Resident Evil Village – Winter’s Expansion

Taking place 16 years after the main story concludes, you play as Rose, who has been bullied all her life because of her powers. She’s offered a way to cure herself of these powers and so the story finds her revisiting areas of the Village, mainly the Castle and later, the house, searching for a crystal, which will remover her powers and turn her into a normal person.

This is all played out in a traditional Resident Evil style, third-person perspective and actually works pretty well here. Rose controls just as you expect her to and the mechanics are the same as other RE games. Graphics are the same as before as the whole thing is built using reused assets. The sound is excellent again and is best experienced though a good pair of headphones.

It is quite short though, with my play through clocking in at just over 3 hours. But, I feel this is about right as it doesn’t outstay its welcome and leaves things open for more of Rose’s story if the developers choose to go down that route. A minor spoiler for the main game here, but on completion you get a screen saying that “The Fathers Story is Done” suggesting that there’s yet more of the Winters to come, whether it be via Rose, who will be the most interesting choice, or via Mia, Ethan’s wife and Rose’s mother. I’m certainly interested enough to want to find out more!

Other parts of the DLC are some new levels for the Mercenaries mode and the ability to play as Lady Dimitrescu, although I’ve yet to experience her as she’s annoyingly locked behind achieving an S rank on a level that I can’t manage! I’m not really a fan of this kind of mode anyway as I don’t really enjoy playing things over and over again trying to improve ranks.

The final part of the DLC is the ability to play the entire original story in the new 3^rd person mode. Some people may like this, but I didn’t. It’s because the game was designed as a first person game and the viewpoint will automatically switch into first person for any of the cutscenes and this kind of ruins the flow and immersion a bit. But by far my biggest gripe with it is that you can’t change perspectives mid game. If you decide you don’t like the third person view, you have to quit out to the main menu to turn it off! If you could switch between them in game then it would have made it interesting to mess around with, but as it is, it makes it more of a novelty than anything else.

Overall it’s a mixed bag. It’s worth checking out for the story related content, but at 3 hours, is quite short for the monetary investment. If you’re new to RE Village and buy the new Gold edition then it’s a definite recommend, otherwise I’d suggest waiting until it’s on a sale before picking it up.