Why I Think Resident Evil Village is Overrated

**This article contains spoilers for Resident Evil Village**

My quest to play every GOTY nominee reaches its end with Resident Evil Village, for Ratchet & Clank Rift: Apart will remain as elusive to me as the PlayStation 5 is to the world. Whether I thought it deserved it, only time will tell.

I didn't have hope for Resident Evil Village going into it. The first thing I noticed and want to praise is the absolutely gorgeous graphics. There are few games — if any at all — that could match the quality in the game. My wife and I walked around the place dumbfounded by how everything looked. We even took some time to talk about how nice it might be to live in Ethan's and Mia's house.

The game quickly continues down its road into something very similar to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard — this time with lycanthropes! You soon find yourself fighting hordes of mutants and fleeing from them, until finally you reach Castle Dimitrescu.

My complaints began as soon as I reached the village, way before I got to Castle Dimitrescu. You see, my wife didn't know that she wasn't supposed to fight back the wave that attacks you shortly after reaching the village, so she killed around three Lycans before her health was running low and we had to flee. This only served to dwindle our respect for the enemy, because they are literally all bark and no bite. After the Lycans catch up, they move weirdly for a while before they finally chomp at you. Keep in mind, however, that you can guard with your arms and they won't be able to bite at anything, despite a Lycan chomping two fingers only a couple of minutes earlier.

It felt like the game tried to pose itself as a threat with these creatures and use scare tactics to prevent us from fighting back, but when doing so the characters felt significantly less scary. Apparently, Ethan's arms are made of steel because it doesn't matter if you're fighting creatures with swords or axes, they'll do next to no damage as long as you block.

Do you think that's the end of my complaints? Oh no, I am not even close! It feels like the writing was absolutely atrocious in this one. So let's play a fun little game: let's count how many tropes Resident Evil Village shows within 30 minutes.

Soon after reaching the village, there is a cuckoo old lady (1), who then remains untouched by the Lycan threat because she's cuckoo(2), you encounter an injured father with a girl that's trying to protect him (3), the guy's an arse despite you helping him (4), you reach Luiza's castle and someone immediately rejects you because you're an "outsider" and you can't be trusted (5), there is a drunk man that is pissed off and borderline abusive (6), he curses everyone and says "we're doomed like her husband" because the guy is dead and the wife cries a little more (7), everyone gathers around and begins doing this chant and near the end the aforementioned injured man apparently was bit (8), so he proceeds to stab and kill everyone, all the while Ethan has a freaking gun to try to stop him and has fought several Lycans to this point but refuses to help (9), we flee with the guy's daughter and find a way out only for her to return to him because "oh my god but he's still okay" and dies (10).

These events happen literally one after the other, and it made me lose so much hope before even entering Castle Dimitrescu. And somehow that's not even the last of them.

Ethan Winters has experienced something like this before. Anyone familiar with Resident Evil 7 Biohazard knows that the poor guy has had at least one limb chopped off throughout the series. Well, after everything goes downhill and his life becomes a mess again, Ethan refuses to comment on it or even care; he's stoic to a fault and it felt like Ethan didn't even care about anything unravelling around him. He finally has a bit of an outburst of emotion after the string of events and then... nothing. Ethan goes back to not caring, commenting, or even mentioning the nine-foot tall vampire — in fact, amidst Lady Dimitrescu and Heisenberg (really?) trying to decide Ethan's fate, he makes a joke.

While we're talking about Alcina, I also have a bone to pick with her and her daughters. We finally kill one of her daughters after reading a note that hints that they're weak to light, and we conveniently get pinned beside a window that allows us to burst it open and kill her. This is actually a consistent thing with all of the daughters as well. Alcina is not happy about this and swears to kill us for it. But despite that, every time she has a hold of us she likes throwing us away. I chalked this one up to Lady Dimitrescu being sadistic and liking to play cat and mouse, but she continues doing this and refusing to kill Ethan off. At one point she actually grabs Ethan, slams him into the ground several times until he literally goes through it, and he somehow lands — not only conscious but unscathed. I know Ethan has some sort of super armour besides the glaring plot armour thanks to him being infected, but how does he sometimes survive some hits, yet somehow when Chris Redfield whacks him across the face at the beginning of the game he faints? 

Ethan must have drunk some Felix Felicis (liquid luck) because there are so many stupid things that happen that somehow lead to him surviving. He gets hung by his hands like Jesus Christ and then finds a hole inside of not one, but three fireplaces that conveniently lead to important areas, one of which Alcina locks, but like what's the point of a lock if there's a hole leading straight to it? Why is it not covered? And don't get me started on the scene where Alcina gets called and is staring at a mirror where we should very clearly be visible. Don't believe me? LOOK AT THE PICTURE.

Image made brighter, I promise it's not that ugly!

I digress, back to Alcina: she finds Ethan, cuts off his freaking hand a la Luke Skywalker, picks him up, and chucks him across the room. After a bit of manoeuvring Ethan escapes, pours some miracle juice on his hand, and reattaches it.

There's a lot to unpack here; I understand how he's able to reattach the limbs but then, shouldn't he be healing slowly throughout the game? Several cuts are healed, but others remain, which makes the healing factor feel like a thing kept there just to cut off his limbs and reattach them. After so many times of this happening to Ethan it began losing its charm. It's no longer scary or cool whenever a Lycan bites chunks off of his neck, he gets stabbed by numerous things in the legs, or has his entire hand chopped off. After using, reusing, and overusing the same things, I kind of stopped being scared or stressed whenever this happened and it was more of a hurdle between that and the next miracle regrowth of his limb.

The scariest part of Resident Evil Village is how much people love the game despite its glaring flaws and trope-filled writing, many of which smaller companies and games would be burnt at the stake for. The fear factor ran out because the game became too fantastical, and Ethan’s ability to survive both of the games he appears on back to back is more unrealistic than Alcina Dimitrescu's height.

I'm going to be honest, I still have a few hours to go to play and I somehow was already capable of writing 1,400 words on why the game is overrated. I'll continue to play and finish it because I really want to see what other stupid crap the Felix Felicis is going to get Ethan through next, but I find it irritating, nay, borderline laughable that Resident Evil Village was nominated for GOTY when any other game doing these same things would have gotten them persecuted.