Continuation of the Ethan Winters story from Resident Evil 7. Playing 7 is not essential, but highly recommended. There is a catch up summery at the beginning of the game for those not brave enough to take on the far more intense prequel.

So how does it compare? I preferred 7. I believe the first-person perspective lends itself more to the horror side of things, where as Village feels more action orientated. Sure, you can switch to 3rd person, but this feature was added later and not the original intension.

The gameplay follows the typical RE formula of picking up key items and backtracking to locked doors to advance the story. Most of the locations you visit around the village are stunning with a great atmosphere. The mansion itself is exactly what you would expect from an RE mansion. There are plenty of NPC’s and bosses, but the game is not very challenging on normal difficulty. If the game was every so slightly better, I’d replay it on Hardcore. Maybe in a few years.

I had no performance issues on my 4080 at 4K. I did install RenoDX (requires reshade) to improve HDR.