Here's my spoiler-free review of Resident Evil Village. At the time of writing this I've finished the game 5 times, completed all available challenges, went through all difficulties and checked pretty much everything the game has to offer. I've enjoyed the overall package, so I'll be focusing mostly on its faults.

For those that are concerned about the duration of the game, I can share some good news: depending on your picked difficulty + play style approach, the game could be anywhere from 10 to 20 hours. For my first impressions I picked Hardcore, did tons of exploration and sightseeing, ended up with 15 hours of in-game timer, even more on Steam playtime due to restarts and deaths. The quality of the segments always felt top-notch throughout the experience and there wasn't a segment that felt particularly rushed.

While RE7 had like 3 goo monsters for the whole game, in Village the variety is back on the menu. It's not as mutation-rich like RE6, but the roster is decent, and you don't get the "not this same-looking thing again" feeling that plagued 7. If I had to complain then I'd mention that some enemy design in terms of attack patterns is a bit annoying, especially during the first playthrough.

Exploration is really fun in this one, as Village looks gorgeous. You can see the areas that you're going to visit in the distance, similar to Souls. It's possible to explore at your own pace and the visuals are a consistent eye candy unless you start noticing recycled assets from previous RE engine games. The pacing is excellent, as it balances between action, exploration and horror.

The gunplay is okay. There are a couple of things holding it back: as of now there's stuttering (see PC Specifics) and on higher difficulties B.O.W.s become far too spongy for my taste. I would rather prefer more dangerous and aggressive behavior or at least increased numbers, but not basic spongy ORC-style B.O.W.s that rarely flinch to begin with. On the flip side, the firepower arsenal has been expanded, you can carry more weapons and they are upgradable. Weapons progression is satisfying, it's possible to do the old RE4 ammo refill trick, the selection of weapons is versatile yet traditional. It gets expanded even more once you finish the game and unlock bonus content.

Standard difficulty showers the player with ammo, Hardcore provides much better resource balancing, but also gatekeeps new players with an unfair difficulty spike right at the beginning of the game. It's not representative of the overall difficulty and is rather frustrating experience for an unsuspecting player. As a whole package Hardcore provides just enough resources to keep the player on the edge, giving something I'd call "resource management anxiety": the player being scared of spending ammo too inefficiently, rather than being scared by B.O.W.s themselves. A satisfying survival horror game won't force you to run away unless it's a scripted/timed sequence.

Village of Shadows difficulty is the arrange mode of this game that shuffles B.O.W.s around, throws in extra surprises, and you'd think it would be similar to RE7's Madhouse, but it ain't. While it is possible to finish your first playthrough on this difficulty, I wouldn't consider it to be an "enjoyable" experience, as the balancing is geared towards returning players that have completion unlocks. See it as RE3's Infernal difficulty.

It's time for the annual soundtrack complaints. RE7, RE2 and RE Village share a common approach to audio design - ambience during exploration, a suspense theme when B.O.W.s are alert or searching nearby, battle themes for the boss fights and a dramatic last stretch theme. Only RE3 breaks this mold by utilizing a remade original soundtrack, which gives the game a deeper atmosphere that the other titles lack. I didn't expect much, but Village sounded really generic and nothing caught my ear except for maybe The Mercenaries theme, similar to how the best themes of RE2 were in the DLC content. I believe that a distinct soundtrack would compliment a survival horror title, classic RE titles and Revelations did it right.

There were quite a few scenes that were painfully cliché. You enter a room and see all the set pieces in place: the trigger, the ambush and the place where things will go bad. Is this supposed to give the player awareness and cause anticipation anxiety? This happens a bit too often and even in some cutscenes it's possible to accurately guess the outcome. I can't say that predictability is a good quality in a horror title, but then again I've heard rumors that Village has been intentionally toned down, since RE7 was "too scary". If so, then I disagree with such decision entirely.

Reach for the Moon Engine scales well with older hardware. If you've played any of the previous games using this engine then chances are you're going to experience a similar performance profile. I was pleasantly surprised that the demo and the main game ran mostly at locked 60 FPS, which is also the target frame rate on consoles. The options menu is vast and there's a nice amount of tweakable settings.

However, as of now there are a few performance bugs that can negatively impact the player's overall experience, depending on how sensitive the player is to them.
Every single time you land a finishing blow on a B.O.W. the game will stutter, and it's certainly ain't yet another implementation of Capcom's Hit-Stop technology from Dead Rising. Does it occur on consoles? No. Does this make the game unplayable? Also no, as I've went through all the game's challenges while having this bug.
Whenever there are a lot of insects on your screen, the frame rate nosedives to the point of being barely playable. This can be avoided by not nearing the bugs, but even then it's not something that can be ignored.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing is not working correctly, since any other RE title will have visible ghosting when there's some kind of motion. This means more aliased image unless you bump up the resolution or resolution multiplier.

I can agree that most video games should have an FoV slider and that it is not acceptable not to include one. We should not be resorting to 3rd party patches for such basic accessibility option, considering that narrow FoV can cause motion sickness.

After watching Digital Foundry PC port review done by Alex Battaglia, I can agree with everything said in the video. So here are a few things that I'd want to highlight.
When I first booted up the game I was confused by the slowest license agreement scrolling I've ever seen, then following by a menu that clearly was not designed for a snappy keyboard and mouse experience. The in-game default key binds are comfortable enough, though.
Variable Rate Shading is completely messed up and defeats the purpose of the setting. It's not configured properly and should be not used as of now.
Ray tracing settings lack any sort of future-proofing, allowing a console-like experience at best. I personally enjoy pushing old games to their limits, especially if they offer options that would absolutely destroy the frame rate on hardware of the time. In this case the resolution of the effects is so low that it can look worse than traditional rasterized graphics.

Sincerely hoping to see the game receive the necessary performance, graphical and QoL patches.

For the duration of my 100% challenge completion I've mostly had fun and I didn't experience burn-out. The game has good levels of replayability thanks to its distinct locations, the player's arsenal of weapons and balanced pacing. As the developers said, Village is certainly more action-oriented and it's good at what it does, same as Resident Evil 6.

Review copy provided by Capcom Co., Ltd and another free copy by a channel supporter.

Here's my spoiler-free review of Resident Evil Village. At the time of writing this I've finished the game 5 times, completed all available challenges, went through all difficulties and checked pretty much everything the game has to offer. I've enjoyed the overall package, so I'll be focusing mostly on its faults. [h1][b]Fine Status[/b][/h1] For those that are concerned about the duration of the game, I can share some good news: depending on your picked difficulty + play style approach, the game could be anywhere from 10 to 20 hours. For my first impressions I picked Hardcore, did tons of exploration and sightseeing, ended up with 15 hours of in-game timer, even more on Steam playtime due to restarts and deaths. The quality of the segments always felt top-notch throughout the experience and there wasn't a segment that felt particularly rushed. While RE7 had like 3 goo monsters for the whole game, in Village the variety is back on the menu. It's not as mutation-rich like RE6, but the roster is decent, and you don't get the "not this same-looking thing again" feeling that plagued 7. If I had to complain then I'd mention that some enemy design in terms of attack patterns is a bit annoying, especially during the first playthrough. Exploration is really fun in this one, as Village looks gorgeous. You can see the areas that you're going to visit in the distance, similar to Souls. It's possible to explore at your own pace and the visuals are a consistent eye candy unless you start noticing recycled assets from previous RE engine games. The pacing is excellent, as it balances between action, exploration and horror. The gunplay is okay. There are a couple of things holding it back: as of now there's stuttering (see PC Specifics) and on higher difficulties B.O.W.s become far too spongy for my taste. I would rather prefer more dangerous and aggressive behavior or at least increased numbers, but not basic spongy ORC-style B.O.W.s that rarely flinch to begin with. On the flip side, the firepower arsenal has been expanded, you can carry more weapons and they are upgradable. Weapons progression is satisfying, it's possible to do the old RE4 ammo refill trick, the selection of weapons is versatile yet traditional. It gets expanded even more once you finish the game and unlock bonus content. [h1][b]Caution Status[/b][/h1] Standard difficulty showers the player with ammo, Hardcore provides much better resource balancing, but also gatekeeps new players with an unfair difficulty spike right at the beginning of the game. It's not representative of the overall difficulty and is rather frustrating experience for an unsuspecting player. As a whole package Hardcore provides just enough resources to keep the player on the edge, giving something I'd call "resource management anxiety": the player being scared of spending ammo too inefficiently, rather than being scared by B.O.W.s themselves. A satisfying survival horror game won't force you to run away unless it's a scripted/timed sequence. Village of Shadows difficulty is the arrange mode of this game that shuffles B.O.W.s around, throws in extra surprises, and you'd think it would be similar to RE7's Madhouse, but it ain't. While it is possible to finish your first playthrough on this difficulty, I wouldn't consider it to be an "enjoyable" experience, as the balancing is geared towards returning players that have completion unlocks. See it as RE3's Infernal difficulty. [h1][b]Danger Status[/b][/h1] It's time for the annual soundtrack complaints. RE7, RE2 and RE Village share a common approach to audio design - ambience during exploration, a suspense theme when B.O.W.s are alert or searching nearby, battle themes for the boss fights and a dramatic last stretch theme. Only RE3 breaks this mold by utilizing a remade original soundtrack, which gives the game a deeper atmosphere that the other titles lack. I didn't expect much, but Village sounded really generic and nothing caught my ear except for maybe The Mercenaries theme, similar to how the best themes of RE2 were in the DLC content. I believe that a distinct soundtrack would compliment a survival horror title, classic RE titles and Revelations did it right. There were quite a few scenes that were painfully cliché. You enter a room and see all the set pieces in place: the trigger, the ambush and the place where things will go bad. Is this supposed to give the player awareness and cause anticipation anxiety? This happens a bit too often and even in some cutscenes it's possible to accurately guess the outcome. I can't say that predictability is a good quality in a horror title, but then again I've heard rumors that Village has been intentionally toned down, since RE7 was "too scary". If so, then I disagree with such decision entirely. [h1][b]PC Specifics[/b][/h1] Reach for the Moon Engine scales well with older hardware. If you've played any of the previous games using this engine then chances are you're going to experience a similar performance profile. I was pleasantly surprised that the demo and the main game ran mostly at locked 60 FPS, which is also the target frame rate on consoles. The options menu is vast and there's a nice amount of tweakable settings. However, as of now there are a few performance bugs that can negatively impact the player's overall experience, depending on how sensitive the player is to them. Every single time you land a finishing blow on a B.O.W. the game will stutter, and it's certainly ain't yet another implementation of Capcom's Hit-Stop technology from Dead Rising. Does it occur on consoles? No. Does this make the game unplayable? Also no, as I've went through all the game's challenges while having this bug. Whenever there are a lot of insects on your screen, the frame rate nosedives to the point of being barely playable. This can be avoided by not nearing the bugs, but even then it's not something that can be ignored. Temporal Anti-Aliasing is not working correctly, since any other RE title will have visible ghosting when there's some kind of motion. This means more aliased image unless you bump up the resolution or resolution multiplier. I can agree that most video games should have an FoV slider and that it is not acceptable not to include one. We should not be resorting to 3rd party patches for such basic accessibility option, considering that narrow FoV can cause motion sickness. After watching Digital Foundry PC port review done by Alex Battaglia, I can agree with everything said in the video. So here are a few things that I'd want to highlight. When I first booted up the game I was confused by the slowest license agreement scrolling I've ever seen, then following by a menu that clearly was not designed for a snappy keyboard and mouse experience. The in-game default key binds are comfortable enough, though. Variable Rate Shading is completely messed up and defeats the purpose of the setting. It's not configured properly and should be not used as of now. Ray tracing settings lack any sort of future-proofing, allowing a console-like experience at best. I personally enjoy pushing old games to their limits, especially if they offer options that would absolutely destroy the frame rate on hardware of the time. In this case the resolution of the effects is so low that it can look worse than traditional rasterized graphics. Sincerely hoping to see the game receive the necessary performance, graphical and QoL patches. [h1][b]Conclusion:[/b][/h1] For the duration of my 100% challenge completion I've mostly had fun and I didn't experience burn-out. The game has good levels of replayability thanks to its distinct locations, the player's arsenal of weapons and balanced pacing. As the developers said, Village is certainly more action-oriented and it's good at what it does, same as Resident Evil 6. Review copy provided by Capcom Co., Ltd and another free copy by a channel supporter.