Resident Evil Village Review

Throughout my entire playthrough of playing Resident Evil Village, the whole game just feels like it was an RE game for a more "casual" audience. I don't like to insult any game as that but Village is just unbearably unfront about the whole thing. Capcom wanted to appeal to the people who thought what made Resident Evil interesting was how "scary" the series is and how the best parts of RE7 where the scripted moments. It even wants to tell to a more emotionally gripping story and scarifices everything to tell it. Unfortunately, not even that said story is very interesting. I wasn't big on this game back when I originally played it and I'm less kind on it now. I'm not super harsh on this title because playing it in the moment is never overly frustrating due to how easy normal difficulty is.

Right away when starting the game, it takes a good while for the game to actually start. I've seen these opening sections get criticized for not being appealing for people who like to replay games or speedrunners but even in the moment, these sequences aren't very compelling due to how convoluted and hard to follow the story can be especially regarding Chris Redfield's actions more on that later.

When finally in the Village after a somewhat decent confusingly presented timed enemy wave. The game *still* doesn't start and you have to go through a pointless sequences with Ethan and a bunch of villagers who serve no bearing on the plot and won't even get mentioned again. You could cut this part and Ethan gets the second seal to open the Castle and nothing would change.

It takes another batch of cutscenes and then you finally get into Castle Demitrescu. Right away it tells you about how the level design is. You are never given this wide open space where you can look around and find puzzle items and explore on your own, you are always railroaded to go one way making the entire Castle level that is supposedly large nothing more than a red herring. It's not an interconnected puzzle but more of a bunch of specific straight lines.

This is one of the more open levels of the game and any level outside of the Factory is designed like this where there isn't much in the way of exploration, just go one way. The titular Village also railroads you to go one way, maybe you can find some random items to sell which leads to my next issue.

Okay, maybe the action side of things could help. Well no. There is no resource management of any kind to be found here. None for puzzle items and nothing for keeping ammo, health and crafting items which is are all it's own menu that has nothing to do with the inventory that carries weapons and ammo. This also leads to the next issue, you get so much money whether it'd be for killing bosses and finding random jewlery in the environment, you will be rolling in so much ammo and have your weapons be so powered up by the time you fight the first boss that you can STAGGER her with basic pistol bullets.

None of the bosses are much of a threat due to the excess amount of resources you can sell just by playing the game. The regular enemy mobs are also too few in a number and can be taken out pretty easily. You storm a Lycan Stronghold later in the game and despite this part having the game throw the kitchen sink at you, it feels like a small piece of the tap is.

It's a shame since RE games tend to have balanced normal modes.

Before I start describing the story, the thing Capcom gave up everything about this game to tell. I will say House Beneviento and The Factory are the best parts of Village.

The former because there is some decent amount of tension to be found with all your guns taken away from you. It is much more scripted but since I was never confused by it's scripted nature, I was able to enjoy it and feel a little tension especially with how distrubing the monster in the Basement can be. Says a lot when one of the more interesting parts is when guns are taken away from you.

The Factory has some decent level design but it guides you and is open enough that it never feels as rail roaded and linear as the rest of the levels do. You know all of it revolved around finding mold and to open certain parts of the map. The enemies are noticeably tougher and require weakpoint targeting to kill effectively. The regular mooks even have their head covered so it isn't as easy to kill them.

These levels do prevent the game from being all bad.

The story which is what Capcom have up everything is very hard to follow mainly due to Chris' action of not giving fake Mia a blood test before storming his house. There is also something about how Rose is like Alessa Gallespie from Silent Hill 1. Mother Miranda is connected to Ozwell Spencer and Ethan being dead the whole time which is such a silly retcon considering this was never hinted at in RE7 or why he is pouring red blood instead of mold when he gets attacked.

Overall, RE8 really is a confused mess of a title that learned all the wrong lessons RE7.