Resident Evil Village - Winters' Expansion

This is a really weak DLC, not even considering its cost, its just stuff that I feel is of general low quality and it would have been a post launch update in RE 2. Its a DLC comprised of 3 things, a short campaign for rose during her adolescence, a few additions to the mercenary mode, and a third person view for the main story.

Getting the easy ones out of the way, the third person view feels gimmicky for a game clearly not designed around that. Enemies were designed for the more accurate FPS view, so this view makes the game inherently harder, and is very janky in a couple of places. They really go the extra mile not to show Ethan's face, its just silly.

The extra content to mercenaries is an alright excuse to visit one of the weakest mercenaries mode to date. Chris has a different arsenal, but mechanically plays very similar to Ethan, the other new characters are a bit more different. Still feel like this would have been a free update, particularly how content poor the original mercenaries launched with.

Shadows of Rose is a good hearted attempt at giving Rose a bit more character development and acting as a farewell to Ethan, but it really doesnt work out. Its very easily to tell that it was made of recycled assets, with the first half behind in the castle, and the second in the beneviento massion. Rose plays decently survival horror in the first half, with a power to freeze enemies that isnt develped enough. But at least the first half is decent at providing more survival horror goodness. The second half is terrible, with a more drowned out Beneviento massion, with cheap lame scaries and instant deaths. Resident Evil was never too good at this psychological horror, and even less at the attempts at SCP horror that tried with this one. Its a lame segment that lasts way more than it should. I guess its worth a playthrough, just barely, and I say this one as someone that feel that the base game deserves its place amongst the best RE titles.

Overall a very shabby DLC

While I have some gripes about Resident Evil Village being a poor man's Resident Evil 4, I still really enjoyed the game beating it twice. Shortly, put (because I don't have a review of RE8 up), I believe that Resident Evil Village incorporates lots of Resident Evil 4's mechanics while missing the reason why they're their or not doing it as well. If that's the case for 8, then this DLC feels like it was made by the Resident Evil 3 team.

This dlc can be split into three components. The first is Shadow of Rose, which is a new short story following Ethan's daughter. This DLC has a lot of problems, The psychological horror angle is shallow (stopping at she's gross and bullied ew is pretty lame) and it is constantly used despite not going anywhere. The plot twists are obvious even for a Resident Evil game. The repeat of a lot of RE8 sometimes feels tiresome, and the dlc as a whole is not much a challenge. There are some high points in this dlc. Rose's powers lead to unique resource management surrounding them. The return to House Beneviento was a welcome surprise as I found it more engaging then the terrible Ethan section, especially with the mannequins stalking you. This faded away however once the second half of this house began. Shadow of Rose was the part of the DLC I was most looking forward too, but have been left utterly disappointed as I feel not much of interest happens in this dlc to even warrant it existing. Excluding the start, the DLC doesn't really drag on at all, it just stays mostly flaccid throughout.

Mercenaries on the other hand is still mercenaries. While probably my least favorite variation of the game mode (5's is the best), it's still a blast to play and the changes they made to mercenaries do spice it up. I also really like the specific character kits outside of weapons, going to be a blast SSS ranking everything.

Finally, third person mode has been added although I really feel one should still play the game in first person as that's how it was designed. It's not too big of a deal but I honestly feel this game works better in first person. I'd be saying the vice versa about Resident Evil 2 if it got a first person mode.

Overall, unless you're an avid mercenaries fan, I'd recommend playing any other good RE game or something similar instead.