RE Village is a fun game that could have been scarier. I felt like there were only two or three areas in the game where I was scared, the rest ranged from not invoking anything to mild tension over where enemies might be. Beyond the horror, Village provides a great experience as an action game, which seems to be the main focus in terms of design. The gun selection never left me wanting and the aiming and shooting on an Xbox Series S controller were functional and easy to maneuver. The plot itself is standard fare to hunt down items and journey through puzzles as in most Resident Evil games, but it holds a few surprising turns that make the ride more enjoyable. The strength of RE8 lies in how different each section of the game is, providing a strong sense of variety and warding off boredom. Overall, I recommend this game to fans of Resident Evil and new players alike, although in the case of new fans I suggest playing 7 first to see where Ethan Winters begins.

I really wish that this was a better game, I'm in love with the new story and the way Square Enix expanded the intro of FF7 and all the remixes of old tracks, but the combat somewhat stains the whole experience, but FF7R is still an awesome game despite my misgivings with the battles! Half of all fights were a total slog and ruined my mood, it feels like the action style is held back by enemies having too much capability to ruin your momentum. Maybe I'm just not skilled enough in this game, but it really sucked the joy out of an otherwise perfect package. I know that it could be better too, I love Kingdom Hearts and Nier, so why is this game so tough to swallow? Besides that, every other part of this game is amazing! The characters were incredibly likable and the voice actors did a great job, I played the game in English dub and it was spectacular. The graphics were beautiful and the familiar locations were highly faithful to the original, the direct translation of prerendered backgrounds to explorable 3D made Midgar feel massive and lived in, especially with the NPC chatter as you walk by. The controls work well enough, sometimes the arrow prompts felt a little clunky and overly slow for a soldier like Cloud though. And even if the combat was frequently annoying, it still has it's good parts, when you're moving you're really going and it's very fun, and the character switching and usage of triggers to open up the command menu are ingenious. I will say though that compared to Cloud and Tifa, I didn't find Barret and Aerith to be super fun with their exclusively ranged normal attacks. I don't want to say much about the story because it really is a wonderful thing blind. Most of the added content in between the story beats veterans already know are fun sidetracks, but a few of them feel like they drag for a bit too long. I'm glad I finally finished the game, and I hope part 2 will be better. By the end of this series of remakes, I want to be able to say that Square Enix has surpassed the original, but it just isn't there yet. Still, go play this if you loved Final Fantasy VII, and if you haven't finished the original then don't play this first, it's not going to be worth it in my opinion. With all of the deviations to the story and some underlying plot details, I consider it more of a sequel than a remake.

Overall pretty fun and worth it for the low price. The low production value is really charming and the game has a strong atmosphere that makes the game tense on a first playthrough. The actual scares are kind of weak after the first jumpscare though, which isn't a big problem considering there's only a few in the hour long runtime of the average run. I won't lie, sometimes I got a little lost finding what to do to progress the night, but the objective markers and the small space you have to explore made this easier. It's a pretty cheap game, I recommend it for a short and fun charming experience! I also just love convenience stores at night.