Resident Evil Village Review
Author: Griffin.
Genres: Action Adventure, Horror.
Resident Evil Village directory.
Here is our Resident Evil Village Review giving you a subjective, unbiased review helping you make a more educated decision on whether or not the game is for you.
The game
Resident Evil Village is set a few years after the events in Resident Evil Biohazard and features Ethan Winters again who thankfully has been greatly flushed out as character, gone is the placid dithering guy we had in Biohazard.
We now have a special forces trained (albeit fast tracked) Ethan who knows how to handle himself which will be a massive help as there’s lots to handle here.
Resident Evil Village as the name suggests is focused around a village in deep Eastern Europe and focuses around you reclaiming your daughter who has been kidnapped and avenging your wife who has been killed whilst taking on all manner of beasts and terrors along the way.
The Village is broken down into 5 sections of sorts, you have the main village which acts like a hub area then 4 branching paths each controlled by the lord of that particular land which when I first heard it I wasn’t sure but the way Capcom have done it, I’m all in, it’s a brilliant setting with bumps and nightmare inducing enemies around most corners.
Once you complete the game on any difficulty you will unlock Mercenaries Mode which sees you fight off hordes of enemies with a selection of weapons which upon completion will grade you based on your overall performance.
The good
The combat in Resident Evil Village is to be commended and is reminiscent of one of the best entries in the series, Resident Evil 4, which for fans of the series will no doubt recognise this as high praise indeed.
You don’t get the ridiculous combat of Resident Evil 5 / 6 which frankly was more of an Action Adventure than a survival horror, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard took Resident Evil games back to where they should be a damn scary, tense survival horror game that makes you think about what it’s put you through as a gamer.
The guns are very well weighted and feel very good to use especially with the PS5’s DualSense Controller with its adaptive triggers reacting differently both for aiming and firing depending on the weight of the weapon you’re using to splatter some Lycan’s brains over the snowy landscape.
There is also a good amount of Resident Evilness here with collectibles, interactive items you need to examine to find something hidden or read a certain note to find out the pass-key to move forward to more nightmarish encounters.
Visually, the game looks stunning with plenty of gore and grotesque along the way to keep even the most hardened horror fans entertained for hours on end, with House Beneviento (play the game to find out why) being a particular favourite of mine and one that will put me off porcelain dolls for a long, long time.
The not so good
*Spoiler Warning, come back and read this section after defeating the first main boss if you don’t want to know what happens en-route*.
Where Resident Evil Village falls apart somewhat is in the main character, mainly the way he handles injuries, now at first, we’re led to believe he’s a happy home maker with his wife (who is murdered in the first 5 minutes) and his daughter (who is kidnapped in the first 6 minutes) living out a normal life, yet he has his hand sliced off and reattaches it with some first aid fluid which must double up as an elastic protein the likes of which we as a species are decades off developing, impaled by 15 inch long blades, smashed off a 40ft drop with a 50lb hammer and beaten, eaten and burnt all in the first hour of the game.
I’m not sure what I was expecting here, but the way the game doesn’t hold injury over you even on the hardest difficulties is a bit… I don’t want say immersion breaking but immersion breaking.
I can fully get behind the fact Lycan’s are running around, there’s a 10 foot vampire lady who wants to carve your insides out for lunch and there’s a village in Eastern Europe with more toilets than residents but I was hoping an injury would stay as an injury.
As soon as I lost my hand I was thinking of ways I could do things in the game with one handed weapons, if there’s a way of equipping certain items to my “stump” and move forward that way but 2 minutes later by the power of video games, the hand’s back on and working fine like it never happened. It’s just a bit odd even by Resident Evil standards.
Audio
No messing about here, the game sounds incredible. Absolutely top notch from the deep speaker breaking roars to the shrieks and screams of Demon’s and their latest unfortunate meal in the distance to the weapons and the explosions you utilise throughout the experience, the game just sounds incredible.
If I have one criticism, and it is a minor one, I don’t like the way Ethan Winters is portrayed as regardless of what happens from his wife dying to his daughter being taken to him losing a hand, he just sounds a bit flat. I was expecting a lot more emotion to come through rather than what we got.
Like I said though, it is a minor criticism, overall, Resident Evil Village sounds foreboding, it sounds eerie and it sounds awesome, especially with a decent headset on.
Online
There is no online element to Resident Evil Village, the game is an offline Single Player game.
Trophies
We get a good amount of variety here from collecting every collectible in the game to completing Resident Evil Village on every difficulty, with a good amount of miscellaneous trophies to do along the way.
Click the link to go to the Resident Evil Village Trophy Guide.
Gallery
Here are a series of photos to show you how the game looks:
Overall
Overall, Resident Evil Village comes in second place, just behind Resi 4, but I think that’s mainly due to the fact I have a good history with Resi 4 and the game will always have a special place in my heart, with that said, Village only just comes in behind it inching out classics like Resi 2 and 3 for pure action and gore.
If you’re a fan of a game such as Outlast where it jump scares the pants off you as well as having nothing but a camcorder equipped.
You might not be a fan of Resident Evil Village, however, if you are a fan of big guns, lots of action that scares the bejeezus out of you, a 10 foot vampire lady who chases you around a castle, a very well put together story and overall game, then Resident Evil Village is definitely a worthwhile purchase which is why here at Griffins Gaming Guides I award Resident Evil Village an 8/10.
Final Score: 8
That’s our Resident Evil Village Review I hope it helps you decide whether or not the game is worth your time and money.