Resident Evil Village – Review

As much as I love the Resident Evil franchise as a whole, I have one major issue, and it’s the fact that the franchise never knows what it wants to be. Is Resident Evil an Action game with Horror Elements? Or is it a Horror game with Action elements? The series tends to flip flop between this and never really finds the sweet spot.

The times when the series can blend it, like Resident Evil 4, the remake of 2, and Resident Evil 7, the series is arguably at its best. This brings us to Village, the latest in the series, and the continuation of the series newcomer Ethan Winters story from Resident Evil 7, which expands on the combat but tries to still fit the horror and dread from the previous game.

Resident Evil Village takes place 3 years after the events of 7 and sees Mia, Ethan and their newborn baby Rosemary (or Rose) happily leaving in a new place in Europe, until Chris Redfield shoots up the place, kills Mia, and kidnaps Rose and Ethan. While Chris’ shocking heel-turn is a big surprise, we don’t have too much time to explore it as the transport carrying Ethan and Rose crashes and Rose goes missing.

Searching for help, Ethan finds a small village that is being attacked by half-man/half-wolf Lycans, after surviving the attack, he learns that Rose had been kidnapped by the Village patriarch and her four lords. Ethan goes on a mission to get Rose back by whatever means necessary.

Much like Resident Evil 7, Village keeps its secrets close to its chest, waiting for that moment to deliver the big reveal. While the story’s main focus is a father looking for his daughter, the game does take some time to highlight the four lords who stand in your way. Of course this being the internet’s favorite Lady Dimitescu, Donna – a girl with a creepy doll, Moreau – a weird fishman, and Heinsenberg who is best described as Magneto if he was in a horror story.

The story isn’t without its flaws though, there are some pacing issues and some questionable twists in the story that almost feels unwarranted, combined with the game’s final two hours which feels like the developers tried to wrap up the story as fast as they could and almost feels like a different game at times. This unfortunately brought down the hype for the final boss battle which planned to bring a horrifying villain felt kind of lackluster when compared to other battles in the series.

There have been some major improvements in the gameplay, and especially towards combat. The story brushes this off as Ethan receiving military training in the three years since Resident Evil 7, which makes him a bit more mobile and have better control over his guns and blocking – a skill I hardly used in 7 but found extremely useful in Village thanks to the ferocity of the various monsters that come at you.

You’re training only gets you so far in the game, and for the rest, we have The Duke, the game’s version of the Merchant from Resident Evil 4. The Duke is there to provide you with supplies, upgrade your health by cooking food from various animals you hunt, and upgrading your weapons to be stronger, faster and hold more bullets.

Another feature from Resident Evil 4 that makes its return is the inventory system, which brings back a grid-based system allowing you to move items around to fit your gear. In my playthrough on normal, I found I didn’t need to use the feature much, but it was a greatly appreciated feature to return especially fighting with the inventory systems in 7, and the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3.

It’s hard for me to talk about graphics for Village as I was stuck playing on the last generation, in fact, a launch PS4. Given how some games are better optimized for the PS4 Pro and up (or the Xbox One X and Series X/S) I was generally afraid that the game was going to look like crap, but I’m happy to say that the graphics still held up to levels I came to expect from the RE Engine and in my opinion, seem to be on par with the Resident Evil 3 remake. Of course, there are some things that the PS4 version didn’t do overly well like fur and hair – but I’m not going to deduct points for that on a last-gen console.

Village has some flaws, but somehow still stands to be one of the better Resident Evil games in the series. It’s inclusion of the fan favourite Mercenaries mode has brought me back multiple times to enjoy the game’s combat, and rewards for completing specific goals in the game is making me want to go through the story again to find the things I missed.