"Resident Evil: Village" Review

Available for: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia (*tries not to laugh*), Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

This seems to be a running theme for me with several review subjects over the course of the past couple years, but despite it being basically a household name, I've never really dived into Resident Evil. While I've experienced my fair share of horror games, these landmark titles have always seemed too clunky, and above all else, too silly for my tastes. The extent of my Resident Evil experience amounts to maybe 3/4 of Resident Evil 5. Veterans of the saga will likely be nodding their heads and saying "yeah, makes sense why he hasn't had much interest, then," but I can't really speak to what was wrong about that game from a fan's perspective. For me, I ended up in a chase sequence with something like a giant monster bat and had to do mirror puzzles and was just put off by those kinds of things. The reason I bring this up is because while the latest title, Resident Evil 8 or Resident Evil Village (get it? The "Vill" in village kinda spells out the roman numerals for 8?) hasn't been a controversial title by any stretch of the imagination, there's a clear divide between people who thought it was really good and people who thought it was good, but kind of a small letdown. Folks who are either longtime fans or who were fans of the fresh direction they took with Resident Evil 7 have seemed to be on the latter side of the spectrum, while as far as I can tell, people without much investment in this series historically have seemed to be on the former. So I bring up my history with this series as a way of possibly giving you a more informed sense of where my opinions are coming from.

So what did I, someone who has only played part of a single game in this long-running franchise, think?

Well I'll be straight with you. While there are issues that need to be discussed, I really, really liked Resident Evil: Village. So much so that I looked forward to playing more of it every single night of my original playthrough. I went through a second playthrough directly afterwards, and I can still see myself going back a third or fourth time. So you know my overall opinion and you know how much experience I have with the franchise as a whole, so sit back, relax, and let me break down some of the more nitty-gritty details.

One question you might have fresh from reading my history with Resident Evil, is "why now?" Why, after ignoring game after game after game after game after game, would I suddenly decide to give the new one a shot? Well if you know anything about this title then you probably have already made a snap judgment about my reasoning, so let me just hop right in front of that: NO, it's not because of the big 8 foot-tall vampire lady who manhandles the main character...I'm not saying that didn't contribute, but it's not why! No, the real thing that got me interested was the setting. I just have this absolute fascination with the whole Transylvanian aesthetic, and that alone made me really want to give Village a shot. Earlier I accused Resident Evil of being too silly for my tastes, but to give some context, during High School, one of my favorite movies was Van Helsing. Van Helsing, if you haven't seen it, is pure, unadulterated schlock. But that whole Transylvanian aesthetic was exciting enough to me to elevate the schlock to something enjoyable. So I figured that even if Village was silly enough to have boss fights with giant mutated bats (or T-Rexes, as I'm made to understand happened in the 6th entry), it might be enjoyable enough because of the setting alone. But for now, this section is supposed to be about the story and I've prattled on for long enough!

Resident Evil Village takes place x amount of years after the events of Resident Evil 7, and continues the story of that game's protagonist: Ethan Winters. After escaping or whatever from the haunted house in Louisiana, Ethan, his wife Mia, and their infant daughter Rose relocate to a village in a nondescript European country (but as we come to learn, one of the rulers of this area is a woman with a last name ending in "escu," so it's 100% Romania). One night, disaster strikes, and Ethan finds that Rose has been kidnapped by the lords of the village. From there, Ethan embarks on a quest to take down each of the lords, rescue his daughter, and unravel the mystery that has been hanging over the village since the start of the plot. It's the kind of story where not a lot actually happens, but the point is the beat-for-beat action inbetween plot moments. So for instance, for like 90% of the game your objective will be "look for Rose," but what actually drives things forward will be what happens in each lord's domain as you do that. So the story and plot points get the job done, what about the characters?

Much has been said about our hero, Ethan (very little of it positive), and I'd have to agree with most people. I don't hate him, per-se, but he's barely above a JRPG protagonist in terms of likability and "deserves to be the protagonist" energy. Like, when MoistCritical (or however he spells that freaking handle) said that Ethan has recurring character Chris Redfield saved in his phone as "Alpha," I thought he was just doing his ultra-machismo schtick and saying "Ethan is a beta male." But as it turns out, he wasn't even joking and Ethan actually has Chris saved under that name. While Capcom almost certainly didn't intend for that to have the implication it seems to have, I can't help but see it in Ethan's character. The entire game he seems totally clueless and whiny, and all of his one-liners just come off as a wimpy guy trying to sound cool. I mean, with the amount of times this guy gets impaled or has something chopped off of him, one would think he'd be entitled to a bit of whining, but things like getting a full piece of his hand bitten off don't seem to even phase him! A lot of critics have really seemed to despise poor Ethan, but for my money his biggest offense is just being a wet blanket of a protagonist, which is ultimately fine when all is said and done. After all, while Ethan is the eyes through which we view the world, the characters that are meant to drive this narrative are the villains. So how do they fare?

Well everyone has made it a point to bring this up, so I guess I should too: Despite the intense marketing focus on the aforementioned big vampire lady, Lady Dimitrescu, she is not the main villain and her role in the story is rather small. And that's a shame, because she is by far the best villain in this game. Standing at around 8-9 feet tall, sporting a killer old timey aristocratic fashion sense, and boasting a delightfully elegant personality meant to distract you from her expansive, varied, and well-stocked torture dungeon, Lady Dimitrescu is one hell of a villain to kick this game off with, and as a result, first impressions of Village are basically perfect as far as I'm concerned. But as I'm sure you can infer from that praise, this means that there's nowhere to go but down after the Lady D segment is finished. Thankfully, with the exception of the final lord's domain, Capcom does an excellent job of making each step down in overall quality special and exciting, to the point that I didn't even notice that each section was less good than the last until I started my second playthrough and was reminded how great the first one was. We'll return to this in a bit, but in order to set the stage for further explanation, I need to briefly touch on another aspect of Village that the uninitiated might be curious about.

Different people have very different tolerances for horror. Some people love the thrill of being startled by jumpscares but can't stand watching people being hurt. Some people love it all. Some people just want a sense of dread or psychological trickery. Some people want to experience a horror game's story but want it to be as tame in the horror aspects as possible. So where does Village fall? Well, first and foremost, I wouldn't call Village a horror game. I'd call it an action game with horror sections or horror aspects, and each domain in this game approaches that a little differently. For instance, the Lady Dimitrescu segment maintains the action gameplay that is present for about 80% of the runtime, but its approach to horror is having Lady D and her three daughters stalk you, and in the few story beats that see Ethan captured by this gaggle of giggling vampires, unpleasantness follows. Without going into too many specifics, a particular sequence comes to mind in which the daughters hang Ethan from the ceiling by way of hooks shoved through his palms, and the way in which Ethan..."gets himself down" made me inhale sharply, quickly say "OHJESUSNO", and cover my eyes like the wimpy baby I am. So the way this first section approaches horror is to set up an intimidating series of stalkers with the implication of "they're going to hurt me if they catch me." I bring all this up partly as of a way of setting expectations for people with varying horror tolerances, but also as a way of explaining how the game manages to stay engaging despite each overall section being less good than the last. To give an example of both this and another approach the game takes to horror, the section immediately following Lady D's takes place in a location that fans have taken to calling "the doll house." By this point in the game, you're accustomed to the gameplay loop, and so you think you know what you're in for. But upon entering the bowels of the doll house, you suddenly lose all your weapons, and with them, your sense of security and confidence. What follows is a short segment that I'd have to say is the most effective horror segment I've experienced since the water monster in Amnesia. Much like in that game, the monster that eventually stalks you isn't immediately presented. Instead, the game spends 90% of this section just reveling in tension and making you think you know what's in store. The tension on display here is nothing short of phenomenal. A key part of Ethan's escape involves having to take a mannequin of his wife apart piece by piece, getting uncomfortably close to each part he takes off. The entire time I was just shuddering and thinking "at any moment she's going to leap up and scream." But Capcom is patient in showing its hand, and I imagine the devs take sheer sadistic pleasure in how the eventual monster reveal subverts expectations. I'm not going to spoil it, but I'll say this: whatever you think the monster in a segment called "the doll house" might be, it's about a thousand times more disturbingly horrifying. So this segment approaches horror in a more straightforward, clever way than Lady D's segment. Two very different types of experience, and despite the fact that the doll house isn't as intricately designed and doesn't have much in the way of a villain, its specific approach to horror disguises that fact. 

Now that I've explained more or less how the game maintains a fresh feel in each segment despite each segment being slightly less good than the last, it's time to talk about the one caveat: the final lord's domain. In this segment the game becomes the kind of experience I've always chalked Resident Evil up to: ridiculous. This segment's approach to horror is the industrial body horror thing, and if the thought of mecha zombies with drills for hands disturbs you it might be effective, but for me the experience was more "...are you serious? Mecha zombies with drills for hands? Really?" And it doesn't get much better from there. There are even heavier mecha zombies, chase sequences with a giant zombie with a propeller head made of chainsaws, and it all ends with a chainsaw+heavy cannon+machine gun vehicle boss fight in the sky. No, I'm not joking. The game actually gets schlockier after this, but in that segment all pretense of horror gets thrown out the window and it becomes the fun kind of schlock. The final lord's domain, however, still maintains that pretense, and it seems to take itself too seriously for it to be fun. 

I've talked about plenty of aspects of this game, but now it's time to touch on gameplay itself. Village continues the Resident Evil 7 foundation of first person gunplay alongside the traditional Resident Evil inventory management system. Ammo is scarce and expensive (at least until New Game +), so the key to combat is aiming down the sights of whatever gun you're using so that you can get headshots on enemies for maximum damage and ammo efficiency. If an enemy gets too close they can take a bite out of you, but a well-timed block can reduce the damage you take and push them back so you once again have some distance to line up shots. You go through this song and dance with a couple different enemy types: Lycans, lesser vampires, gargoyles, zombies,....mecha zombies with drills for arms, etc. Different enemy types end up providing ever-so-slight variations on the formula I've laid out whether by way of their behavior or the environments they're found in. For instance, when swarmed by Lycans, it's sometimes better to aim for the chest because this particular enemy tends to bob and weave more frequently, meaning you have a higher chance to miss headshots and waste ammo. Or on the other hand, lesser vampires tend to appear in more claustrophobic spaces out of nowhere, so while they don't move as much, your reflexes need to be just a tad bit better. No change in enemy type has a profound impact on the gameplay loop, but it's just enough to keep combat from being exactly the same thing over and over again. In addition to your guns, you also have access to heavier equipment such as landmines (which one reviewer noted are finally useful in a game for once) and pipe bombs, so how you want to go into a given encounter is mostly up to you. The same goes for the types of guns you bring. As I mentioned, Village uses the traditional Resident Evil inventory management system. Your inventory is made up of a grid of x amount of squares, and different pieces of equipment take up different amounts of squares. For instance, a lockpick might take up a 1 square total while a shotgun might take up 3 vertical squares and 6 horizontal squares. You can rotate equipment around to your heart's content to make the spacing work, but you only have x amount of squares until you upgrade, and sometimes you just can't fit certain combinations of equipment no matter how clever you get with the placement and direction. There are many, many guns to be used in Village, so it's a constant game of re-evaluating what you have and selling off what you don't need to this game's traveling merchant, The Duke.

The Duke plays a pivotal role in player progression beyond just being the guy to buy ammo from in a pinch. He'll sell you weapon components, permanent upgrades to weapons, crafting recipes, buy treasures off of you, and if you shove some food into his morbidly obese mouth he'll upgrade your stats! That's a really tortured way of getting the discussion about the village itself started. As a location, the village is rather small, but it's the kind of open world hub you see in games like 2018's God of War, where more and more layers of the location start to get peeled away as the story progresses. At the start, you can only access a couple areas, but go to a story mission and you'll get, say, a well crank that lets you go to the wells you've passed and finally obtain whatever is at the bottom. After each mission ends, you can get your hands on all sorts of valuable treasures to sell to the Duke, and more money means you're going to be better equipped for whatever mission is next, so there's always incentive to go back through the village to explore and pick up whatever you couldn't get to before. Beyond the treasures, after every mission the village becomes inhabited with various kinds of animals that can be hunted for their meat. By bringing this meat back to the Duke, you can contribute to various recipes that, when completed, give a permanent upgrade to your health, movement speed, etc. Now don't get me wrong: Far Cry 3 this is not, as the animals are just kind of sitting there wherever they're pictured on the map, but it's still a bit of extra incentive to go exploring inbetween story missions. And for those of you who are like me and don't like the thought of just going up to a pig or goat that was being raised by people and killing it, here's my take: Everyone in the village is gone, so a pig that depends on people to get its food is going to starve to death and is probably pretty close to that level of hunger already. Look, all of this is to say that the village is both enjoyable to explore and beneficial to explore if you aren't fascinated by the Transylvanian aesthetic like I am. 

That brings us to the technical side of things, and let me just say that first impressions are about as good as first impressions can be. The graphics in Village are stunning. The character models are among the most realistic I've seen and the lighting everywhere you go serves its purpose perfectly. However, that doesn't mean Village is spotless from a technical standpoint. Texture pop-in is frequent and tends to cover a lot of screen space. It tends to exclusively be background details such as overarching brush, so I never noticed that textures were missing until they suddenly popped in, but it happened with shocking frequency. In addition, while the framerate is usually smooth, when you get hit by certain attacks from boss enemies the game basically becomes a slideshow for a few seconds. These are mind-boggling technical problems to have in a game so otherwise polished, and unfortunately they appear often enough to be detrimental. But aside from these issues there's not much to complain about.

Before I conclude this review there are two other things I need to touch on. The first thing is the post-game "Mercenaries" mode. When you complete Village for the first time, you unlock a whole bunch of new stuff, and among these rewards is "Mercenaries" mode: a time trial mode where you try to kill all the enemies in an area before time runs out, all while trying to keep a consistent kill combo going. Each level of this mode comes with a few waves, and in-between waves, you spend money you picked up during combat to buy supplies or upgrade weapons to possibly help you net a higher score in the next wave. In general I don't really like modes like this, but I played a few levels because I enjoyed the base gameplay that much, and I can say it's a solid, if unsubstantial mode. But there was another reason I gave Mercenaries a shot. After completing Village for the first time, achievements you've gotten throughout the campaign start to actually mean something. After the credits roll, you see that your achievements net you a special currency to be spent in the main menu for a variety of in-game goodies to make the game ridiculously unbalanced. You're likely to have enough of this currency after playthrough #1 to purchase a full-on assault rifle, for instance, and with enough currency, I believe you can even acquire a lightsaber! So that's another reason why I played a couple rounds of Mercenaries: there are additional achievements that can be unlocked there, and I wanted some of the additional weapons. 

The final thing I wanted to touch on is the little rolling ball puzzle that you can do 4 times throughout the game. Essentially, in each lord's domain, there's a little miniature palace and a special ball that can be found somewhere else in the level. If you bring that ball to the mini-palace, you can drop it in and move the palace to cause the ball to roll along a path, and if you manage to get the ball to a certain point, you unlock a treasure that sells for a high price. I loathed this puzzle every single time I did it. I needed the money for ammo and upgrades so I always did them, but I found myself getting frustrated every time. You can only turn the palace a little bit at a time and the physics don't always seem to work quite right. So on more than one occasion I'd find myself frantically turning the palace to try and see if I could get my eyes on the ball again and finally find it just in time for it to roll off the side because I hadn't angled the labyrinth at the exact angle it wanted. Were it not for the fact that it's optional, I would be taking off a lot more for this puzzle than I'm going to!

A lot of folks have expressed concern about the fact that this isn't as scary as the previous title, and that's certainly understandable if you're somebody going into this hoping to constantly be on your toes. But I'm not a Resident Evil fan and I only went into this wanting a fun game. So for my money, Resident Evil Village has entertaining action, one truly gripping horror segment, an intriguing setting, and plenty of replayability both for the power fantasy of being fully upgraded and for the entertainment value of potentially killing lycans with a lightsaber. With its wet blanket protagonist, lackluster campy finale, frustrating side puzzles, and technical hiccups, it isn't a perfect game, but it is a great one that provides more than enough bang for your buck. If you like good action, if you're new to Resident Evil like I am, or if a 9-foot tall vampire lady sucking blood from your hand really is enough to carry a game for you, you're bound to find something to like about Village.

Let us review:

Ethan is lame - 0.3

Bad final domain - 1.0

Technical problems - 0.5

Rolling ball puzzles suck - 0.5

The final score for Resident Evil: Village is...

7.7/10 - Pretty Good

Good work, Capcom, good work.