Resident Evil Village Review

Resident Evil Village is the 8th game in the Resident Evil franchise. It comes developed and published by Capcom and is a sequel to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. In this game players will get to play as Ethan Winters who is searching for his kidnapped daughter in a spooky village filled with monsters.

Resident Evil Village Review

The Resident Evil series of games aren’t really known for being super long to complete. If you’re planning on getting this game this weekend, it’s possible to finish it in a weekend or two depending upon how much free time you have. This game is not a large open world game like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla where you need to set aside 100 hours to complete it. Resident Evil Village took me 21.2 hours to complete and I went through it fairly slowly, but I do consider around 20 hours to be a decent amount of time to spend with a game these days. So it’s the perfect length for me because I can play for an hour or so a day for a month and I can get through it slowly.

Looking back at the whole experience that was Resident Evil Village, I’d say that there were moments were I really enjoyed the game, times where I was frustrated with the puzzles and occasions where the gameplay was a bit odd.

How was the storyline?

For some reason the horror genre in both video games and movies isn’t really known for super compelling storylines. The Resident Evil series is no different, it has an interesting story about monsters created from a virus that are wreaking havoc all over. Your character is placed in the place with the monsters and then you have to survive there whilst completing a variety of objectives. Resident Evil 2, 3 and now this are the only games I’ve played in the franchise and I’d say the storyline is about the same for each of them. They’re good, but not too deep.

Resident Evil Village is quite good for fans of the series to get as it does attempt to expand the lore of the Resident Evil universe quite a bit. In this game you will encounter a variety of monsters who seem to have been around for a very long time. Due to everything being very old and the village itself seemingly being very old, you come across a lot of books, notes, photo’s and other items which you can read to learn more about the origins of things there. The game will pull you into the origins of the village and over time you will learn a lot. I love this type of stuff and I enjoyed reading and learning about all that.

In Resident Evil Village the game’s story will slowly introduce Ethan to a variety of residents at the village, you will encounter some normal people, but mostly you will encounter monsters and monster bosses. The story you mostly follow is that you must essentially beat a bunch of bosses, then the final boss and then only then can you reach your objective of rescuing Ethan’s baby. Along the way Ethan will be steered into the direction of each of these bosses until each confrontation takes place. This is okay, we’ve seen this in many video games before, it works, bosses work in games. It’s just not anything new. Interestingly, the game isn’t one that gives players a choice. It is not like you can go and try take on boss 3 before boss 1, you have to just do it in the order intended.

There are some scary moments in this game and one that weirdly involves a giant baby chasing you and whilst that might not sound scary as I write it in this review, I can tell you, it was scary when it happened. These types of things, while weird, they’re what makes Resident Evil Village great, it’s why I purchase a horror game. I want that feeling, I want to feel the chills as I play the game and there are moments in this game where it certainly delivers that. But the game often leans towards action moments which is what the boss fights are and whilst these boss fights certainly are tense action moments, but they’re not scary. I prefer to be scared.

When going online you can find articles from around the web about whether or not this game is scary or not. But there’s one good one on Comicbook.com here which has a producer commenting about that the game was made less scary by design due to the feedback the developers got from Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. It says there “Some of the feedback we received regarding [Resident Evil 7] was that it was too scary to play,” he continued. “In one regard, that’s exactly what we were striving for, so it’s a huge compliment for us. But at the same time, it’s always our goal to create something that anybody can feel comfortable jumping in and playing, so we eased up on the tension curve [in Resident Evil Village] relative to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, so that players aren’t in constant fear.” Now I haven’t played Resident Evil 7, so I need to make that clear, but I have played 2 and 3 and for me, I prefer these games to be kept scary, I want it scary. When the franchise goes towards the action side of things, it’s not as fun. If I want to play a first person shooter, I can just play Call Of Duty, I don’t need to have that experience brought into here.

Resident Evil Village Trailer

How was the gameplay?

In a general sense the gameplay is good, but I do have some gripes with it.

This game is a first person game and if you’re like me and you’ve only played Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, it feels a lot different to play Resident Evil Village in first person after being so used to playing in third person. As a personal preference, I prefer to play in third person because I can see the reaction of my character in the game’s world, I can get a sense of how they’re feeling in each moment. With Resident Evil Village, the first person perspective does try to let you feel what your character is experiencing, but it does so by using Ethan’s hands or through Ethan’s breathing. I never see what Ethan looks like, but I can hear he’s stressed out sometimes and see his hands shaking. You get used to to playing first person instead of third person after about 5 minutes, but it is something different nevertheless.

The Resident Evil games I’ve played all seem to share the same type of inventory system. You pick up items and need to fit them into your storage, which is limited. There will be weapons you come across in this game and if you’ve got not enough space for it, you’ll either have to drop what you have or purchase more space for your inventory bag so you can carry more. In Resident Evil 2 and 3, there were storage boxes you could place un used items you didn’t want to carry around when visiting save points, but Resident Evil Village doesn’t let you do that. You just simply buy more inventory.

As the game leans towards a more action focus, there is emphasis placed on collecting weapons, upgrading your weapons and buying ammunition for those weapons. You earn money in the game called ‘Lei’ which is dropped by monsters after you kill them. You can also earn money by defeating bosses or larger enemies who drop crystals that can be traded in for Lei so you can buy more items. It is strange to me that a village filled with monsters has its own currency, what do those monsters spend it on? However, there’s no need to worry about that, it simply just does and you just have to go with it.

I never really found myself short of ammunition in this game. If you don’t have enough Lei to buy more ammunition, you can always just craft some using the various scraps you find. Resources are plentiful and that’s because this game is meant to be more action heavy than previous titles. No longer do you have to run around scared and worried about how much ammo you’ve got left because there’s too many monsters and not enough weaponry to deal with it. Here, in the village, you’re free the shoot as much as you like most of the time.

The boss fights are fun, but generally fairly easy to get through. Some bosses are better than others, but I won’t go into the details of these too much because of the spoilers involved.

My main gripe with the gameplay though is that the enemies aren’t really adapted very well for an action game. Enemies still move fairly slowly like they do in Resident Evil 2 and 3. You’ve got time to plan your shots, but this only really works when your ammunition is limited. It’s scary when you have to try take down something and only have say 3 bullets to do it. Here, you can just fire away most of the time, you’ll have 5+ guns to choose from after a certain point. Enemies are slow moving and aren’t really a threat at all after a while and that makes taking them down more of a chore because they’re simply just in your way more than anything else.

One of the best things about Resident Evil Village is the puzzles. The game has excellent puzzles and some of them had me stuck for so long that I have to admit, I had to go online to find a guide for how to get through it. Some of them had me lost and I just could get it, I love that. Whilst I didn’t expect to be so challenged I definitely was and you have to pay attention sometimes to get through things fast, otherwise you could get stuck.

How was the music and sound?

There’s not too much music in this game while you are exploring the world, but the game does have a pretty decent theme song that goes with it. You can watch a video about it on YouTube below 🙂 This video will take you through the behind the scenes of how it was made.

Most of the game, as it’s a horror game will have you listening to the world around you. There’s a variety of monster sounds, screams and gun reloading/firing sounds in there. These are all great and very well done. You can at certain times, feel very immersed in the world and small sounds will actually cause some good jump scares sometimes.

How about the graphics?

Graphics in this game are great. I played this on PC and tried a variety of different configurations. The texture quality is high, the shadows are great and the lighting is very good. You do need a fairly decent PC to run it on maximum settings, but even on lower graphics settings or in 1080p, it still looks decent.

Character models are well designed, Lady Dimitrescu is probably the most recognisable character in the game as she featured heavily in the marketing for it. But other character models are also decent as well. Each of the bosses look unique and nobody is at all alike. I like that. Monsters however, are repetitive and most monsters all look the same, with the same clothes and movements so that’s the only downside I guess.

Conclusion

Overall I did really enjoy the game and whilst I do have some gripes due to the action heavy components and the repetitive enemies, the game is overall good. I loved all the puzzles you had to solve in the game, I liked the character models and the graphics are great! If you find this on sale it’s definitely worth adding it to your collection.

Want to get the game?

You can find copies of the game on Amazon Australia right here.

More Resident Evil reviews

• Resident Evil 2 Review
• Resident Evil 3 Review