★★★★★

I have played many horror games in the past, and from the immense storyline and the intense boss fights, Resident Evil 8: Village definitely tops the cake! Immediately after starting the story, I was already immersed as the protagonist Ethan Winters, the protagonist for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Resident Evil 8 is a direct continuation of the Resident Evil 7 storyline and takes place nearly three years ahead of its timeline in the present day 2021.

Storyline

Ethan has gone through a lot in his time trying to hunt Mia, his wife, and finally managed to get her out of a crazy man’s house in the Resident Evil 7 story, after getting home, he decided to start a family of his own and Mia gave birth to Rosemary. Traveling to the present day, Chris Redfield has been on the hunt to find the source of it all, the mold.

The mold makes people go insane and essentially removes their human consciousness and makes them go into a zombified state of mind and turn into a creature called a Lycan. Ethan and Mia both become infected by the mold during Resident Evil 7’s storyline and Chris only obtained one cure. Ethan decided to give it to his wife instead of himself. Those events lead to tell the story of what you’re about to play through.

Difficulty

Is this game hard? Yes and no. You can play with many different difficulties, from casual to a more hardcore difficulty called the village of shadows. The different difficulties can make you rip your hair out so if you are not looking to spend hours upon end scrounging for ammo, you should go with the casual difficulty.

The harder you go, the more ammo bosses and Lycans will require for you to take them out. Also, their programmed line of sight will increase, which means they’re going to aggro you a whole lot more. If you select a harder difficulty, in the beginning, you can always go back if you die or even during the game to change it to whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Crafting and Weaponry

Crafting and buying items is an essential part of the whole Resident Evil Universe. In this game, it is a little bit different within the buying system. You will meet a man that goes by Duke. After talking with him for a little bit you can buy blueprints, ammo, and weapons from him. His progression will take the whole game to get through so don’t expect to have it easy for a while!

Blueprints are going to be valuable to you as you can craft different items like a shotgun, handgun, grenade launcher ammo, or even mines and explosives. He also has something that you come across during the first half of the game that can really boost some of your health benefits, this is called Duke’s kitchen. You will find passive animals around the map that drop meat after you hunt them.

There is only a limited supply around the map that is marked, so do not miss them! You can hand in those items and he can give you different effects such as a speed and health boost. You will also find crafting parts in buildings and outside that include herbs and mechanical parts. These items are used to craft the blueprints that you purchase from around the map with Duke.

Bosses and Antagonists

The boss fights in this game will make your butt clench! They are really scary but at the same time really fun to fight. The hardest boss to fight is the leader of them all which is Mother Miranda, she was a biological scientist turned cult leader who mutated by the mold. If you want to beat her on the first try you should probably play through the casual difficulty.

Next to Mother Miranda being the hardest would be Karl Heisenburg, a Mutant who can control metal similar to telekinesis. He serves Mother Miranda with three other siblings which leads us to our next boss Lady Dimitrescu. Like her mother and brother Lady Dimitrescu was also a mutant human aristocrat, she has 3 daughters named Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra who you’ll meet about an hour into the story. Lady Dimitrescu’s boss fight was the first boss fight that you encounter and she was one of the easier bosses, but if you’re on hardcore good luck.

The next boss is a very disgusting creature who goes by the name Moreau. Moreau is the son of Mother Miranda who was the last surviving member of the Moreau family, during his boss fight he turns into a giant fish in which you have to drain out water so he can’t swim anymore, once you do that the fight is on! Moving on from Moreau we have Donna Beneviento.

Donna Beneviento was a mutant doll maker who can control dolls….isn’t that frightening!! When her parents died, she cut herself off from the outside world and only spoke to her doll Angie. Her boss fight was also one of the easier ones as you didn’t technically fight her. Last but not least we have Uriaș. He was one of the strongest Lycans who stood by Mother Miranda and was the one who enforced her rules. He was infected by a parasite and transformed into a towering creature who used a big mallet to eliminate whoever got in his way.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this game was really fun! You will go through a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the story, which honestly adds so much effect to the characters and who you end up meeting. You grow a connection to them and it feels like you actually get to know them.

Some of the pros and cons I have are as follows. One of the biggest issues my buddies and I had was getting the right sensitivity on the keyboard and mouse. It felt really slow so if you are on 400dpi, I would suggest turning it up to 800. Another con I could give is that the developers were really vague when it comes to giving directions on what to do. It is a puzzle game however, in some of the areas you would spend hours trying to get to a location or finding a part.

Some of the pros I could give include when looting buildings, if you did not fully loot a location it would indicate that you missing something by showing a red box around the lootable area. If it was fully looted, it would be blue. Another good one was the amazing graphics and detail that they put into level design and much more. It was fantastic! Check out some additional tips for Resident Evil on this blog!