Why Resident Evil Village Sucks

In its defense, it works for a Resident Evil game. If you are looking for something that matches that tales of Leon and Claire in Racoon City then I guess you have lucked out (barely still don't find it that good). Though, as a horror game it is incredibly dissapointing.

The false advertising of Lady Dimitrescu, though she is not why I played the game, was only the beginning to how much I disliked this one. Despite her being the entire bait of the production she is in the game for at most one hour and thats only if you cannot play it well enough. Her character and her story also got little to no screentime and also held very little signifigance. As well as the scenes including her daughters. As much as I love bugs in horror and I absolutely adored the story between Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, it just felt like it held no leverage.

Resident Evil Village struggles mainly with tension. The atmosphere is fairly empty. Well lit, lots of space, very easy dodge and run mechanics. And while this makes for less tedious gameplay (thank god) it does take away from the rest of the game. Resident Evil as a series thrives off of body horror and making the player observe it. It's monsters are often something to behold and it just didn't feel apparent enough in this one. Especially since you had the choice to just move on or look away.

The formula of this was also so repetitve in the worst way, none of the boss fights felt big enough or threatening enough. The prefight gameplay was as expected, exploration mixed with point and click puzzles, and frankly it all felt like it was just dragging on. There was little to no horror aspects within it. The most jaw dropping immersive section of the game was against the fetus creature (can easily be found by searching 'Resident Evil 8 baby'). This part of the game genuinely got to me, the visceral noises of the child, the way it moved, the way it's body is shaped all of it. Only for this section to be swept under the rug for a game of hide and seek? With a doll? I am so tired of horror games pretending dolls are scary, while they can be in the right atmosphere, this well lit room in a game with, frankly, little to no stakes as it was fairly predictable, just was not adding up to the chase scene that ensued before it.

And then for the fetus creature to be interpreted as a delusion? So dissapointing. Things like this should have been carried through the whole game, especially since fatherhood was such a heavy and pushed theme in this one.

I guess that my main issue with this game simply came with the high expectations for it. Certain scenes remind me of PT Silent Hills or even Outlast, obvious considering their similar animation, and with my deep love for those games I simply was hoping for the best when it came to this one.

There are just a million aspects of this game that do nothing but take the player out of it. If you do not know Ethan Winters going into the game the scenes where he regrows his hand are a pretty great example of that. Which is also just kind of cheap in itself, there truly are no real stakes at all. The only characters I felt strongly for were the homonculus baby creature and Heisenburg! Characters that either don't exist apparently or are ruined by the end of the game.

The whole segment within Heisenburgs factory was just a let down. There were maybe two good visuals from that arc and then it immediately turned into boring gameplay, a part of me wishes they just kept up the allyship ruse for longer.

Overall, a dissapointment. It was missing the camp aspects of the Leon based Resident Evil games, which make the game more forgiving to critique, and just had the habit of taking out the interesting scenes of the game and swapping them for an expected chain link based setup. Wish I could have liked this one, I really wanted to especially since the character design on the antagonists were so good as they all differentiated. Sadly character design only goes so far.

More of the fetus creature, less of whoever was supposed to be the main antagonist next time.