What a fun follow up to a surprising turn for Resident Evil.
The last Resident Evil came as a bit of a surprise. I thought it was just going to be a VR gimmick, but then it turned out to be a legitimately interesting new direction for the series. Even with some of it's frustrations it's mostly a decent and fun survival horror game, and now in first person which gave it some interesting new angles.
With RE:Village I feel a little like they again played with the formula in some interesting ways to make for another intriguing experience. I played through the game in 3 sittings across three days. Some kids may think it's short (I beat it in 19 hours trying to get everything), but it's longer than the first game by a little and they have Mercenaries mode to play with when you're done. For me it is sufficient.
Graphically I think the game looks fantastic. I don't quite have it at max, but I have it about what I would say is mid and at 1080p (about average for most gamers I would guess) and it looks fantastic. The only thing that stands out to me is there were a handful of frame rate hitches (where the game would stutter freeze for a second). This only happened maybe... seven times in my playthrough and it doesn't crash the game. It also didnt happen for me at bad times or cause issue when I was in combat. The framerate wasn't entirely stable (it was mostly 60 but at times it did dip- especially when loading in new areas or particle effects). Any of the frame rate issues were not game breaking, tho. It could also be my computer as I do not have the best computer out there. Still, the game looks amazing.
The gameplay mechanics are well done. I feel with this one it's mostly a first person shooter. I played at standard (which was the default difficulty and possibly the highest for first play- I don't remember because it unlock new difficulties when you beat the game). While I don't know if I found all the possible money there is, I found a ton and upgraded ALOT. I did not always have ammo, and did feel a need to conserve and strategize, I mostly also felt that as long as my shots counted it was ok to shoot almost everything because you're rewarded often with loot that you can use or sell.
They took away the storage chest in this one and instead gave you more storage capacity with the added benefit of still being able to upgrade your capacity. This takes away from the "realistic" nature in some ways, but it adds new depth to the inventory as well. While you still have inventory Tetris from RE4, if you keep up with everything you will have more than enough space when playing normally. I think this is an interesting idea and well executed.
Combat is still frenetic, but the guns feel weak. The hits smash, but (and I'll get into this more later) the sounds feel muffled and it comes off weaker than you'd expect. Even so, the combat is still cool, intense, and you have to fight different enemies differently which brings a strategy to fights that keeps it fresh.
The exploration in this game is great. It feels rewarding, and interesting. You can go around any location you're in, and it doesn't feel like you've only been in one place for too long. It also gives you a lot to look at.
The game isn't all combat, and in this they leaned into puzzles maybe more than I remember RE7 doing. There are a lot more, and even long stretches when you're solving puzzles, or environmental scenarios, rather than fighting. I really enjoyed this. My only complaint there is the way they do this (no spoilers) makes the game feel like it's split into different game types you have to beat. This sections will be combat focused- this section will be puzzle and no combat. It's strangely implemented and I feel it would be better served to mix it up more all the way through.
There is a cooking system in this that serves as a sort of upgrade system. You get more health and guard protection when you have the merchant cook up certain meals. I love this system. I wish, though, they had added an animation to him cooking rather than just a sound. This was rather old school of them to do, and it would be neater to see him cooking I feel. Also, I found it frustrating at times. There are a few ingredients you can only get within certain locations and at certain times of the game each location will get closed off. You can never go back, so if you miss anything- it's done. You can never go back to get it. This means there are things you can miss and never do. This kind of goes with the exploration as a whole, but this part of it was incredibly frustrating. Not only that, but this can happen when you're still playing a location and just beat one certain part- it locks it off and you can never go back and get something you missed. This is one of my biggest gripes I hope they think about and work on for future installments.
They have a great map system they developed with RE2 Remaster where it tells you what rooms are completed and others still need to be searched. If they're going to use this, and these upgrade systems, why close off locations so we can never go back again? There's no way the first time you play to know that's going to happen. It's not done in a way that even feels fair.
The story starts off just plain bad. It's really going to be up to the player on whether or not you think they redeem themselves. I felt they did some interesting enough things that I was actually very happy with where it went even though a lot of the way to get there was really really stupid. It did a good job at explaining itself though, and that goes a very long way for me in video games.
The acting is uneven. I was actually ok with most characters, but there's two in particular that are really awful. Again, I felt the game kind of fixes this by the end, but one of these characters is almost entirely pitched down and on top of the bad acting it sounds really awkward. It's strange. I only forgive this because of notes and things you read that kind of give an explanation to this, but it's still really bad.
The sound in this is messed. I suppose this could be because it's relying on surround sound, but it has an option for "headphones" surround or something like that. On my computer for some reason this just causes the sound to break and it mutes even if I turn it off. Also, just altogether, the sound seems broken. Stuff sounds right in your face even when it's far away, sometimes music cues just stop or cut out, guns don't sound powerful (they're very muffled), and overall the sound is very strange. I know it's not just me because even streamers I watched play this also have sound issues. It's just something about the way they code the sound on this engine is very odd. I don't know why. It does not ultimately break the game, but may give you a ton of unwarranted jump scares- maybe they intended that.
Speaking of which, this game is not scary. I would say for the first couple hours it's a little creepy, especially in the first major location, but the game doesn't lean into this a whole lot so if you're not easily scared you definitely won't find this game scary, but you may still get some jump scares if you're skiddish. I actually think it was creepy for most of the game, but by the time you get to a certain point the game is no longer even trying to be scary. Even Ethan is clearly not scared at all by then, and he jumps at everything when the game starts. I don't know. I kind of like that. It felt like the game was evolving and as the character you play becomes less scared- you do too. I thought it was an interesting conceit- if done intentionally.
Overall, I highly recommend this one. It's got some bad parts, but if you like a certain kind of horror (that I would liken more to Freddy Krueger than paranormal activity) then this might be of interest to you. It's not entirely scary, but I'm not sure it was meant to be and by the end I thought they did a lot of interesting things.
I recommend you check it out.