BinoBeanBoy
1 review liked by BinoBeanBoy
Resident Evil Village is a WILD ride of a game almost entirely from front to back. A vast improvement to the good, but dull, RE7. You want more enemies? You got it. You want good FPS survival horror combat that feels satisfying with a large arsenals of tools and weapons at your disposal? Boom, right here.
Honestly, it's a wonder to me why RE4 is apparently even getting a remake. Because the spirit and gameplay of Village feels a lot like just a successor to what they did in RE4. Village feels like if you took a lot of the premise of RE4, but actually made it scary and not so ridiculously comedic in tone.
Combat is A LOT more action oriented than 7, or even the classic trilogy. But it still retains a lot of what you would hope for in a RE game. Combat feels tense, but also not so tense that it feels like a last resort. It feels good shooting lycans and various other enemies in this game, and you'll still have to make good use of exploring and observing your environments in order to to scrounge up ammo and resources. You'll definitely be using a larger arsenal of weapons in this game, but you never feel like you have enough ammunition to just carelessly blast away. Despite the action elements being more apparent, the game is still quite frightful at times. No spoilers, but there is a section in this game that I think is perhaps the scariest moment in RE. It genuinely shook me to my core unlike any other game in the franchise.
Despite those survival elements still being retained, there are classic elements of RE that are not here this time around. Namely, that being the lack of the Item Box and any real inventory management. There was never a moment in this game when my storage was completely full. Key Items and Treasures don't take up inventory space, either. They definitely dumbed down the inventory system in this game and that kind of sucked because I think it's a major part of the survival horror. You never have to consider that you may need to hold on to a limited amount of weapons and ammo in order to have a good amount of storage for other stuff throughout your adventure. At the same time, though, RE4 also ditched a lot of the inventory management. The game incentivizes action and wide-spread exploration so it would have probably been hard to make item management a thing here without it being incredibly annoying.
In terms of story, Village is surprisingly decent. Especially for RE standards. It is A LOT more enjoyable this time around compared to RE7. It feels a lot less "stupid" than other RE games. There's a surprising amount of heart in the narrative. For as generic as the "angry father trying to save child" narrative is, I think it's handled fine here, and it has an enjoyable amount of revelations that will make you want to unravel the mystery of the village and what is going on. Ethan Winters returns, and he's quite improved compared to his first appearance. He has a lot more personality this time around, showing a wide array of emotions throughout the game. Todd Soley did a great job performing as the character.
The environments all feel like they had a lot of thought and care put into them. There's a lot of personality and detail that you can appreciate as you walk around the village. But beyond just the environments feeling great, you also have a pretty solid cast of antagonists who all feel different from one another and add their own respectable amount of personal terror into the DNA of Village.
For the most part, I don't have a crazy amount of things to complain about. However, I will say that there is a section near the end of the game that I rather disliked. It just felt out of place, generic, and goes on far too long. You can the feel the absence of creativity in this section compared to the others. It's actually kind of funny, because Ethan makes comments throughout this level about how much it drags on. Which was about the same time that I started thinking the same thing. That being said, I feel this game still has the RE issue of the intro being the best section, but for Village it doesn't feel like such a sharp decline in comparison to something like RE7. The first half is extremely great, and the second half is still great but just slightly lesser. It's probably one of the more consistently well-rounded RE games in terms of levels.
For RE fans, I feel the consensus is gonna be a mixed bag similar to the reception of RE4 because, like I said, it's practically a spiritual successor to it. If you hate RE4 and everything afterwards and much prefer the more survival-heavy aspects of the classic trilogy, then you're probably gonna dislike this game. But if you like survival horror with more of an emphasis on action and gunplay - like RE4, Dead Space, and The Evil Within - then I think you're going to REALLY like this game.
Honestly, it's a wonder to me why RE4 is apparently even getting a remake. Because the spirit and gameplay of Village feels a lot like just a successor to what they did in RE4. Village feels like if you took a lot of the premise of RE4, but actually made it scary and not so ridiculously comedic in tone.
Combat is A LOT more action oriented than 7, or even the classic trilogy. But it still retains a lot of what you would hope for in a RE game. Combat feels tense, but also not so tense that it feels like a last resort. It feels good shooting lycans and various other enemies in this game, and you'll still have to make good use of exploring and observing your environments in order to to scrounge up ammo and resources. You'll definitely be using a larger arsenal of weapons in this game, but you never feel like you have enough ammunition to just carelessly blast away. Despite the action elements being more apparent, the game is still quite frightful at times. No spoilers, but there is a section in this game that I think is perhaps the scariest moment in RE. It genuinely shook me to my core unlike any other game in the franchise.
Despite those survival elements still being retained, there are classic elements of RE that are not here this time around. Namely, that being the lack of the Item Box and any real inventory management. There was never a moment in this game when my storage was completely full. Key Items and Treasures don't take up inventory space, either. They definitely dumbed down the inventory system in this game and that kind of sucked because I think it's a major part of the survival horror. You never have to consider that you may need to hold on to a limited amount of weapons and ammo in order to have a good amount of storage for other stuff throughout your adventure. At the same time, though, RE4 also ditched a lot of the inventory management. The game incentivizes action and wide-spread exploration so it would have probably been hard to make item management a thing here without it being incredibly annoying.
In terms of story, Village is surprisingly decent. Especially for RE standards. It is A LOT more enjoyable this time around compared to RE7. It feels a lot less "stupid" than other RE games. There's a surprising amount of heart in the narrative. For as generic as the "angry father trying to save child" narrative is, I think it's handled fine here, and it has an enjoyable amount of revelations that will make you want to unravel the mystery of the village and what is going on. Ethan Winters returns, and he's quite improved compared to his first appearance. He has a lot more personality this time around, showing a wide array of emotions throughout the game. Todd Soley did a great job performing as the character.
The environments all feel like they had a lot of thought and care put into them. There's a lot of personality and detail that you can appreciate as you walk around the village. But beyond just the environments feeling great, you also have a pretty solid cast of antagonists who all feel different from one another and add their own respectable amount of personal terror into the DNA of Village.
For the most part, I don't have a crazy amount of things to complain about. However, I will say that there is a section near the end of the game that I rather disliked. It just felt out of place, generic, and goes on far too long. You can the feel the absence of creativity in this section compared to the others. It's actually kind of funny, because Ethan makes comments throughout this level about how much it drags on. Which was about the same time that I started thinking the same thing. That being said, I feel this game still has the RE issue of the intro being the best section, but for Village it doesn't feel like such a sharp decline in comparison to something like RE7. The first half is extremely great, and the second half is still great but just slightly lesser. It's probably one of the more consistently well-rounded RE games in terms of levels.
For RE fans, I feel the consensus is gonna be a mixed bag similar to the reception of RE4 because, like I said, it's practically a spiritual successor to it. If you hate RE4 and everything afterwards and much prefer the more survival-heavy aspects of the classic trilogy, then you're probably gonna dislike this game. But if you like survival horror with more of an emphasis on action and gunplay - like RE4, Dead Space, and The Evil Within - then I think you're going to REALLY like this game.