Resident Evil Village is a first-person action-horror game that plays like Capcom fed Resident Evil 7's claustrophobic tension directly into the chassis of Resident Evil 4 and hit turbo. You are Ethan Winters again, except now you are a dad on a mission instead of a husband on a mission, which sounds like a lateral move until the game starts throwing lycans at you inside of forty seconds. The central village hub connects four distinct zones, each with its own lord, its own threat model, and its own tone. Castle Dimitrescu is gothic horror with tight corridors and an unkillable stalker. House Beneviento strips your weapons entirely and becomes something genuinely unsettling. The Moreau reservoir goes waterlogged and oppressive. Heisenberg's factory turns the whole thing into a borderline action shooter. Each segment almost functions as a standalone game type, which is both the title's biggest creative swing and the source of its main criticism: the tonal whiplash in the back half, particularly the endgame, catches people off guard and does not always stick the landing. On the shooting side, this is where Village earns its keep for a shooter audience. The gunplay is tighter and more responsive than RE7, and the weapon upgrade loop through the Duke's merchant shop is genuinely satisfying. You start with a basic pistol and a knife, and if you loot and sell smart, you will finish the game with a properly kitted sniper, shotgun, or magnum depending on your playstyle. Enemies, especially the lycans in the opening village siege, are not bullet sponges but they are fast, they flank, and they punish ammo waste hard on higher difficulties. The crafting system forces real choices: herbs go into health meds or ammunition types, not both, which keeps resource management honest even when the normal difficulty starts to feel loose around the midpoint. Anyone coming from a pure twitchy shooter background should go straight to Hardcore. Village on normal, once you get the weapon upgrades rolling, does not push back hard enough. The RE Engine doing its thing on PC is worth talking about. Ray tracing support, high-res textures, and a solid frame rate ceiling mean this runs well on modern hardware and looks genuinely impressive in dense indoor environments. The game is not open world but the semi-open village hub gives it a metroidvania-adjacent exploration loop, with the Duke's shop, hidden treasures, and goat collectibles rewarding thorough players with Lei and upgrade materials. Puzzle density is high by RE standards, and the variety is real: you are not just rotating medallions and hitting switches. Some of the puzzle design in Beneviento specifically is the kind of thing that will stick with you for reasons that have nothing to do with gunplay. The honest critique is that RE Village leans harder into action than RE7 or RE2 Remake, and if you came for pure survival horror dread, the back half of this game is going to feel like a different genre. The story wraps up the Winters arc but gets convoluted in ways that require you to care about RE lore continuity to fully land. Boss fights are visually impressive but some are simpler than the buildup earns. Mercenaries mode is divisive as a bonus mode and definitely not the main event. None of this kills the experience, but it is worth knowing what you are buying. For a solo FPS-adjacent experience with strong production values, a well-paced first two-thirds, and a weapon upgrade loop that actually feels rewarding, Village holds up well into multiple playthroughs. Fred, Scout Team