Well, we’re back at it again this week. Welcome to part 2 of my Resident Evil: Village Review. Now, I know last week I left on a cliff hanger but for those who didn’t read the first part please go read the first part otherwise you’re going to be very lost with what I’m discussing in this week’s review, hence why it is a part 2. This week however I promise is the last part, I will not slide a part 3 in here. Last week, I ended the fight between Donna and her doll. So, picking up right from there is where the rest of this review starts.

Now that you have the two flasks, it’s time to get the third one. You get to now go and find Moreau, who is honestly the grossest looking lord out of the four. Once again I’ve added a picture as I believe it’s important to show the characters I’m talking about. Now, with Moreau you find the flask and you take it, but he doesn’t let you have it too easily, he tries to trap you in his area and kill you but you manage to escape. Which leads you to getting onto a boat and beginning to drive around in this boat. Running through a reservoir and having to drain the area of the water you then have to explode and shoot his huge mutated form. This ends up being just kind of annoying and dodging isn’t super great from him but it’s not the hardest fight in this game. Once you kill him, you get to bring the ‘arms flask’ back to the altar, you’re one closer to having all of them to get the chalice. However, when you’re leaving the reservoir a tv turns on and you hear Heisenberg who is seemingly very excited for you both to meet one another and fight…

Now, when you go towards Heisenberg’s area there is a split path way, to the left is just a barn with some monsters you can fight but it isn’t too important. However, if you go to the right and go up the stairs you go into a huge castle and begin to go through it…believing that this is where Heisenberg will be. Although, what you end up fighting at the end of it…it isn’t Heisenberg, it’s just a really evolved lycanthrope zombie, who isn’t easy and getting him to stay away from you isn’t very easy as he does call some other zombies in at some points. Finally, once he’s dead you have the last flask, the ‘torso flask.’ Once you finish this you find another tv and Heisenberg officially invites you to this factory.. The place you had just been was the den of the zombie lycanthropes. Once you get to the factory you’re shoved into a chair and forced into a conversation with Heisenberg who reveals Miranda’s true intentions. She wants you to be going around and killing all 4 of the lords…she wants you to do this as you’re collecting all of the flasks for her and unlocking the altar for her… she’s watching you to see how strong you are.

To see if you could be a new lord underneath her. Ethan decides to not accept Heisenberg’s deal as he wants to use Rose as a weapon due to how supposedly powerful she is which I get but I found it annoying that you couldn’t choose the dialogue here. However, you get thrown into a hole and you get to meet one of many different experiments Heisenberg has run. You meet what has the body of a zombie but has an engine and a tip of an older plane with the spinning blades in the front of it as its head, you can’t do anything so time to run again! From here you’re forced to try and get out of  this factory starting at the bottom and going all the way to the top. Only to be thrown back all the way down by Heisenberg who has powers to control metal which isn’t great to find out here. However…at the bottom you run into Chris who you’ve ran into one other time but it wasn’t too important to mention, Chris begins to explain what has been going on…and actually helps Ethan.. He gives Ethan this machine that has a grenade launcher and a machine gun on it, which is pretty sick. Once you get that, you go up to the surface and here is the second hardest boss fight in the game, at least for me it was but this was due to me not understanding a mechanic of the fight. Heisenberg also has a bigger and final form in this fight which actually makes sense and is cool to look at.

Once you finish this fight, you see Mia…or what you think to be Mia. Chris earlier had revealed the Mia at the beginning had been Mother Miranda shape shifting as that’s her power. This Mia is also Mother Miranda. Once she’s close enough. She kills you. Ethan Winters is now dead… The screen fades to black.

This gives you a fake sense of the game being over, you get transported into a cutscene of Chris Redfield, talking about the mission. The whole mission. The goal is to blow this all up and get this all over with, however things aren’t going as planned and he regrets not telling Ethan Winters sooner than what he had. So, you’re left to play as Chris for a good long while. Whilst you’re doing this you fight some zombies and at one point end up blowing up some stuff which is fun! However, as you go through playing as Chris…the idea of where the real Mia has been brought up several times ever since it is revealed it was Miranda earlier. However, Chris ends up finding Mia…locked in a cell in Mother Miranda’s lab.. She asks where Ethan is and Chris is just like he’s dead. Mia however…pauses and reveals something that I honestly wasn’t expecting…

You’re put back in Ethan’s perspective … .waking up in a foggy version of where he had died…arguing with Eveline…Mother Miranda’s daughter. They argue for a bit but eventually Ethan gets away from her…going and finding Mother Miranda. There is one last chance to interact with ‘The Duke’. Please do it, as you’re going to be going into the hardest boss fight of the game against Miranda. She has four different forms. The picture I’ve attached here is her regular form that you’ve seen since the beginning of the game. During her fight she has a ground form with some arms out of her back instead of wings, a spider form (my least favorite), an angel form where she can throw what I can only describe as a fire mudball which does major damage, and then finally there are some points of the fight where you are shrouded in complete darkness and you’re left running from candle to candle while avoiding her. I will say, I’m the type of person where at the beginning of the game I will always pick the medium setting and force myself to finish the game in the medium setting. Her boss fight made me do something I hate doing, I lowered the level to casual. The levels in Village are; casual, standard, and hardcore. Standard is described as balanced, however I looked up while I was doing it and it seems a lot of people consider her boss fight to be not balanced at all and I have to agree. It took me at least 2 hours to keep trying and just caving into casual mode. Once her fight is over, you get Rose…you get to leave..you’re on the way out, but you’re starting to wither away, just like what you’ve seen everyone you’ve killed do. Everything comes full circle. You’re heading out…Chris finds you, while you’re clutching Rose, trying to rush and get you guys out of there.

Ethan begs Chris to tell Mia something and Chris does that casual line of no you’ll tell her yourself. However, Ethan knows he doesn’t have a chance. So, he takes the explosive trigger, hands Rose to Chris and disappears within the distance.. Chris returns to a helicopter with Rose in arm, Mia is on the helicopter and some other army guys on the plane.. Mia questions Chris on Ethan’s location…saying he wouldn’t abandon them…Chris tells her what happened and she sits down holding Rose and cries, coddling her. After this, you’re shown the rest of the story from the beginning, the ending of ‘The Village of Shadows.’ The story comes to a close…you think you have all the answers…then you get a cutscene at the end. A girl with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a hat sitting on a bus…getting off  the bus and going to the graveyard…putting flowers on a grave..Ethan’s grave. You learn quickly this is Rose, and from what is hinted she has powers that are similar to Eveline, which she hates being called that we see from when an Agent calls her that. The game closes and…that’s it. I asked my friends since the official announcement of Resident Evil 9 has been made if she comes back and it doesn’t sound like the Winters will be making an appearance again, which is kinda sad but it opens the doors up to a larger future.

I’m going to adjust a text I sent to my friends right after I finished playing for the end here as I was really emotional when I finished it and I think it’s a good thing to add here as it gets into some of the deeper things about this game and the series. ‘I think his death was a lot more personal. You got to play as him and get to know him yeah whatever but the end where he crumbled into ash like everyone else- you were witnessing your own death take place the whole entire game without knowing it and it’s heart wrenching. It’s a very well written death story, i mean even though technically he’s been dead for awhile but with all the Resident Evil games from what I know it’s always been oh yeah you just heal because well just because. This one actually being like there’s a reason you don’t die like everyone else. It hits hard and it’s just well written and I really appreciated it. Especially how he took his own death into his own hands, knowing he was going to blow away in the wind just like everyone else he watched die by his own hands. He didn’t want Mia to see that. He knew it would only break her heart and I think it’s just so very well done genuinely. Obviously there were some problems that could be frustrating with directions and such, but the way they tied it together at the end of the death and then closing with the book again? It’s just very satisfying to me and it’s something I can really take away from and enjoy.

So, at the end of the day I really truly do recommend this game to anyone who has heard about it or seen anything about it as it’s a good game to play. Or! If you don’t want to play it yourself but still get the experience of seeing it yourself I’ll put a link at the end here of Markiplier playing it which I’m going to take an assumption here and say if you’re here reading me talk about video games you will most likely know who he is and his playthrough of it is really good. This game is available on the following platforms; PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, iOS, Windows, Google Stadia, and pretty much any device you can get Steam on and have games run successfully on. It is 40$ but CapCom games do go on sale from time to time so you could probably find a way to get it cheaper but I’d say it’s a game worth 40$ as the playthrough is just a solid one.

Link to Markiplier’s playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3tRBEVW0hiDKEQwl5vzr0BgaGXZS0fi9