Four years after the horrific events that happened in Louisiana we’re finally greeted with a Sequel to the Resident Evil Biohazard Story.
Resident Evil Village takes the events that happened in RE7 and expands on them with a fantastic new story for the series. Ethan Winters and his wife Mia attempt to recover from their horrific experience in Louisiana by moving to rural eastern Europe. After a gruesome opening, in which Mia is shot and their baby kidnapped, Ethan must set out to discover what fresh hell he has landed in this time.
You start out exploring the village. Most of the inhabitants have been slaughtered by four monstrous local lords at the whim of a destructive demigod. To save his daughter, Ethan must track these four lords down to their lairs and kill them. The village itself feels and plays out a lot like the Spanish Villa from Resident Evil 4 (2005), with being able to craft, buy from the duke, upgrade weapons and even boost your health by cooking up ingredients.
This makes for a welcome return to the series for any fans of the old RE4. For any newcomers to the series, the game does have a few flashbacks to the story that happened down in Louisiana including a “Previously On” Video before you even start your playthrough. This ensures that you don’t miss any key plots and feel left out. The gameplay and level design have a mild open-world feel to it letting you navigate back and forth from the different areas when treasure hunting and trying to get more Lei(Ingame Currency).
Each of the different lairs feels so unique due to the Lair Lord’s own unique characteristics. Dimitrescu, Beneviento, Mareau, and Heisenberg each have their own powers and therefore base their lair around that. Dimitrescue being her castle. Beneviento being the Horror Psychological Dollhouse, Mareau being the Swamp, and Lastly Heisenberg with his Factory. Each lair also requires a completely different playstyle from the previous one. With one not having weapons to fight back at all.
The further I went into the game the more I realized how much we’ve seen in the trailers and posters of the game compared to how much was in the final game. All of the best surprises were kept absolute secrets, the story has so many twists and turns that the game can’t help but keep you in permanent suspense, even keeping me up until 4 in the morning trying to get through the last few chapters as I simply could not put my controller down.
I played Resident Evil Village on Playstation 5. It offered some functionality using the DualSense controller, things such as the Adaptive Triggers and Subtle vibrations when a monster approaches you were amazing ingame and truly made you feel a bit more “part of the game” I had a scene where I had to hide in a cupboard to avoid one particular miniboss from finding me, the dualsense vibrations were so on point you could zero in where exactly the boss was walking as he stumbled towards you. This is an amazing feature added by the Developers.
Final Thoughts:
Resident Evil Village is by far my favorite entry into the series so far, By combining the horror from RE7 and crafting and combat styles from RE4, Capcom has achieved an absolutely ambitious yet stunning entry into the Resident Evil Series. It’s a must-play for any Resident Evil and even Horror Fans.