This review contains spoilers
I might have my issues with Resident Evil Village, but ultimately, it's a rock-solid action horror game with plenty of qualities that far outshine its notable flaws. The prospect of downloadable content that actually expanded upon the game's narrative as opposed to the scattered vignettes or non-canonical "what if" scenarios that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil 2 remake's post-launch content comprised of excited me. Especially the idea of a pseudo-sequel that took place nearly two decades later, exploring the struggles of protagonist Rosemary Winters, who had previously served as the dismembered MacGuffin in Village. Shadows of Rose, being DLC, was never going to have Village's production value, but I was surprised by how disappointed I ended up with it as a whole.
Although developed by Capcom, Shadows of Rose was led by different key staff than the base game and feels a little dissonant with Village as a result. Taking place from a third-person perspective and featuring over-the-shoulder combat feels strange given Village's original perspective, but it's not poorly executed either. Given that we've had two over-the-shoulder games in the RE Engine prior, this doesn't surprise me. Gunplay and aiming both feel adequate and nothing about the base mechanics strikes me as badly done. Capcom has fairly gracefully transformed Village's gameplay loop into a different perspective and that is sort of impressive. I have my nitpicks with the movement, though. In RE2make especially, third-person movement felt weighty, and there was a slight delay in changing directions. This movement system felt incredible and learning how to best utilize it to avoid enemies and swerve through Raccoon City's corridors was monumentally satisfying. Not so in Shadows of Rose, where the movement system is far snappier. Rose moves immediately in whichever direction you push her in and this took a bit of getting used to. It's not a bad movement system by any means, but it does feel somewhat unpolished given the level of care prior games put into theirs. The DLC's level design is still largely closed-in, so an RE2make style system could have worked well. In any case, Shadows of Rose's new gimmick is Rose's superpowers, which can be used to destroy sclerotia located throughout the environment allowing for progression in previously blocked-off areas. Rose's powers are a bit disappointing, as for the majority of the DLC, they serve as little more than sclerotia destroyers or what is essentially a supernatural version of the defensive items in previous games. I understand the need to not go full Devil May Cry, but Rose's abilities are so pedestrian and boring compared to what could have been. When the player fully unlocks her powers for the final boss fight, they're not bad, but by then it's too late for them to add anything interesting to the gameplay. The final boss essentially being a revamped version of Village's final boss doesn't help the matter here. Something I did appreciate about Shadows of Rose's game design was the move back to a more survival horror-esque-loop instead of Village's action gameplay. The face eaters, the primary enemy type Rose faces, are particularly dangerous foes that require a lot to take down, especially on hardcore difficulty. This initial section in Castle Dimitrescu was quite solid, and issues with the gameplay's wasted potential could have still yielded a fairly decent experience had it stuck with that, but unfortunately, House Beneviento had to kneecap the experience just as it did with the base game. While I didn't like Beneviento in the base game, I at least thought it had some good ideas, albeit not executed well. In Shadows of Rose, it also starts with promise, with a genuinely extremely tense sequence featuring mannequins that act like Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. It's essentially one big puzzle box where your camera is the tool, and it's tense and scary! I liked that part a lot, which is why it's a shame that the vast majority of Beneviento, and essentially this DLC, is just a prolonged stealth section against giant dolls, and one that isn't even remotely fun or scary. Another reviewer brought up that "Capcom saves their worst ideas for their DLC, without fail." and this cannot be more true. The entire sequence just feels so lame. It's not scary, it's not fun, it's just tedious to play and its attempts at horror feel so tryhard and even cringeworthy. Unfortunately, it's a rather large section of the DLC, so it soured me on the whole package quite quickly.
Despite some intriguing concepts and stellar antagonists (for the most part), I found Village's scriptwriting to be very poor, filled with poor plotting, silly twists, and an annoying emphasis on trying to surprise the player. While Shadows of Rose doesn't necessarily suffer from bad twists or shock value, it's also not particularly well written whatsoever. It has, at least partially, different writers than Village, and in some ways that is clear. Rose, due to her strange abilities and physical abnormalities, is bullied relentlessly by her peers at school and delves deep within the Megamycete to find the new MacGuffin so she can remove her powers and live a normal life. Despite being so core to her motivations, Rose's bullying feels barely touched upon or developed and the DLC's portrayal of bullying is extremely surface-level and unnuanced. With some hyperbole, the dialog thrown at her during some of her flashback sequences sounds like it's from a children's cartoon and not a rated-M game that supposedly touches upon mature themes. After this opening sequence, it's not touched upon much more than through puzzle symbolism, which isn't great but is a big step up from said intro. Although I said Shadows of Rose doesn't focus on forced twists like the base game, the revelation that Charlie Graham was Mother Miranda in disguise, somehow, despite Miranda being trapped within the Megamycete is incredibly stupid. I also heavily dislike how they treat Eveline, the main antagonist of RE7, in her return. What was once a sympathetic antagonist is now boiled down merely to anger instead of the bigger variety of emotions she had in her debut title. You'd think that Capcom would allow her to grow and change, but if they can't do that with their mainstay protagonists they definitely won't for a smaller character either. For what it's worth, it's not all bad. Rose is a fairly endearing protagonist and while we don't get to know her very closely, I do know that I'd like to see her more in future titles. Although I saw the twist that "Michael" was Ethan Winters coming a mile away, the final scenes with them together were quite emotionally touching and served as a sweet conclusion to the Winters arc of Resident Evil. Shadows of Rose certainly has some scriptwriting positives, but largely it falls flat with a fairly unsuccessful story.
Shadows of Rose is difficult to praise visually because the majority of it is largely riding off the back of the incredible assets and maps originally created for Village a year prior. The DLC pack, as you might expect, indulges greatly in asset reuse down to entire locations. Not strictly a problem, but I do want to point out that when I say "Shadows of Rose looks very nice!" it's largely because Capcom had their work already cut out for them. The vast majority of visual qualities and flaws are largely inherited from Village. As for things created specifically for the DLC, the face eaters are pretty cool-looking enemies; I quite enjoy the melted candle wax look, and the way they attack Rose is fairly unnerving. Rose has a neat design and I like that she wears Ethan's jacket, it's a nice touch. Shusaku Uchiyama returns once more to compose a score that sounds nearly identical to Village's but without nearly as many Eastern European influences or standout tracks, simply boiling down the musical style to its base elements. It's largely fine and works okay for the DLC.
Despite being excited based on the premise, Shadows of Rose, unfortunately, measured out to be quite a mediocre disappointment for me. While I enjoy the greater survival horror influence, Rose as a protagonist, and how it resolves Ethan's mark on Resident Evil's world setting, I disliked the terrible Beneviento section, tedious stealth segments, and trite and surface-level storytelling. Shadows of Rose was never going to be incredible, considering the base game itself is quite flawed, but I can't help but feel I expected a bit more than this. Seeing as this DLC takes place at the furthest point in Resident Evil canon, I'm curious where the rest of the mainline non-remake franchise will go after this, but I'm unsure what place Rose has in any of it.
Although developed by Capcom, Shadows of Rose was led by different key staff than the base game and feels a little dissonant with Village as a result. Taking place from a third-person perspective and featuring over-the-shoulder combat feels strange given Village's original perspective, but it's not poorly executed either. Given that we've had two over-the-shoulder games in the RE Engine prior, this doesn't surprise me. Gunplay and aiming both feel adequate and nothing about the base mechanics strikes me as badly done. Capcom has fairly gracefully transformed Village's gameplay loop into a different perspective and that is sort of impressive. I have my nitpicks with the movement, though. In RE2make especially, third-person movement felt weighty, and there was a slight delay in changing directions. This movement system felt incredible and learning how to best utilize it to avoid enemies and swerve through Raccoon City's corridors was monumentally satisfying. Not so in Shadows of Rose, where the movement system is far snappier. Rose moves immediately in whichever direction you push her in and this took a bit of getting used to. It's not a bad movement system by any means, but it does feel somewhat unpolished given the level of care prior games put into theirs. The DLC's level design is still largely closed-in, so an RE2make style system could have worked well. In any case, Shadows of Rose's new gimmick is Rose's superpowers, which can be used to destroy sclerotia located throughout the environment allowing for progression in previously blocked-off areas. Rose's powers are a bit disappointing, as for the majority of the DLC, they serve as little more than sclerotia destroyers or what is essentially a supernatural version of the defensive items in previous games. I understand the need to not go full Devil May Cry, but Rose's abilities are so pedestrian and boring compared to what could have been. When the player fully unlocks her powers for the final boss fight, they're not bad, but by then it's too late for them to add anything interesting to the gameplay. The final boss essentially being a revamped version of Village's final boss doesn't help the matter here. Something I did appreciate about Shadows of Rose's game design was the move back to a more survival horror-esque-loop instead of Village's action gameplay. The face eaters, the primary enemy type Rose faces, are particularly dangerous foes that require a lot to take down, especially on hardcore difficulty. This initial section in Castle Dimitrescu was quite solid, and issues with the gameplay's wasted potential could have still yielded a fairly decent experience had it stuck with that, but unfortunately, House Beneviento had to kneecap the experience just as it did with the base game. While I didn't like Beneviento in the base game, I at least thought it had some good ideas, albeit not executed well. In Shadows of Rose, it also starts with promise, with a genuinely extremely tense sequence featuring mannequins that act like Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. It's essentially one big puzzle box where your camera is the tool, and it's tense and scary! I liked that part a lot, which is why it's a shame that the vast majority of Beneviento, and essentially this DLC, is just a prolonged stealth section against giant dolls, and one that isn't even remotely fun or scary. Another reviewer brought up that "Capcom saves their worst ideas for their DLC, without fail." and this cannot be more true. The entire sequence just feels so lame. It's not scary, it's not fun, it's just tedious to play and its attempts at horror feel so tryhard and even cringeworthy. Unfortunately, it's a rather large section of the DLC, so it soured me on the whole package quite quickly.
Despite some intriguing concepts and stellar antagonists (for the most part), I found Village's scriptwriting to be very poor, filled with poor plotting, silly twists, and an annoying emphasis on trying to surprise the player. While Shadows of Rose doesn't necessarily suffer from bad twists or shock value, it's also not particularly well written whatsoever. It has, at least partially, different writers than Village, and in some ways that is clear. Rose, due to her strange abilities and physical abnormalities, is bullied relentlessly by her peers at school and delves deep within the Megamycete to find the new MacGuffin so she can remove her powers and live a normal life. Despite being so core to her motivations, Rose's bullying feels barely touched upon or developed and the DLC's portrayal of bullying is extremely surface-level and unnuanced. With some hyperbole, the dialog thrown at her during some of her flashback sequences sounds like it's from a children's cartoon and not a rated-M game that supposedly touches upon mature themes. After this opening sequence, it's not touched upon much more than through puzzle symbolism, which isn't great but is a big step up from said intro. Although I said Shadows of Rose doesn't focus on forced twists like the base game, the revelation that Charlie Graham was Mother Miranda in disguise, somehow, despite Miranda being trapped within the Megamycete is incredibly stupid. I also heavily dislike how they treat Eveline, the main antagonist of RE7, in her return. What was once a sympathetic antagonist is now boiled down merely to anger instead of the bigger variety of emotions she had in her debut title. You'd think that Capcom would allow her to grow and change, but if they can't do that with their mainstay protagonists they definitely won't for a smaller character either. For what it's worth, it's not all bad. Rose is a fairly endearing protagonist and while we don't get to know her very closely, I do know that I'd like to see her more in future titles. Although I saw the twist that "Michael" was Ethan Winters coming a mile away, the final scenes with them together were quite emotionally touching and served as a sweet conclusion to the Winters arc of Resident Evil. Shadows of Rose certainly has some scriptwriting positives, but largely it falls flat with a fairly unsuccessful story.
Shadows of Rose is difficult to praise visually because the majority of it is largely riding off the back of the incredible assets and maps originally created for Village a year prior. The DLC pack, as you might expect, indulges greatly in asset reuse down to entire locations. Not strictly a problem, but I do want to point out that when I say "Shadows of Rose looks very nice!" it's largely because Capcom had their work already cut out for them. The vast majority of visual qualities and flaws are largely inherited from Village. As for things created specifically for the DLC, the face eaters are pretty cool-looking enemies; I quite enjoy the melted candle wax look, and the way they attack Rose is fairly unnerving. Rose has a neat design and I like that she wears Ethan's jacket, it's a nice touch. Shusaku Uchiyama returns once more to compose a score that sounds nearly identical to Village's but without nearly as many Eastern European influences or standout tracks, simply boiling down the musical style to its base elements. It's largely fine and works okay for the DLC.
Despite being excited based on the premise, Shadows of Rose, unfortunately, measured out to be quite a mediocre disappointment for me. While I enjoy the greater survival horror influence, Rose as a protagonist, and how it resolves Ethan's mark on Resident Evil's world setting, I disliked the terrible Beneviento section, tedious stealth segments, and trite and surface-level storytelling. Shadows of Rose was never going to be incredible, considering the base game itself is quite flawed, but I can't help but feel I expected a bit more than this. Seeing as this DLC takes place at the furthest point in Resident Evil canon, I'm curious where the rest of the mainline non-remake franchise will go after this, but I'm unsure what place Rose has in any of it.