Resident Evil Village

Capcom's 2021 sequel puts Ethan Winters in a Romanian village run by four lords answering to a woman in a castle, and structures itself as four distinct horror games in sequence. Castle Dimitrescu is stately, pursued-by-a-tall-lady horror. House Beneviento removes your weapons entirely for the most frightening twenty minutes Capcom has ever shipped. Moreau is a swamp, and Heisenberg's factory is essentially an action game. That variety is the design, and it means the pacing never settles, for better or worse. Mechanically it inherits RE7's first-person view and adds a merchant, a grid inventory that is openly a Resident Evil 4 homage, and cooking upgrades from hunted animals. It is more action-forward than RE7 and less frightening for it, a trade the fanbase argues about. Shadows of Rose, the paid DLC, adds a third-person campaign, and a free update brought third person to the main game. The RE Engine visuals and the ray-tracing update remain a technical showcase.