Spoilers included:
This could be goodbye. That's what I spent thinking when I was considering buying this game. Resident Evil has been perhaps the last game series I've been interested in. I liked even RE6 a ton and I was left waiting so eagerly what is next for Leon, Chris, Jill and the universe. RE7 was simply an outstanding experience, but it felt like a changing swansong. It started a new page while giving very slight nods to the past RE universe implying that all is ok. Global crisis and big evil masterminds are gone and from now on it might just be random incidents like the Baker's that veterans like the aged Chris Redfield can clean up. I didn't think about it really, but it felt like I'm ok if there's never another RE game. Ofc there will be more, but the initial reveal of RE8 caught me off-guard and while I really liked the Dracula vibes of the trailer, even the release date came unexpectedly and I only realized it's coming the day before launch. I have bought like 5 games on launch date: Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Arkham City, Gears of War 3, Resident Evil 6, Mass Effect 3. I had RE8 in my shopping cart for a multiple hours, thinking whether I want to spend the money, but I decided since this might be the last game that will ever really interest me, I'll go for it. When waiting for the game to download, I had the same kind of feelings I had with Final Fantasy VII in 2002 on PSX or Splinter Cell Double Agent in 2006 on Xbox or Final Fantasy XIII-3 Lighting Returns in 2014 on X360 - knowing these games are probably the last ones I'm playing on the console and all of them fit the "This is the end" theme. Difference is this is PC and all the series I mentioned above have been since driven to the ground. I was ready.
Graphicwise I'm not demanding and RE7 already looked really good, although I was curious how the new setting would actually look in the game. And RE8 looks pretty cool with some really nice waterfall vistas, classy rooms lit by dozens of candles and I also have a soft spot for Romania and Transylvania so seeing some of the rural town architecture and castles in game was cool. But at the same time I have to say that after the original Xbox games have looked so good it's hard to care and this game doesn't stun me. The most notable thing is how most everything from tables to candles to even most vases or ice shards hanging from roofs I can't break or move so it's really static. With PC I have to keep in mind I used the same laptop that I played RE7 with. At first the menus scared me as they hinted that the game needs 4GB of GPU memory to even remotely run, but thankfully in semi-low-medium settings the game ran just well with 2GB, excluding a couple of scenes. For an hour I was annoyed how it seemed that in cutscenes the dialogue and action don't sync and I realized the cutscenes run like 10fps while dialogue is normal speed. Also the early scene where they burn a town really made the game chug and I wished there was setting for something like "Fire effects - off". I was considering even refunding the game, but quick googling showed it's not my PC's fault really. I had turned off the game while googling, turned it on again and noticed the issues were almost solved just with that. It feels like there are multiple games that require restarting the game asap after the first start. Again it's lil annoying having to deal with this stuff on PC, but after this I was good to go for good. Audiowise voice acting is solid and I like the multitude of languages available and might replay the game just for language study purposes so huge props there, though it's a lil shame everything in Transylvania seems to be written in english and everyone has perfect american accent in english version. Music is just... there, I barely heard any but RE has never excelled in making memorable individual songs - they just build world. Star of audiovisual side are the monster growls and grunts. I quickly started to dread whenever I heard the faintest feral roars and sounds of some poor guy being munched to pieces, trying to pinpoint where the sound exactly is coming from. Rarely games make me think "oh please no" just with audio but this does, in a nightmarish good way.
The game itself then. There are things I like... and things I don't. The intro inside Winters' house was cute enough, but the walk in heavy snowstorm was like poor retread of the excellent RE7 intro. It felt like I'm guided by invisible barriers as I'm walking through endless white screen in some really low-budget indie horror, until the first beautiful vista came in sight. Thankfully the solid combat and structure of RE7 makes a return. These new enemies are even more viscious, tough and fearsome than the old symbiote goo ones. At first I was just barely making it through and being forced to run away hoping to lose them or find something to use against them. It felt familiar but stuff like pushing cabinets in front of doors and hiding in the shacks, running from window to window to shoot the enemies, while fearing when they're going to burst through roof or floor or some wall, felt superb. The early segment where they force me to lose against unwinnable odds and how I'm beaten near death really hammers home the threat level. I need to respect them but also hate them. I'm not a fan of werewolf type of beasts and they were kind of ugh, but fortunately the game changed it up with undead ghouls, the vampire ladies and more. There's plenty of stuff to scavenge for the collector in me, but not too much to make it reduntant, every bullet and scrap counts - although the countless wells, locked drawers and more was a hint of some issues I'll mention later. Particularly delightful was how the solid combat sections are broken down with lots of different kind of puzzles. RE7 mostly had hammed-in shadow theatre puzzles, but this has puzzles that require logical thinking, observation, physics, elements, deciphering literature and more - and usually scenarios aren't repeated twice. If horror game is only supposed to incite fear and suspense, RE8 succeeds damn near perfectly. Even though at some point I even noticed I got the same confidence from RE7 back and I felt I'm ready to take on everyone with precise limb and head shots, efficient explosives use, buying gun upgrades with extra ammo and just taunting the ugly mofos to come at me - just like Ethan in the game did. It's like Matrix moment when I decide I don't want to run, I want to kill every one of these fuckers - and when it happens in sync with the game character it's just magic. There have been plenty of games where the "hero" remains hysterical pushover no matter how firm and headstrong as a player I am, or vice versa, and it really ruins the game. Not here, and still the lycans and other creatures were a threat I can't play around with.
Unfortunately the negative pool also grew, aside from the technical issues and lycan theme. I was under the impression that Lady Dimitrescu is the main villain or at least 2nd in command so the very quick transition from the small village to "end castle" baffled me - "is this a 4 hour game?". Even before that, even though the intro and functionality of lycans stalking around the town and being terrifying was powerful - the way all the dozen townspeople were killed within minutes of my entry into the town and in very awkward, forced way felt weird. At least this wasn't lite-RPG with townspeople giving me quests like I first feared so I'm glad they were killed off. Then in the castle I had a weird sensation as I was encountering Dimitrescu's maidens - being very rinse and repeat type of battles (albeit cool) along with "collect 4 keys to open access". I shrugged it off, especially when Dimitrescu was so intimidating and cool (although I think people got overhyped about her for no reason, she's no Wesker or Jack) and the last battle against her was just outstanding as her castle crumbles under winter sun as she and Ethan are screaming at each other. I kind of bought into the leaked spoilers I saw and thought this would be the end of her and Ethan, and then Chris would continue somewhere else. But Ethan survived and soon the game just crumbled in my eyes. That damn Duke made me think of Fable the very first moment I saw him (not the only parallel I would make between the first intro video, lycans and more) and then he tells me "there are 4 guys in this world, each has a key, I mark them in your map, go get them - oh and there are lots of treasures in the world, I'll also mark them on your map." RE7 had some of this, but it never directly implied that you must kill all the Baker members in separate, thematic boss encounters or that "this game world has lots of busywork". This game quite feels like Fable combined with Arkham Origins and Assassin's Creed a.k.a. all modern Ubisoft games. I had to stop the game for a while at this point and just... no. Then I forced myself to play a bit more and ended up in the orphanage... which is an amazing segment if you're looking forward to playing Silent Hill. Since Silent Hill is pretty much gone I can understand why Capcom sees an oppoturnity. This is another segment that in a way is amazing psychological scenario as Ethan dissects his wife, his recent events and his life and deals with losing his kid. Nothing is true and everything is paranormal. While I enjoyed the thing a lot, I was the whole time telling myself this needs to relate to Ethan's paranoia mentioned in the beginning. Since Ethan can practically regenerate himself it must mean he is a B.O.W. and now he is having some sort of phase and all this will tie into the grand Resident Evil lore and set up something. Not really the case. Later on the disgusting fish boss that reminds me of the frog prince from The Simpsons more than a lil is bit too much comic relief but the water puzzles and boss fight are pretty cool. The last crusade to wreck the alpha lycan in their den and war against very literal terminators in a foundry continue the theme. They're all extremely well crafted and varied moments with amazing boss fights, but I can't help feeling it's like Resident Evil is trying to stay on the throne by "stealing" all ideas and mimicing others. At least by the terminator scene the game revealed once again to remember it's Resident Evil roots with pseudo-scientific experiments, excentric human villain and combat featuring attacking and escaping in turns from the lethal human-based enemies. It rooted me in Resident Evil feels after the game had floated all around for a while.
The ending moments of the game were just superb. The game does a bold twist I didn't think would happen anymore and Chris Redfield gears up and stomps through the familiar yet devastated town as a certified badass and even though there's always the fear Capcom will want to turn the franchise again into a shooter, in this kind of doses it's just epic to punish my now-hated enemies even worse than Ethan ever could. Although I think it's a bit annoying how he brought squadmates but I never see them do anything. At this point the game cements itself as a Resident Evil game and that the old games are all relevant, which was so, so good to see. Although they threw even a bit too much exposition in a single room instead of spacing it out. Then the game throws a twist I kind of could predict, but it's more clever than I feared as Ethan isn't just a B.O.W. from birth. Instead his comeback for the final showdown in a cavern out of hell against one of the better end bosses with good, varied segments and lot of banter is great. Even better is the final twist and sacrifice of Ethan. At this point Chris Redfield is pretty much untouchable but the fact how they first save Ethan and imply he is magical only to have him pass over his daughter and then face death made me feel a tear that hasn't happened since Lost Odyssey. The ending is beautiful in that it is a lengthy conclusion to the point I could treat this as the final game of the series, there's no obvious sequel baiting. Yet at the same time it gives plenty of leads from BSAA to Ethan's daughter that could play a role in the sequel, plus of course all the other parties involved with Umbrella's history. The one downside is that they end the game with more Fable-esque nonsense. RE7's ending with Go Tell Aunt Rhody was thousand times better that gave me chills down my spine for days. And finally, knowing some recent DLC practices and seeing that initially the menu's didn't have any sort of extras, I was ready to call it a day once the credits ran out - "coming soon as DLC". But Capcom brings a blast from the past with a bunch of unlocks in an in-game money shop that has character figures, weapons, concept art with actual dev backstory of what was the process behind them and mercenaries mode. I've always liked Mercenaries mode but I'm not sure nowadays I have the motivation to excessively play it. At any rate, it works marvelously in this game's context with the tight-enclosed romanian town, really cool shop/powerup system and while I never want to see enemy health bars in story modes, seeing their health bars delete rapidly in this mode is just so satisying. Taking short victory laps after the dozen hour story and just punishing everything from lycans to ghouls to terminators with explosive deaths, super speed and 5x knife stabs was such a good ending.
Summary:
I wasn't really looking forward to more Resident Evil, although it is perhaps the only game franchise I have any interest in anymore aside from Elder Scrolls. But I liked the idea of returning into the world of Dracula Resurrection game but in a more dynamic manner, though honestly RE7's story was pretty conclusive so I wasn't jumping from excitement. The very first moments of the game were really bleh with a long walk in a tiny path fogged by blizzard that I expect from a Steam greenlight asset flip. In the town the game picked up and the game's really solid combat and gameplay were instantly enjoyable. At first I need to cower in the broken houses with my handful of ammo, nervous of where are all the noises coming from and if the beasts will come through roof or window or floor. The barricade system and flour sacks are a great addition to the normal shoot or run gameplay familiar from RE7. The intro is even a bit too busy with the survivors who conveniently get all killed, making me sigh along with Ethan. As the game calms down and I learn the ropes and gain my footing, it never stops being satisfying to shoot a couple of rounds into enemies' knees to make them stumble, followed by a couple of headshots, or a shotgun blast directly to the face, or playing cat and mouse with the terminators luring them to show their weak spot. The game has plenty of puzzles and various kinds from key finding to pushing objects to deciphering poems, all of which I enjoyed a lot, especially I have soft spot for the marble labyrinths. Otherwise too the game has variety, from the packs of feral beasts wandering around the town to the few immortal vampires inside the castle to the huge frog fish to the near indestructible robot-men to the mind games. All of the segments are excellently crafted, but it is too formulaic and gamey. I didn't care for the Grimm/Fable/Nightmare before Christmas type of intro and when Duke explained to me how the game will play out: These are the guys in the game, I mark them on your map, you need to kill them, and oh there are also lot of other collectibles I will also mark on your map. Even before that, while I greatly enjoyed Dimitrescu's castle, her daughters very nearly felt like nameless lieutenants in any subpar open world game and the multiple "get multiple keys and bring them in this one room" certainly didn't help. At that point the game efficiently lost me, it felt like I'm suddenly playing Fable or Arkham Origins or Assassin's Creed instead of a very story-centric and unpredictable horror game. I thought I understood why the game is called Village instead of VIII, Capcom kind of was lazy and didn't dare to call this actual VIII. So the game is lucky that the following hours with the actual bosses and levels were so well done because this could have ended ugly. But the Silent Hill orphanage is a very tense and disturbing mockup, the vomiting frog prince RE4 fish tribute also has its moments plus the boss fight with acid rain and blocked paths is exciting.
After that "hiatus", Heisenberg finally actually shares some story even though he is also kind of annoying Joker-wannabe with his ridiculous "This way!" signs and whatnot, or as if Capcom wanted to add Dante into RE universe. But the trip to lycans den to wipe out their leader and destroy the tribe is the moment the game kicks into high gear for me and I felt like Neo even though death was always near. Afterwards Heisenberg's factory setting feels fitting for Resident Evil with heavy iron hell vibe, and it kept the high gear for the rest of the game. The game starts to have good, although half predictable twists, Chris Redfield comes back and totally redeems his so-so appearance in RE7. Now Chris looks like believably aged version of RE5-66 Chris and he also sounds to be in the same ballpark, plus his personality change makes sense after RE6. This amount of of 2% veteran badassery vs. 98% "squeeze your pistol and fear" is exactly the right ratio, although Capcom still doesn't quite nail the concept of "squadmates". I was delighted that RE8 is confirmed to have tight roots with Oswell's legacy and the lore from RE1-RE6, although it was like 1 room that contained all the lore so it's like Capcom ticking yet more boxes, at this point the laboratories at the end of games telling everything is a bit of a predictable trope I hope something is done about, though same time I really enjoyed it. The finale of Ethan coming back was kind of predictable considering the lengths his regeneration went to especially in this game, but the way it happened even without heart and the outcome certainly wasn't as I was expecting him to become a boss or triumph. The end boss is one of the better ones in the franchise with cool hellraiser vampire morpher thing and the moments after it were really touching. It wasn't Chris who passes the mantle to the new hero, but actually Ethan was doomed and went face to face with death in a way Mass Effect 3 wishes they handled Shepard. Ethan put down a demi-god with his last strength, knowing he is probably doomed anyway and let Chris and others carry the torch further.
The game was a good 11 hours long with a very conclusive and satisfying end that clearly ends this game but leaves room for interesting ways for the story to go. Mercenaries and the other unexpected unlocks at the end were a cherry on the top. Graphics are good with some really nice romanian town and castle scenery and it runs well even on my quite weak PC, although there is some desyncing with cutscene animation and voice acting present. Audio is good quality and A.I. never felt broken but contributed a lot to the suspense. So in short I'm extremely satisfied having paid full price for RE8, and even though this would be a fitting swansong, I'm still interested in seeing what RE9 will be. They have interesting immediate options, Chris is back as a leader and despite some setbacks this game has good foundation and enough effort and creativity to make another game work. But I really hope they are done with the Grimm thematics: the accursed doll girl, the fish king comic relief, the giant mobster merchant and the animation book all were blergh. To me Resident Evil is about urban and science based horror, which can be augmented with some mysticism smokescreen, but this many smokescreens in one place doesn't work and it just feels like gipsy magic and that soon our main character grows angel halo or devil horns depending how you play. Also while I like Metroidvania, not every game needs it, at least not in the Assassin's Creed way. Fighting against the same minion boss 3 times, who never learns of her previous (sister's) downfall is bad. Having 15 conveniently placed wells all with the same mechanics and contains is bad. Having a jokey storyteller telling me what is the plot of the game and then sending me to it almost without surprises is bad. Having a GPS map with exact statistics of which rooms still contain undiscovered things in a transylvania based game is bad. Fortunately the game doesn't tell me when is the point of no return so while I was sort of OCD about collecting the things (but after a while decided that keeping the horror universe alive in my mind is more important than collecting gems and meat), at one point it became impossible and then I just went on enjoying the plot as it unfolded. Otherwise I would still be collecting the things and ruining the feel of this horrific world. For when I'm running the same town streets for the 30th time without enemies, or with the same rinse and repeat respawning enemies, the game turns into a life-tourist-egg-hunt-simulator and not a horror game. Anyway, Resident Evil Village still keeps the series going strong, which makes the series super special. All the numbered games and even most spin-offs are great or better. This falls just short of highest grade because of those bunch of "why would you do this?" moments. It's like the series is looking for identity, but they're at least on a path unlike many who just pissed away their greatness.
8/10
Wishes: It's a short one. The cutscene-dialogue desync hurt a bit and shouldn't happen. The 10 second bit with Duke explaining the game and showing some sort of fortune teller visions easily could have been handled so much better. If he just talked about the history and lords in general like how he talked later in the carriage real-time and gave me vague idea where to go "that door there leads to House Benevido" it would have been so much better and make me see the game as it unfolds and not know "oh so this is what I'll be doing for next hours in this order". Also he didn't need to talk about the treasures or mark them, the one treasure in castle where I had to use a paper map was the right way to do it. Well/lock markings and collectible tracking map colors weren't needed either especially since none of that stuff was actual collectibles, just general useables. Also I hope this was their Grimm game so next one will be less disjointed.