Operation Backlog Completion 2025
Oct 112023
 

Two years ago, I played Resident Evil Village and generally enjoyed it despite some mixed feelings.

Last year, its story DLC Shadows of Rose came out, and I picked it up… only to forget about it until this year.

But now it’s finally time to talk about Shadows of Rose.

Note: Certain implied spoilers for Resident Evil Village are impossible to avoid while discussing the premise of Shadows of Rose, so keep that in mind if you haven’t finished Village yet.

Shadows of Rose is set 16 years after the events of the main game and follows Rose as she sends her consciousness into the Megamycete in an attempt to rid herself of her powers by finding a Purifying Crystal. This setup for the story allows for a bit more psychological and supernatural horror, although it didn’t lean into it as much as I expect.

For the most part, it feels like a miniature version of Village’s castle and house sections. You explore with a mild amount of backtracking and puzzle-solving, and face enemies both with guns and with Rose’s powers, which you unlock as you progress.

I worried a character with special powers might feel overpowered for a survival horror game, but instead they serve more as a means of stalling enemies to buy yourself some extra time. They also play a role in exploration, which helped the DLC feel a bit more distinct.

Story-wise, Shadows of Rose is fine. It didn’t wow me with anything exceptional, but it was a decent personal story for Rose. The most disappointing thing about the DLC is probably that it takes advantage of its Megamycete concept to just reuse areas from the main game. That makes it feel like a bit of a retread. It would have been much more interesting to see unique places from the Megamycete’s many stored memories. Similarly, it ends with the main game’s epilogue scene instead of adding anything new.

Where the DLC shines the brightest (or darkest), though, is in its scares. Shadows of Rose made me jump a few times, and its take on House Beneviento comes close to the main game’s section in terms of scariness. It might even surpass it. I wanted a scary game for October, and this was a good choice.

I still have concerns that the series could be leaning back toward action-oriented adventures instead of the slower-paced survival horror style that finally made a return, but as far as this DLC goes, I had quite a good, spooky time with Shadows of Rose.

Oct 222021
 

I don’t understand Capcom sometimes. I really don’t.

Last year, one of our spooky October games was Resident Evil 7, so it’s only fitting that we take a look at Resident Evil Village this year.

Village picks up after the events of Resident Evil 7. Ethan Winters returns as the protagonist, trapped in an isolated village full of monsters as he searches for his kidnapped daughter. Like its predecessor, it has a tone that feels very unusual for Resident Evil at first, this time leaning into supernatural horror with vampires, werewolves, and similar creatures.

It attempts to explain all of this, of course, and I didn’t especially mind that shift in direction in the first place.

No, my major concern ahead of Village’s launch was that it might focus too much on action, and the demo together with the reviews left me with mixed feelings. But I saw enough encouragement from other survival horror fans that I took the plunge and bought Resident Evil Village (shortly after launch, in fact; I just ended up taking a long break partway through it).

Now that I’ve finished it, I have more mixed feelings than ever.

There are a lot of great things in Village. I loved the exploration in the village and the first major area. Searching for keys, backtracking, unlocking new areas – the classic gameplay loop was there. For me, the merchant dragged it down a bit, since finding treasure to sell to a merchant so I can buy items and upgrades isn’t the sort of thing I look for in a survival horror game (and I wasn’t crazy about enemies dropping resources, either).

The system wasn’t terrible, but my initial satisfaction of returning to a previous area with a new key item that let me unlock more areas and find more items faded into emptiness when I realized most of the new items would be treasures to sell.

You also can upgrade your physical attributes by killing animals for meat and bringing it back to the merchant. I actually liked that, since it made sense and didn’t make me feel too overpowered. In general, this whole aspect of the game was something I would have preferred to do without, but could accept because of the rest of the gameplay.

One section of the game was also so terrifying, I’d rank it up there as one of the scariest moments in any horror game I’ve played. I loved it.

But then, in the latter part of the game, it shifted toward action. It kept some basic aspects of the structure but had a bigger emphasis on shooting things. Then it veered even harder into action from there. Honestly, it went so far, I might have found it endearing if I wasn’t worried about Capcom’s direction for the series.

Can they just not help themselves? Are they still trying to appeal to two different audiences with the same game? Do they really want to make an action game and used this to test the waters?

If you’d asked me in the first half of the game, maybe even the first 3/4, I would have recommended Resident Evil Village in a heartbeat. It had action trappings that didn’t take away from the survival horror gameplay, and it followed in the footsteps of Resident Evil 7. But if you asked me during the final sections, I would have said no, they’ve gone back to action horror, it’s not like the old games at all.

Remember when Capcom went through a period of claiming each new Resident Evil game had both action sections and classic survival horror sections? That’s what this is. This is the game they claimed to have made so many times, but coming off of the success of Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 remake’s return to horror, I’m not sure why they decided to do it.

I don’t know how I feel about Resident Evil Village, and I don’t know where the series is going. Resident Evil 9 could be an incredible horror game, or it could be a return to action. It all depends on what lessons Capcom takes from Resident Evil Village.

May 052021
 

Resident Evil Village will be released on Friday, reviews are out now, and a demo has been available, albeit one with some odd availability restrictions.

So, how are we feeling about the next Resident Evil game?

I haven’t talked about Resident Evil Village here a lot, but if you’ve followed my posts enough to see when it does pop up, you’ll know I’ve had mixed feelings ever since the game was revealed.

I was never pleased with the action-oriented direction the series took with Resident Evil 4 and the games that followed.

Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 remake, however, were a triumphant return to survival horror that once again left me excited for the series.

Mixed reviews citing limited exploration and a lack of puzzles made me skip the Resident Evil 3 remake, and then Resident Evil 8, or Village, popped up with an awful lot of surface similarities to Resident Evil 4.

After my renewed hope for the series, I found myself once again feeling pessimistic toward what looked like a return to action horror. But I did try the demo, and that left me… cautiously optimistic. There are definitely action elements here; enemies dropping money that I can take to a vendor to buy and upgrade weapons is not exactly what I look for in a survival horror game.

On the other hand, the demo also included some locked doors and puzzles, and not just ones to solve immediately and move on.

Reviews came out today, and I read a few of them. I saw several references to the action being ramped up, but also some that mentioned backtracking and unlocking new areas. It sounds as though Village might have the style of exploration and progression that I look for in survival horror, which is a major thing the previous action Resident Evil games were missing.

If Resident Evil Village clearly followed in the footsteps of Resident Evil 7 and RE2make, I’d probably be getting it day one. Since it does seem like it veered back toward action a bit, I won’t be. However, I’ve heard enough now that I’ll probably give it a chance eventually.

What do you think of Resident Evil Village based on what we know so far?