Long time followers of this blog know I have written a lot about the universe of Resident Evil games, books and movies in prior years. Like....enough that it may surprise you to know that it took me approximately 4 1/2 years from the date of its release to get around to playing (and finishing) Resident Evil Village....and I haven't even started Resident Evil 4 Remake yet, either. It took me a good year or two to get around to playing and finishing the RE 2 and 3 remakes as well.
Part of the problem with writing about the RE 2 and 3 remakes is that, well, they were kind of decent and managed capture the feel and style of the originals in a more modern play experience without bringing over any of the wonky or janky bits. In fact they were both rather fun games to play, and as such the most I could say about them was "Thumbs up, would play again!" Also, these are stories that, even if modified a bit, are well known to me, having played the originals multiple times....so not quite as exciting as entirely new content.
Resident Evil Village is a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7, which was the first in the series to break with a third person perspective, and also leaned into a lot of tropes that had become common in horror games around when it came out, including helpless protagonists (you eventually do get weapons and the game at some point begins to feel like a Resident Evil game, but not for a while), overwhelmingly villainous monsters who hold a clear power advantage, and for at least the majority of the game it is entirely unclear how it relates to the plot of the bigger Resident Evil universe. It eventually opens up with the (SPOILERS!) discovery of a beached Umbrella research ship, and the incredibly late game appearance of Chris Redfield, now working for a reborn Umbrella Corp, this time as an organization dedicated to cleaning up the mess of its predecessors, but until those moments the story is basically about a guy named Ethan Winters looking for his girlfriend who went back to see her weird family in the Louisiana Bayou, and they it turns out are all horrific mutant monsters that, you eventually learn, are being genetically modified by exposure to a mysterious mold that Umbrella was studying.
Cut to the sequel, in Resident Evil Village Ethan and his now wife Mia have had a child named Rose and moved to "Europe" (somewhere in or near Romania, it is presumed), where they seem to be living a normal and happy life, although Mia is acting a bit weird. Protip to young 'uns out there, its not really that weird, many moms act a bit off post-pregnancy, so if you ever find yourself there, trust me, she's just being herself, she is not secretly a Resident Evil monster. Almost immediately this is interrupted by Chris Redfield and his team of crack assassins murdering Mia and trying to spirit away baby Rose and Ethan without any explanation afforded; Chris Redfield is turning into a bit of a creepy black ops villain, it seems.
If you have seen any of this game's images, videos and discussions over the last years then you probably know this is the game with the big scary mommy-dommy vampiress, Lady Dimitrescu. As it turns out, this is only the game's first boss, as Lady Dimitrescu and her three "daughters," who are each creepy vampire-fly women are but the first stage of a much longer battle with the progeny/creations of Miranda, the actual real boss of the game and the actual reason this remote community in Romania is completely screwed up.
I played REV in the late-game DLC added third-person mode, so my sense of the game's creep factor was probably lowered by that fact a bit, but I really do love the over-the-shoulder third person perspective more than first person mode for horror games, its just the sweet spot I find most entertaining. That said, my son said he preferred the first person mode because it made the entire game creepier and more visceral, and he is not wrong; he plays all of these the day I buy them FYI, so just in case you think I'm buying a game and sitting on it four years....yeah I totally am, but the rest of the family (or those that care) have already played them to exhaustion immediately.
The multiple bosses in the game that come after Lady Alcina Dimitrescu (as well as the vampire herself) are all transformative battles, which is a staple of Resident Evil games.....you meet the villain, who is usually normal-ish looking (or horribly mutated, but still in a "normal" way such as with Moreau) and then you eventually push them too far, they take some damage, and the familiar "Now I begin mutating Akira-style out of control into a beast ten times my size" event happens and you get to have a fun boss arena fight. This is only broken by one encounter, with the doll-maker Beneviento, a woman who can manipulate the mind through hallucinogens and uses the mutating effects of the mold's source to control her dolls. That entire sequence strips you of weapons and forces you to deal with her horrifying hallucinations without a means of defense until the very end, and its actually done incredibly well, leading to the creepiest mid-game moment where you still have agency. Many other encounters are creepy, but handled as cut scenes; the evil doll's sequence is masterfully done and is the one part of the game that most closely reminds me of the earlier RE7 game. Dimitrescu's Castle is also fairly close, as you can't really harm her or her minions without using the right environmental tactics, so much of the castle sequence is spent running and hiding, as well. But the Beneviento Doll maker? This is probably some of the best stuff I've seen in any Resident Evil title, right up there with the first Tyrant encounters in the original trilogy and the opening creepy house sequence in RE7.
Around 75% of the way through REV I began to get a sense of tedium. I admittedly had been almost 100%ing the game, finding all of the special treasures and looting everything I could, but there came a point when I realizes I had depopulated the entire village and surroundings, and all that remained was to go after the semi-final boss Heisenberg and then Miranda herself. Ethan Winters had graduated from survivor to true monster hunter, and by this point in the plot it was clear he himself could very well also be a monster, just one that didn't appear to be ready to mutate. Around this point I have to say that I began to feel like the DNA of REV now felt like a blend of the high octane action of Resident Evil 5 and 6 more than RE7; the game had firmly established that it was most definitely in the Resident Evil universe.
Right before the final boss Miranda we find her secret lab where there was an insane level of information dumping. Lots of clues existed in the rest of the game, but the final lab neatly tied up everything in a bow, including explaining the Umbrella Corp./Dr. Spencer connections to the mysterious region and its mystery mutating mold monsters. The exposition dump was appreciated, but I really wish there had been more clues and details to be found more gradually; the end-of-game exposition dump felt if not a tad contrived, it might have been nicer to have it slightly more spread out, at least.
Similar to the RE7 DLC, but now part of the core game experience, you get a chance to play as old grizzled veteran Chris Redfield who must be like in his late 40's at the time the game takes place. Redfield gets a fun sequence where you are effectively given all the ammunition you need to fight hordes....literal, vast hordes of every lycan and other beast that has been a serious threat to Ethan up to this point with the firepower necessary to make short work of them. Before you rejoin Ethan following more blatant exposition dumps (and a final, grand explanation for his inexplicable healing powers) Chris manages to collect the goods, rescue Mia and plant the bomb (a surprisingly small bomb, but it does the job of wiping out the entire vale) before we return for Ethan's final showdown to save Baby Rose from Miranda. Miranda's fight is...fine....but perhaps not the most inspired as boss fights go. Not great, but at least not frustrating. If you had been maxing out your weapons and hoarding ammo, you will find this fight to be fairly easy, or at least not difficult.
I haven't played the Rose DLC yet. My son missed that the DLC released and wants to watch me play it. It sounds like it will be typical RE bonus content that is okay but not great; we'll see. The main game was well worth it, but I was surprised at how much REV shed it's RE7 vibe for more conventional RE style horror....but with the concession that maybe that was inevitable, playing in the third person mode.
If you, like me, somehow never played this game, but enjoy good survival horror, then I would give it a thumbs up for you! If you haven't played RE7 you really ought to play that one first, though. Solid A- from me, mainly because I was, toward the end, feeling like the game could have ended at about the 70% mark and I would have been content.....but to its credit, there weren't too many areas that felt like a drawn out slog (maybe tiny bit with The Factory at the end, which was tense and interesting but also easy to get lost in). But all of the locations and bosses of the family were in general well realized and different enough that the game kept providing new and interesting stuff at every step, and it really was only in the late game when I began to feel like Ethan was the Real Monster here that it felt like it was time for the story to end (but I still had to defeat Heisenberg and Miranda by that point!)
Now to play Resident Evil 4 Remake before Resident Evil Requiem comes out! I have pre-ordered Requiem, and am determined to play it on day of release, none of this multi-year procrastination again!
What's left to say.....hmmmm....how about, "Hey Capcom, when's Resident Evil Code Veronica getting remade????"
One final thought: what was up with Duke? Your resident merchant is never explained, and chooses to be enigmatic right up to the end. I was expecting some sort of reveal that he was cousin to Dimitrescu or something. My son says there's a connection to the arms dealer in RE 4 but he also hangs out on fan-theory forums so its hard to parse out what is real and what is just redditors pulling nonsense out of thin air.
