY GOD I GET IT, IT'S AN RE4 REFERENCE to the 12 hour revelation that was the game's titular village and what it represented from a design philosophy, Resident Evil Village is a masterwork. Every zone offers something so fresh to the series and yet so familiar. It operates on a wealth of history to draw from, while never afraid to do something bigger, do something weird. It's pacing is immaculate, it knows just when the player is getting comfortable and it pulls the rug out from under you as soon as it is. You kids wanted RE4 with a fixed third act? BUDDY HERE IT IS.

RE4 was groundbreaking for video games. It fixed third person shooters. Gears of War would take RE4 and improve upon it to the point that every AAA cinematic experience that isn't a David Cage or Hideo Kojima production has played the exact same way. Will Village be as groundbreaking in that department as 4? No. It's familiar. It's fine. Where Village shines however, is everywhere else. The presentation, the level design, the gunplay, the enemy design, the pacing, the setting, the characters, the performances, the narrative. It's a new high that the series hasn't seen since 2004. Resident Evil Village is Resident Evil perfected.

Resident Evil Village is everything a new game in a long running franchise should be. It takes bits and pieces from every prior game, and puts them together in a way that reveres those older entries while also standing above them. It's mechanically rock solid, genuinely scary at times, has great pacing, intricate level design, cool puzzles, the stupidest story I've ever seen, and a ton of replay-ability. Capcom don't miss.

Edit: After trying to get SS on every Mercenaries level I'm gonna have to slightly lower my score, because that mode is kinda bad and needed a lot more attention. Everything I said about the base game still stands.

VIILLAGE is a great upgrade to the some-what lackluster 7, fixing a few of its primary issues such as its pacing not drastically going down as the game progresses. Adding a layer of Resident Evil 4 was a good idea as it blends well together, you'll notice a LOT of Resident Evil 4 stuff, the most obvious mechanics being the briefcase and the merchant (Which kinda makes me sad thinking all these assets are for a future RE4 Remake). The level design, for the most part, is the highlight of the game, some sections, such as the castle are great. The enemies? They're alright, not a lot of variation but they're way better than those mud-shitters from 7 and the antagonists are some-what memorable.

It overall left a good aftertaste. Definitely a move in the right direction, and I hope it keeps getting better from now. Who am i kidding, it's the usual Capcom Resident Evil rollercoaster.

I was expecting nothing or if something a very average game, so I was pleasantly surprised that it hooked me so much that I actually decided to finish it in one night and be left with an overall positive feeling of the village. Obviously both the case system and treasure system are heavily RE4 inspired but they also added a new mechanic, guard pushing, so if you guard an incoming attack you can retaliate with a strong shove which sends the enemy further away. Apart from that if you've already played 7 you should feel ok with the gameplay. The first few parts are really solid in both the exploration, featuring varied environments and somewhat simplistic but valuable puzzles, and the placement of the enemies which for the most part can be duked out but when you have to fight the game will make it pretty obvious by giving you options to help you out around you. I will say that having played the game on standard, I'd probably wouldn't touch the higher difficulties with a foot long stick because they'd make the enemies even spongier, and it's already slightly bad on standard. The ending section is kind of less interesting than everything else, and the actual ending is pretty depressing considering what went down. Overall though this is a solid entry in the series and a way better game than 7.

This game is a perfect sequel to Resident Evil 7 and perfectly expands on the gameplay, story and characters without ever feeling like it's trying to be a replacement. This is very much a different beast.

Gone are the dank swamps of Louisiana, with the rotting houses and slimy walls, in this game we see a perfectly realised Gothic aesthetic bought to life in a terrifying package that truly feels like a worthy successor to both RE7 and RE4.

Except...
And here's where we go into spoilers so
[SPOILERS HERE, DO NOT READ PAST THIS, IF YOU DO THEN YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO BLAME ME FOR HAVING READ SPOILERS]
So, the elephant in the room, the final hour or so of the game, it's an extremely linear slog which basically takes the game straight back to the place we were story-wise at the end of RE6, which is am awful place to be. It's saved slightly by a pretty good final boss and an interesting implication from the game's post-credits scene.
Luckily, the final hour is so linear and so detached from the rest of the game that it's easy to take it seperately to the rest of the experience. If I were to recommend anything, I'd say to just stop playing the game after the third time you see Chris (in Heisenberg's factory), it's all downhill from there.

The other major issue is difficulty, I played the game on standard and didn't die more than 8 times, and more than a couple of those were intentional to reload my save (before I noticed the 'reset' button in the pause menu). The combat feels close to being difficult enough, if only the enemies attacked frequently enough to actually be a legitimate threat, but the puzzles are unforgivable, survival horror is a genre built on the quality of its puzzles, and in this I don't think I was stopped even once on a puzzle, on anything really. The game is a breeze, which is a real shame.

But it still manages to be scary, all thanks to some really good setpieces, enemy AI, level design and, the highlight of the whole experience, the art design. And here we are now on the positives of the game.
Oh my god, the art design, I could gush for so long about every single enemy, every single location, everything is so dripping with atmosphere and personality and fear. And this is perfectly complimented by the sound design, which can be rocky at times with some really shoddy sound effects here and there, but most of the time the ambience and enemy sounds are just perfect.

I'd definitely recommend this game to anyone and everyone, and I'm tempted to bump it up by half a star once I get over my disappointment at some of the final story beats, but we'll see. Perhaps when I replay it, which I intend on doing, hardcore mode, on stream, I'll think better of it.

A vast improvement over Resident Evil 7. Tight gameplay, excellent level design, and unmatched atmosphere. It all comes together to create a unique survival horror experience. Resident Evil Village is handily one of the greatest entries in the series. Core gameplay is smooth, fast, but deadly. Boss fights are fun, challenging and full of classic RE craziness. Weapon variety is wonderful, crafting, hunting, etc all come together to craft a masterclass in survival mechanics. Truly floored by how wonderful this game is.

a massive improvement over 7 (which was already a great game) and pretty close to a masterpiece. good mix of action and horror. actually, the part i expected to be the least scary (the obligatory balls-out action focused final area that's in every RE game) was the scariest to me.

i like the overall brand of horror, it's unique and something i'm glad to see from the resident evil series. it's less focused on pure biological horror, like previous RE entries, and is more moody and weird. not the same type of tension of RE7, but it definitely didn't abandon horror or anything. there's even a section of the game that goes all out psychological horror, which admittedly wasn't my favorite level but it was unique and i applaud the RE team for trying something different.

can't wait to dig into some mercenaries and NG+ runs. i need those infinite ammo weapons

I'm a bigger fan of "Horror" Resident Evil games than "Punching boulders and crashing through windows" Resident Evil games, so Village was a wild ride, because it absolutely says fuck it and just does both. The first two areas are straight out of Resident Evil 1 and 7, and last two are straight out of Resident Evil 4 and 6. The fact that it still manages to deliver a cohesive experience is nothing short of a miracle. I didn't vibe with it as much as I did with 7 and 2 Remake, but I still had a great time. The final hour or so of the game is awful though, but it's no surprise considering that it's...well, Resident Evil. Wouldn't want to have it any other way.

Also, everything that came out of Ethan's mouth was unintentionally hilarious. I'm not sure if it's the writing or the performance (maybe it's both) but I absolutely could not take him seriously.

Visual design is great.
Shooting feeling and sound is awful.
Navigation is pretty good.
Treasure pixel hunting is disgusting.

Main point - it is fun. And replayable.

Overall its pretty decent, although clunky at times. And finally the story of Ethan Genericblokers is over. Waiting for story conclusion in next installment.

Also, I want my Revelations 3 with Rebecca back.

I could see my rating going up or down given more time to reflect on this, but my gut reaction is that I had a really great time with this somewhat messy game. It's absolutely trying to be a jack of all trades, and as a result feels noncommittal but at the same time also provides a lot of variety. The castle is taking elements from the sort of "pursuer" gameplay that something like RE2 Remake does, the Beneviento house is cribbing from the modern crop of defenseless "run and hide" horror games, etc.

Thankfully I really enjoyed each one of these individual pieces, even if they don't quite come together cohesively. The factory is definitely the weakest area and feels long in the tooth, but the other segments are appropriately paced.

At the end of the day this still has the core tenants of RE that make the games so enjoyable, the main elements of scavenging for materials, light puzzle solving, and combat are still very well designed. (The puzzles less so, I'd say that they help break up the pacing nicely but the actual puzzles themselves are pretty weak). I know the combat here has detractors, and I think the main problem is that the starting guns before upgrades are tuned far too weak/have no stopping power. Once you get some upgrades in the problem is alleviated somewhat and combat encounters become a lot more fun, though it's certainly not quite RE4 in that department.

Another way this is not RE4 is in it's inventory design. This was one thing I genuinely thought was disappointing. I didn't fill up my inventory once in my entire playthrough. They copied this system without understanding why it was engaging in the first place, the fact that all of your pipe bombs/mines stack means you never have to worry about it. It feels sloppy and I think is a telling example of how this game's mechanics don't congeal as well as, again, something like RE2R.

Final note: I thought this game's story was... really good? It took me by surprise how well thought out everything was. It is relatively simple, but his is the first RE game that really feels like a direct sequel to it's predecessor, and they capitalize on that really well. Looking forward to RE9 as this definitely feels like the middle chapter in a trilogy.

Este juego. ESTE JUEGO
Es increible como este juego se ha coronado como el mejor juego de Resident Evil de toda la saga por diversas razones.
Primero he de decir que todo lo que hay en este juego es memorable, desde los 4 señores, sus diferentes hogares , la historia y su final completamente inesperado me ha tenido entretenido las 7 horas y media que me he gastado en mi primera vuelta.

Este juego es una oda a todo lo bueno que funcionaba en los RE anteriores y gracias a ello, rebosa carisma por cada estancia en la que estás. Bebe de los grandes exitos de toda la saga, incluido los remakes y se nota en cada parte del juego. Cogen todas las cosas que tenían tremendo encanto en el RE4 y las usan de nuevo con un toque distinto que funciona a la perfección. Incluso hay una parte de acción que te deja respirar y sentirte mas fuerte que tus rivales durante un rato y es tremendamente agradable.

Por alguna razón lo han hecho, han conseguido arreglar todos los fallos del RE7 y meterle todo el sabor de los juegos anteriores creando una nueva experiencia que me va a costar olvidar