For the sake of clarity you should know that this review is going to seem unfair. Many review sites have already pointed out the multiple similarities between Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4, which is inevitably going to lead to unfavorable comparisons when you consider everything that RE4 managed to accomplish. When a game’s only major flaw is that it’s too long it’s hard to improve upon it, and it’s even harder to make numerous callbacks to said game and not get burned in the process. So there will be quite a bit about RE4 in this review, and I can tell you right now that a fair amount of it won’t be in Village‘s favor.
But let’s start with the connections to Resident Evil 7. In Village you once again play as the oft-abused pair of hands known as Ethan Winters, who has spent the last three years trying to forget the time his now-wife Mia cut his hand off with a chainsaw. They just had a baby and are living in an unnamed part of Europe before disaster strikes, Mia is killed, and Ethan wakes up in the middle of a forest several hours later with no baby and near a village with a bad case of ugly werewolves. Thus begins a quest to find Ethan’s daughter, Rose, and hopefully avoid getting stabbed too many times in the extremities. The first major difference you’ll probably notice from RE7 is that there are actual enemies to fight in Village, rather than just the embarrassing slime creatures from the Baker’s basement. Lycans are dodgy and can quickly climb things, while the zombie vampires are slow and will sometimes ambush you from underground…and that’s about it. Sorry if it seemed like I was building up to something more interesting than two enemy types but that’s about all you get outside of some special encounters in the story, which we’ll get into later.
The other major carryover from RE7 is the framework of how the game plays out. There are four major bosses in the game: Beneviento, Dimitrescu, Heisenberg, and Moreau, and much like my understanding of RE7 most of your exposure to them is an early scene where you’re tied up and they’re staring at you, and then running away from them until a story thing happens and then suddenly they’re weak to bullets. In fact, much of the structure of Village is quite similar to RE7, in that all the of atmosphere-heavy stuff is in the beginning half and after that it’s more akin to games with drawn out, scripted sequences and Space Invaders. I really don’t understand why horror games have this obsession with “run away and hide from the spooky thing that you can’t kill until eventually you can,” which may sound like a dumb thing to say because on paper it’s the most obvious thing in the world. An unstoppable, inevitable presence that you can’t escape so your only course is to run can definitely be intimidating, but in video games it creates a problem because one has to deal with things like level design and AI that can make the difference between tense moments or bland interruptions. Village unfortunately has rather poor level design for these chase sequences where the scripted invincible enemies won’t pursue you very far and/or exist in an area with only one alternate path, so you can either easily run to an area they can’t follow (which is usually just the end of the hall) or bait them into following you into one of the area’s only wrap-around hallways so that you can get around them and back the way you actually want to go.
Compare this to Mr. X in the remake of Resident Evil 2. Sure there were still a few rooms he couldn’t get into but they were more spread out (plus there was a lore reason for it), and beyond that there were plenty of places where the two of you could maneuver around each other, instead of just one little roundabout or even worse forcing you to hide in a cabinet like a bad Alien Isolation sequence and just waiting for the bullet-immune threat to leave like you do in Village. The repetition of it happening over and over with different enemies gets a little tedious as well, at least Mr. X was a lone, memorable threat that had to be navigated alongside the regular enemies, but these sequences happen with multiple different characters in Village and they are always the only threat you face when they happen. It’s just poorly executed compared to similar games in the franchise, which leads directly into the comparisons with Resident Evil 4.
There are so many parallels between Village and RE4 that it’s hard to know where to begin exactly. Let’s just talk about the most straightforward one: the inventory from RE4 is back, and boy has it been missed. No longer do guns and health items take up the same amount of space in your pockets, instead we’re back to the glorious grid system of RE4, where you occasionally have to put your Tetris skills to work to make more space for that tasty grenade launcher you found. Along with RE4‘s inventory comes a merchant like RE4‘s as well, who always manages to find his way to the next area before you do and sells items, weapon upgrades, and also provides improvements to your health and defensive abilities. This means that enemies drop money now when killed, and there are also treasures to sell or even horde to piece together into more expensive items, which rewards sharp-eyed players or those that want to explore every inch of the map. These features along with smashing boxes and vases for ammo is one of the most direct callbacks to RE4 that you’ll ever see, but so much of what Village does is just a little bit worse than what RE4 did before that it’s hard to not fondly look back…which I’m going to do now.
Let’s talk about the weapons first, since I mentioned the upgrades in my previous paragraph. Much like RE4, Village has weapons of multiple types that can all be upgraded with not only attachments but also by spending money to improve their damage, firing rate, reload speed, and capacity. RE4 had a LOT of weapons and each had their strengths and weaknesses, plus almost every gun had a special final upgrade that could make a strong case for keeping it over others in its class, such as a massive damage boost, bonus critical hit chance, or extended range. Village has a much smaller pool of weapons (outside of post-game unlockables) and none of them have these special upgrades, so each new pistol or shotgun that you get is literally just a flat improvement over the one you’re currently using, and there’s almost no reason to keep using the one that came before. “This new shotgun is better than your old one” is nothing new in games but this is RE4 we’re talking about, plus games like DOOM have taught us that you can give players new weapons without diminishing earlier ones, but maybe that’s too much to ask for in a game with limited inventory space.
Light spoilers about the game’s first half hour and boss designs will come up in the next two paragraphs (if you don’t want to read them you can scroll until you see the picture of Ethan with a shotgun), because there’s also a lot of similarities to RE4 in Village‘s encounters and there’s two things in particular that I cannot stand: the village attack in the opening and the boss designs. RE4 has a very memorable opening sequence where you walk into a village and are set upon by angry locals who attack you relentlessly until a predetermined point, after which they’re called away. Village copies this moment relatively blow for blow, including the big enemy you may not be able to kill and a house with a shotgun in it, but it makes the whole thing a more scripted and cinematic affair with a sky full of flaming arrows (for no reason) and a preliminary warm-up round where Lycans try to break into a barn but temporarily stop after you kill one of them. The problem is that the whole thing feels so much more constrictive than RE4‘s bombastic opening that it’s much less enjoyable, with RE4‘s more open village and ability to easily traverse through the various buildings giving way to Village‘s narrow, compressed paths that are practically linear and offer almost no room to maneuver. One could argue this is meant more as an atmospheric experience than a gameplay one, and that could be a fair argument considering that Leon in RE4 is inherently a more capable person than Ethan and RE4 is unapologetically a more action oriented affair. But in these sorts of sequences I find that giving the player a sense of “oh man there’s so many and there’s no way I can hold them all off, I need to keep running and see if I can shake them off in the buildings” is far more engaging than “I have two bullets left and there’s no way to outmaneuver these guys, I may as well just die and try again after the loading screen.”
Similarly the bosses are a huge missed opportunity as well compared to RE4, but that might just be the inherent weakness of the Resident Evil model sneaking up on us and undermining some cool character designs. All of RE4‘s boss fights had monsters or mutations of some variety, but sometimes they were giant and sometimes they were person-sized, and the arenas you fought them in would change too, such as an open arena or a claustrophobic basement. Village has an obsession with taking their cool characters and turning them into monstrous abominations once it’s time to actually fight them, and while the designs of these horrors are cool in their own way I think most of us were actually expecting a fight against the likes of Dimitrescu or Heisenberg, not the blobs they turn into when it’s time to throw down. I didn’t hate Village, but the most disappointed I’ve been at a video game in a long time is when I realized we wouldn’t be fighting Heisenberg man to man. Instead we have two final bosses that are “run around corners so their lunge attacks can’t get you and then shoot their person-shaped bits,” one game of hide-and-seek, one…whatever the fuck Heisenberg’s fight is supposed to be, and a final boss that takes far too long to put down considering their lack of any noticeable change in patterns as the fight goes on.
Then we have The Mercenaries, Resident Evil‘s horde mode that was first introduced in, you guessed it, RE4. Traditionally it’s a time trial mode where you play was one of several characters with a preset loadout against unlimited enemies that spawn until you either die or run out of time, with bonus time added from gathering collectibles around the map and killing enemies. Village has, inevitably, made several adjustments that are arguable whether they’re better or worse. For starters there aren’t preset character builds any more, instead you start the level inside the Merchant’s shop and make your own build using a set amount of money, then venture off into the first area. That’s right, I said “first area.” Rather than being an unlimited swarm of enemies they’ve also changed Mercenaries into a level-based affair where you fight through three areas with a set number of enemies, only needing to kill a certain amount of them to progress but with encouragement to hunt down every enemy for the sake of a higher score. Then in lieu of characters with unique skill sets there’s random power-ups scattered throughout the map that you can pick up for bonuses like higher knife damage, enemies exploding on death, or healing when you deal damage. When I say random I do mean random, as they are in breakable objects that you can stab with your knife and then get to pick one of three options as your power-up.
They say all these features let you “create builds” in the same way you can make a build in a roguelike, but Mercenaries shouldn’t be a fucking roguelike. The thought is there for a good Mercenaries experience, for example they could have added multiple characters with these power-ups as add-ons to distinguish them, or even better if they want to have the multi-stage level format they could have these add-ons unlock for whatever character you’re playing with as you finish a stage. However the limited number of enemy spawns, unpredictable special abilities that you gather, and surprisingly linear level design in Village‘s Mercenaries (once again going for the narrow hallway approach in some areas compared to the more open design of previous Mercenaries modes), all brings into focus how mediocre Village‘s combat is.
Resident Evil 4‘s combat had a rather addictive rhythm to it, which was part of what made the Mercenaries in RE4 and RE5 as fun as it was, and it’s sorely lacking in Village. The pattern of shooting an enemy in the head or knees to stagger them and then following up with a melee attack created a unique attack and retreat balance, coupled with some fun animations (read: suplexing cultists). Village doesn’t have that, nor does it have RE4‘s handicap of not being able to move while shooting, so instead of any sort of counter balance or tactical play we’re instead reduced to the classic “walk backwards while shooting them in the head five or six times.” Some people say the crappy vampires are weaker in their legs but I never found my time to kill any worse for wear when I was just shooting them in the head, and without REmake 2‘s brilliant limb damage I rarely found a reason to shoot them anywhere else. Frankly the combat is just boring, and while you may not be playing a Resident Evil game for the combat you’re definitely going to find yourself in some situations where you’re in combat a hell of a lot more than you’d expect, and in those moments you’ll experience some of Village‘s lowest lows.
Most of the highs are backed by the RE Engine’s continued brilliance, though much of the great lighting from RE7 is absent here as you spend about half of the game outdoors. Facial animations also seem to have taken a bit of a dip, especially with Mia, but when the shadows hit just right and the enemies are crumbling to dust it’s a very pretty game. I especially liked Ethan as a character in this game, where alongside a few particularly bad ass moments and some reasonable voice acting the game makes him feel very “present” by using his breathing as a form of enemy radar. Nine times out of ten if Ethan is breathing hard it means there are still enemies nearby, and it makes him feel very in-the-moment compared to other FPS protagonists that just feel like floating guns sometimes. Most of my attachment to him gets undermined by the end with a sloppy last second development, which I won’t spoil, but needless to say the story is fine as far as Resident Evil games go, even if the quality of playing the game itself starts to unravel the further into the story you go.
Without having played Resident Evil 7 myself I can’t end this review with a generic comment along the lines of “if you liked the previous game you’ll like this one,” so I’ll have to make due with what I’ve got. Resident Evil Village is a fusion of RE4 and RE7 that takes elements of both and yet fails to be as atmospheric as RE7 or as creative and deep as RE4. The first half of the game starts with some reasonable promise, and even though the team didn’t have enough of a vision to reach its full potential there’s probably enough here to keep fans of first person horror games engaged over its questionably short run time. The real question is if you’ll see enough reason to come back to it when those first eight to ten hours are up, once the tension of the unexpected is gone and all that you’re left with is boring combat steered by a likable man with no face that will never be a hand model. I’d say you aren’t missing much by just watching one of the eight million Let’s Plays of it on Twitch or YouTube, but the choice is yours.
