Village is a chaotic melding of its past entries, but there is a much stronger sense of pacing and flow here than in 7 - including constant reorientation of what spaces are safe and a more expansive, looping geography. The RE engine (reach for the moon engine?!) has such a beautiful physicality to it, with indulgent texture work & photogrammetry so lifelike that at times it feels like a flimsy/over adorned set of a Hammer film - further layers of artifice mirroring the genre mashup at its core.
A sense of long term consequences haunted earlier RE titles and this is the main area I found Village is lacking. Boss enemies in Village do little to shift how you play (eg. the Licker in RE2 limited when you made noise, Crimson Heads in the REmake forced you to consider returning to cleared areas). As this entry shows they are gesturing to their past confidently, I hope they consider returning to some of these dynamics in the future.
A sense of long term consequences haunted earlier RE titles and this is the main area I found Village is lacking. Boss enemies in Village do little to shift how you play (eg. the Licker in RE2 limited when you made noise, Crimson Heads in the REmake forced you to consider returning to cleared areas). As this entry shows they are gesturing to their past confidently, I hope they consider returning to some of these dynamics in the future.