Resident Evil Village - now featuring giant vampire MILFs

[Wunderbar]

It's a shame the castle isn't like 2-3x as big with just the one save point and a lot more to do/more ground to cover before being able to get back to safety. As it is if you are spotted you just kind of dodge her once then run to a safe area or the save point. The sister that ambushes you is also a nice idea but its only in the one main room and the save room takes about 10s to get to from there.

I agree, the castle was a huge missed opportunity, on surface it looked like a typical sprawling RE location. But then you basically find all mcguffins in a linear fashion, and you never needed to backtrack anywhere.

Seems like despite RE7 and RE2R successes Capcom immediately ditched the survival horror gameplay and went straight for the RE4 crowd, again. Except Village is not as good at being RE4. The combat is anemic, the level design is lame, there maybe like... four or five enemy types, and none of them are fun to fight. Even the inventory tetris was a letdown.

Damn man. Though RE4 was 90% on rails and was good. I'm a sucker for RE games even if they are kind of shit.

it's not the worst mainline RE game out there (i think RE6 is still worse).

 

[Zombra]

It's odd. I played Village this Halloween and really liked it a lot. I usually play things on "kinda hard" difficulty, definitely didn't have the bullet sponge idiocy Average Manatee described but there was still a lot of tension. The different pacing between the four big chapters was captivating imo, almost like they were trying again to do what they did with RE6 except actually fun this time. Obviously the intent was not to have "one huge mansion" like RE1 but just spend a few hours on each location type, get a taste, get it done and move on. For me this more dynamic structure worked really well. Not a flawless game to be sure, but pretty strong from beginning to end. No real complaints here.

 

[Average Manatee]

That's interesting. I went around to look for exactly what the difficulties change and found this:

0 0~999 1
1 1000~1999 0.85 Casual: 0~1999 (start from 1200)
2 2000~2999 0.75
3 3000~3999 0.6
4 4000~4999 0.5 Normal: 2000~7999 (start from 4200)
5 5000~5999 0.45
6 6000~6999 0.425
7 7000~7999 0.375
8 8000~8999 0.325 Hardcore: 7000~8999 (start from 8500)
9~12 9000~12000 0.2 VoS: 9000~12000 (start from 12000)

First two columns are the real difficulty "level" (selected difficulty level just sets a range for your adaptive difficulty which shifts up up or down levels by dealing damage or taking damage). Third column is the damage modifier all your shots deal. So on Normal your shots can range from dealing 37.5% of base damage to 75% base damage. That's a huge range and kind of shows why adaptive difficulty systems suck. Hardcore is either 32.5% normal damage or 37.5% normal damage and highest difficulty is 20% normal damage, which actually equates perfectly with how I said that enemies feel like they "should" take 1/5th as many bullets to kill.

I'm guessing you played on normal difficulty Zombra? Because hardcore still looks very bullet spongey (starting enemies would take about ~12 shots to the head to kill with unmodified pistol). I wonder did you completely drown in ammo the whole game? If Casual and Normal difficulty gave as much ammo as Hardcore and VoS I'd expect to be overflowing with it. I was pretty tight on ammo when I finished off giant lady and I cheesed a lot of enemies to get free kills and not waste ammo in the castle.

 

[Average Manatee]

I agree, the castle was a huge missed opportunity, on surface it looked like a typical sprawling RE location. But then you basically find all mcguffins in a linear fashion, and you never needed to backtrack anywhere.

There was a small amount of backtracking for some optional finds but yeah, missed opportunity. And the game does seem to be going downhill now.

Seems like despite RE7 and RE2R successes Capcom immediately ditched the survival horror gameplay and went straight for the RE4 crowd, again. Except Village is not as good at being RE4. The combat is anemic, the level design is lame, there maybe like... four or five enemy types, and none of them are fun to fight. Even the inventory tetris was a letdown.

Well, going for the doll girl now and they definitely copied RE7's "completely non-combat puzzle-based section" of that game. Really wasn't a fan of that part of RE7 but at least it had a somewhat threatening time limit for you to solve the puzzle in. In RE8 its just boring running back and forth.

To a certain extent every mainline game since RE4 has been a copy of RE4, they've just copied and emphasized radically different sections of RE4 while dropping others. Honestly if anything this is the closet the game has gotten to pre-RE4 due to how enemies are so bullet spongey (at least on the highest difficulty), meaning that not killing everything is actually a good idea and developing a path around enemies in certain areas is the way to play. But that's not enough to overrule all the other problems, and if the castle is the only place that isn't a corridor shooter then it won't even matter much later on.

it's not the worst mainline RE game out there (i think RE6 is still worse).

Well RE6 was just so awful that I've sort of expunged it from my memory. Every other RE game (aside from the recent remakes) I've both played and replayed every few years to varying degrees but RE6 deserves to die in a grave somewhere.

 

[Zombra]

I'm guessing you played on normal difficulty Zombra? Because hardcore still looks very bullet spongey (starting enemies would take about ~12 shots to the head to kill with unmodified pistol). I wonder did you completely drown in ammo the whole game? If Casual and Normal difficulty gave as much ammo as Hardcore and VoS I'd expect to be overflowing with it. I was pretty tight on ammo when I finished off giant lady and I cheesed a lot of enemies to get free kills and not waste ammo in the castle.

Normal difficulty seems like what I probably chose, yes. If the next one is called Hardcore, I know I didn't want that.

No, there wasn't a ton of ammo all the time - I certainly had to craft a lot over the course, and there were plenty of times when I had to use a less favored weapon type because the best weapon for the situation was low or out. Also I had to be strategic about when to upgrade magazine size because those upgrades come with free refills. I did use the knife some to conserve but didn't "cheese" any fights. Also of note, I played with no crosshair and no HUD, and I'm adamant that I will never again be the kind of player who reloads a save game whenever I miss a shot. Is there aim assist? If so I turned that on but many (many) shots still didn't connect. Lastly I'll mention that I don't use any kind of walkthroughs so if there's an enemy that can only be defeated by sunlight, I generally only figure it out after bouncing a ton of ammo off their armor. The point is that I "waste" a lot of ammunition with deliberately suboptimal play. Bottom line, I have no idea if the amount provided is the same for all difficulties.

 

[Average Manatee]

There's definitely aim assist on by default. Playing without crosshair would explain a lot, missed shots add up quick. And not getting headshots does too, headshots seem to deal ~2x damage.

That reminds me of another complaint I have, a lack of the laser pointer option that earlier REs had. Modern FPS crosshairs in an RE game make aiming way too easy and quick, the old laser pointers forced you to slow down a lot more if you wanted headshots. Though it'd also make the pistol even more useless.

In terms of cheese

Spoiler

There's a point where you light a fire and enemies can be lit if you bring them back to that room which quickly takes them down to 1 HP and you can kill them with a single knife hit. There's around 10-12 enemies in the area ahead that can be brought back to the fire, so that saved 200+ pistol ammo for me since it would be a very difficult area to run by them in incredibly dark and fairly cramped corridors.

Aside from that room the only common enemies I had to fight in the castle were the enemies in the blood room. I did thankfully use my pistol against two of the daughters (not the first one in the cramped area) which meant I had a lot of shotgun and rifle ammo for giant girl, which would have been awful to fight had I needed to rely on the pistol.

 

[kites]

(slight use of) adaptive difficulty/damage scaling based on accuracy/ammo management may seem alright in principle, but in execution it is completely unsatisfying.. I can see why they started using it, but it's been getting worse every title since re4.. when I spend 10-20 hours with a game, I want to know how many shots in a target area I need depending on ammo type/etc

 

[orcinator]

(slight use of) adaptive difficulty/damage scaling based on accuracy/ammo management may seem alright in principle, but in execution it is completely unsatisfying.. I can see why they started using it, but it's been getting worse every title since re4.. when I spend 10-20 hours with a game, I want to know how many shots in a target area I need depending on ammo type/etc

Feels like only God Hand did it somewhat competently by making adaptive difficulty a gauge of how well you're doing and letting the player see it.

 

[Average Manatee]

(slight use of) adaptive difficulty/damage scaling based on accuracy/ammo management may seem alright in principle, but in execution it is completely unsatisfying.. I can see why they started using it, but it's been getting worse every title since re4.. when I spend 10-20 hours with a game, I want to know how many shots in a target area I need depending on ammo type/etc

I feel like some randomization adds to the tension/horror aspect rather than letting the player methodically reduce every enemy down to "this enemy dies in exactly 3 handgun shots, this one dies in one shotgun blast and 2 handgun shots, etc etc". But it should be randomness rather than difficulty scaling. RE4 had a critical hit chance on headshots that would lead to instant head explosions which I found to be a fun mechanic. Sadly there is no such mechanic in Village and every enemy is completely predictable in how much damage they take to down if you're at the same difficulty level.

 

[Zombra]

Any system that makes it feel less like a spreadsheet is good by my lights. Unless I'm there for the spreadsheet experience like in some games. In Resident Evil (in any of its many forms) I am not there for the spreadsheet experience.

 

[kites]

I can understand that, as for tension/unpredictability, but resource management and picking your fights seem to be tossed to the side. When you don't know if you need 1 headshot or 5 it can be frustrating, and start to feel too "gamified" by a guiding hand - or to say the system isn't organic enough, so you can easily see if you're careless w/ ammo, they'll give extra, and if you're too clean an accuracy, they'll punish you by making enemies sponges. Or the inverse, where you die 2 times and the suddenly there are less troubles and everyone has 2hp.. boring..

~2/3 of crates being randomized and almost always dropping what you need is another factor in this as well

*Speaking mostly based on my feeling playing RE2R, as it's my most recent firsthand, I've only seen a friend play 7/8. Totally open to being misconceived.

 

[Wunderbar]

~2/3 of crates being randomized and almost always dropping what you need is another factor in this as well

*Speaking mostly based on RE2R as it's my most recent firsthand, I've only seen a friend play 7/8

RE2R's resource pickups aren't randomized though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Beat the Tzeentch and Nurgle bosses.

Again, not a fan of the entirely non-combat puzzle sections that RE games seem to enjoy these days. So doll girl was boring.

Nurgle was kind of a let down, there's literally only like 6 common enemies in the chapter for him in two areas, the rest is indeed a corridor puzzle whatever sequence. The boss itself was pretty ass, I think because of bugs unique to my system. His spit can clip through walls and hit you, and unlike basically every other attack in the game it's a multi-hit one so your ability to always survive 1 hit and then regen back just doesn't work against him (his spit also hitstuns you so you get hit multiple times). And while its not that hard to avoid his spit by moving it's also a really long boss fight due to HP bloat and the fact that he's only weak for about a second after one of his attacks. Really not a fan of bosses with that mechanic, lady dragon always had her head exposed so it was a question of skill whether you could hit it enough, not memorizing animation timings. If you could just hit him all the time it wouldn't have been that bad because it only takes like 30 shotgun shells to kill him, but when you spend a minute running in a circle for him to do an attack that lets you shoot him twice, it takes a long time. Also kind of pissed that you get the magnum immediately after him, I'd have emptied into him to turn a 20 minute fight into a 5 minute one.

Not sure if the 4th boss is Khorne or Slaanesh. He's clearly got the metal thing down but giant lady was also into blood a lot, and both are obsessed with their image. At least it seems like a massive combat chapter so far, basically Village's equivalent to RE4's island.

I did side track a bit to clear up hidden stuff and optional content, and tried to kill the minibosses running around. Found that the dog in the farm was by far the best reward at 80k but it took all of my magnum ammo + a third of my shotgun ammo. Since shooting irreplaceable magnum ammo seemed like a bad idea I did the math and figured that buying ammo upgrades and ammo to kill the Dog was a profitable exchange. It's actually a hard fight though, the only enemy so far that you can't avoid by calmly jogging in the other direction. For the first time in the game healing up and actually blocking attacks becomes relevant. It's actually kind of hilarious, it gives like -90% damage reduction or something. Dude's arms must be made of adamantium. Took 5 healing items but still well worth it. Have almost 500k cash saved up now.

The more I play the more I realize that the Handgun is not actually a weapon for self defense. It's a tool used to transmute bullets into money, through shooting things that are completely harmless and pose no risk to you. Nothing actually dangerous in this game can be overcome with the handgun, but finding 15 bullets is like actually getting 1000 gold as soon as you find an area where you can circle around an obstacle while shooting common enemies. Though the best things to shoot are crows who drop about ~2.5k cash on average.

 

[kites]

RE2R's resource pickups aren't randomized though.

It's been a few years. Is that not the case for almost every other title past re4 w/ breakable crates though?

 

[Average Manatee]

I can understand that, as for tension/unpredictability, but resource management and picking your fights seem to be tossed to the side. When you don't know if you need 1 headshot or 5 it can be frustrating, and start to feel too "gamified" by a guiding hand - or to say the system isn't organic enough, so you can easily see if you're careless w/ ammo, they'll give extra, and if you're too clean an accuracy, they'll punish you by making enemies sponges. Or the inverse, where you die 2 times and the suddenly there are less troubles and everyone has 2hp.. boring..

~2/3 of crates being randomized and almost always dropping what you need is another factor in this as well

*Speaking mostly based on my feeling playing RE2R, as it's my most recent firsthand, I've only seen a friend play 7/8. Totally open to being misconceived.

Yeah, adaptive health/damage difficulty sucks except possible on the easiest difficulty to make it even easier for people who are clueless (games journalists).

I think the adaptive drop system is much more palatable though. If you are doing good you get like 90-100% money drops from enemies, but if you're missing a lot of shots and low on ammo you get more ammo (especially for weapons you're low on). And finding more random ammo that matches weapons you have in your inventory is also a good feature, players shouldn't be forced to carry every type of gun in the game just because otherwise they are missing out on useful ammo. You could see this in RE4 where the mine launcher was kind of quirky and fun but you wouldn't want to force everyone to carry one around by dropping mines constantly.

~2/3 of crates being randomized and almost always dropping what you need is another factor in this as well

*Speaking mostly based on RE2R as it's my most recent firsthand, I've only seen a friend play 7/8

RE2R's resource pickups aren't randomized though.

I'm pretty sure they are adaptive? Don't recall exactly and haven't played RE2R in a long time, but I think every game since RE4 has relied heavily on this to balance the game.

 

[Wunderbar]

No, RE2R's pickups are set in stone, the only adaptive thing about the game was randomized damage system and additional enemy spawns. The game also didn't have any breakable crates, ammo and recovery supplies were just lying around in the open or in occasional drawers/lockers.

 

[Zombra]

When you don't know if you need 1 headshot or 5 it can be frustrating

I get that. You're not wrong to play RE games primarily as resource management games, but I don't play them that way and I don't find them nearly as fun that way. I play them primarily as horror games which is a whole different attitude.

 

[Average Manatee]

Wew, ok, the boss in the stronghold is an actual legit fight for once. First time I really had to spam explosives to get through dudes. Only having one fight with regular enemies before the boss was a major letdown, was prepared for another Castle-sized area. Seems like the Castle makes up 2/3rds of actual the content out of the 4 boss areas.

No, RE2R's pickups are set in stone, the only adaptive thing about the game was randomized damage system and additional enemy spawns. The game also didn't have any breakable crates, ammo and recovery supplies were just lying around in the open or in occasional drawers/lockers.

Google is telling me that at least some of the drops are random/adaptive.

Though I do recall that RE2R didn't have common enemies dropping items so that's a major plus for the resource scarcity angle. I should probably replay it since it's been a few years, assuming Village doesn't kill my enthusiasm.

 

[Average Manatee]

Final dungeon was pretty good. Not as good as the Castle but at least it's a 2nd part of the game that seems to have effort put into it. The boss of the dungeon was pretty meh (hated how the fire he spawns seemed to have very erratic hitboxes, sometimes you could run through it sometimes it damaged you). The final lord boss was a crap gimmicky fight, so trash. Final final boss was interesting but also kind of anti-RE, the fight played out more like a DMC boss fight with you perfectly needing to time blocks and get shots off in between enemy hits.

Also, while the HP bloat is real, one thing that seems to be the case with this game is that enemy HP doesn't automatically increase throughout the game alongside your weapon damage. So when your pistol is dealing 220 damage it's actually killing things in under half the time of the starting pistol at 100 damage, rather than it basically keeping pace with enemy HP in later chapters which is normally the case in RE games. Obviously harder enemies do start appearing but there's still the normal dudes who start going down in ~8 headshots rather than 20. And aside from the Nurgle boss's small window of being able to shoot him the bosses weren't tedious or HP sponges, emptying the magnum on the last two bosses feels like it took off half their HP.

Overall, 6/10. I rate it about the same as RE5. There's a massive gap in quality between the different sections. Castle is 9/10 (basically just needs to be bigger and have more to do), Factory is 8/10 (ditto, also needs a big titted milf replacement to chase you around), rest of the game ranges from 1/10 to 5/10.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

RE2R has some scaling related to the ammo you find while exploring. Like if you already have a bunch of bullets in your inventory (Or in the chest), the next time you pick a pack of pistol bullets from a room it will be like 4 bullets instead or 7. It's more noticeable on the Leon campaing, Claire has way more bullets with the submachinegun, to the point this isn't even noticeable.

 

[Average Manatee]

Wait, by RE2R are you guys talking about Resident Evil Revelations 2, or the 2019 remake of RE2? I was thinking of the former, have never played the remakes.

 

[Zombra]

Honest question, how do you people know stuff like this? Do you play the game 10 times and write down how much ammo you find in every room, cross-indexing it with current inventory levels? Or do you read optimization walkthroughs before ever playing the games?

 

[Wunderbar]

Average Manatee yes, the remake.

Revelations 2 is not RE2R, it's RER2

 

[Average Manatee]

Honest question, how do you people know stuff like this? Do you play the game 10 times and write down how much ammo you find in every room, cross-indexing it with current inventory levels? Or do you read optimization walkthroughs before ever playing the games?

It's just a thing that they (and most of their imitators) been using for balancing for a long time. RE4 specifically has been thoroughly played and dissected to the point where people know everything. Like, the only way to get mine drops is to have the mine launcher in the inventory and hold less than 8 mines. This is the most obvious and harsh cutoff I know of but it applies to other things too. When you play other games you start to see patterns pretty quickly. When you run out of ammo for one gun you tend to start finding much more of that ammo in the "random" places and you then go back to the same equilibrium you were at before.

It's honestly not even something you can really optimize for. If you're running out of ammo the game tends to give you more ammo, if you're running out of health items the game tends to give you more health, if you're doing well on both you tend to get more money. It's still better to just be as accurate as possible and not get hit. If for some reason you really don't like a specific gun and drop it the game gives you less of that ammo type.

Average Manatee yes, the remake.

Revelations 2 is not RE2R, it's RER2

Yeah the existence of the remakes completely slipped my mind since I don't really pay attention to games I don't play and I don't really have a huge interest in playing remakes. It just hit me when TheHeroOfTime started talking about Claire and Leon and I was about to ask whether he confused Leon with Barry or was actually talking about RE6 (but that'd be dumb, who'd want to talk about RE6?).

 

[KIss My Ass]

I still haven't finished this. Looking back, RE7 was way better if you ask me. That actually felt like oldschool Resi Evil in first person. RE8 never gave me that feeling. The upcoming release of 4 just made me randomly think of this.