Resident Evil Village is a direct continuation of Resident Evil 7, so you can either play the seventh part first (fortunately, it takes 6-7 hours to complete), or watch a special video from the developers for 2 minutes, where all events are described very briefly. Well, you may have to look at the Wiki a couple of times for some names, but no more.
Plot
The protagonist of the game, Ethan Winters, moved to Europe with his wife, Mia. They have a daughter, Rosa, and they lead a quiet life in a small cozy house, trying not to remember the terrible events of the seventh part of the game. Suddenly their idyll is interrupted by Chris Redfield, he kills Mia and takes Rosa away. This, if anything, is not a spoiler.
but a plot from the developers, which they showed in the very first trailer. After that, Ethan finds himself in a remote, nameless village, where some kind of devilry happens: there are almost no inhabitants, devastation is everywhere, and huge hairy dogs and werewolves roam the streets.
Ethan finds out that a certain mother Miranda patronizes the village, and with her there are four lords: the owner of the plant, Heisenberg; A puppeteer who lives in a house on the edge of a cemetery; ugly Moro from the lake near the mill and the same Lady Dimitrescu’s from the castle of the same name. How all these characters are interconnected, what Chris Redfield needs and where Ethan’s daughter has gone – you have to find out.
The plot is not always logical, but copes with the function of “interesting and guiding” the player. Moreover, the tricks here are quite simple: everything that happens in the game is described in a couple of sentences, but information is given gradually.
little by little, and as a result, you always remain in a slight ignorance of what is happening here at all. And this, in turn, works great for the atmosphere, because Ethan also constantly does not understand anything and is surprised at everything. On the one hand, this makes Ethan a bit of an empty character, but on the other hand, it is easier for the player to get used to his role.
Gameplay
Combat mechanics in Resident Evil Village combine classic, one might even say, traditional elements from the second and fourth parts: little ammo, but not a lot of enemies, thick-skinned enemies, but rather slow. Shoot a trio of werewolves, walk around, collect all sorts of loot, solve a puzzle, open closed doors, shoot another three werewolves – quite normal gameplay for those who played Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 7. But this does not mean that the game has nothing more to offer .
Each location of one of Miranda’s mother’s henchmen is a separate attraction. Lady Dimitrescu’s castle is a reference to the police station and running from the Tyrant from Resident Evil 2 Remake. The Dollmaker’s House is a reference to the Silent Hills (aka P.T.) gameplay teaser by Hideo Kojima. At the same time, the heroes borrow exactly as much as they need, so that it is not too long, but interesting. As a result, in Resident Evil Village, each location is remembered, although the basics of the gameplay are almost unchanged. But if they work, then why not?
Unlike Resident Evil 7, a merchant named Duke appeared in this part. You can buy ammo, crafting schematics, or weapon upgrades from him. But the game cannot be turned into a hurricane shooter – the Duke sells a limited number of cartridges. You will have to pay in local currency, which either drops from enemies or is hidden in different places on the levels. The Duke also accepts various kinds of jewelry: figurines, dolls, golden goblets and crystallized remains of especially strong enemies.
The bosses let us down a bit – it’s almost always a pile of meat around which you run in circles and put all the cartridges into it. Although a couple of bosses have interesting mechanics, but most often it will be just a round dance around the target. Moreover, in Resident Evil Village, some arenas are too narrow – literally the size of a martial arts arena, in the center of which is a pile of meat three times your size.
The moments when you have to kill a lot of enemies in a small location seemed superfluous to me. But here the problem is in the shooting mechanics itself – as I said, it is very classic. To kill two or three zombies in a narrow space.
it is enough, but when enemies constantly shoot at you, specific aiming and the lack of an adequate response to shots begin to tire. It seems that there is critical damage to the head, and enemies sometimes fall, but still, the more enemies, the more stuffy it becomes to shoot at them. It’s funny that this does not include one cool short episode where you need to mow down a bunch of werewolves. But here, unfortunately, a spoiler, which is worth it not to disclose its details.
Graphics and visual
Capcom did a very good job on the visual part of the game, and even with the paste gene. The general style of the environment and locations always reminded me of Bloodborne, which is cool. It seems that the developers themselves walked around the village and arranged objects, tinted textures and hung severed goat heads on trees – the locations look very atmospheric and unique. True, because of this, interactivity suffers a little: bottles and pots are firmly glued to surfaces, and pants hanging on a rope seem to be frozen – they will not react either to the player or to his blows.
But still, these are small things that can be sacrificed. Light, shadows, effects, filters, processing – all together produces a very beautiful picture that fits into what is happening. The Dimitrescu’s Castle is decorated with gold-framed wood, the Dollmaker’s house has shabby peekable wallpaper, and the Heisenberg Factory reeks of Wolfenstein Castle motifs.
The only thing that doesn’t work very well here is ray tracing. First, the rays in Resident Evil Village are purely auxiliary – in some places they make the shadows softer and add some reflections. Secondly, on a PC, fps can drop from 60+ to 15-20 in the most unexpected places for this. It is worth turning off ray tracing – and fps returns to normal. This is the only case when the game is unstable, otherwise everything is very smooth and beautiful.
