YMMV / Resident Evil Village

---

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • This line from Ethan when he encounters Chris at Moreau's Reservoir:
    Ethan: You killed Mia! Now do me and finish the job!
  • In Heisenberg's notes, he states that Ethan has an "interesting body". While he's probably referring to Ethan's Mold infection, dirty-minded players can take this another way.
  • Ethan's line to Chris after he kills Miranda and starts to calcify, saying that they "finished each other" could be taken another way.
  • Eveline's jealous line to Rose in "Shadows of Rose" is "I came first."
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How much does Lady Dimitrescu truly love her daughters? Some of her comments after he kills them sound more like complaining Ethan wrecked her prize cars, and it's worth noting that they were originally just servants she transformed and renamed, with all memories of their previous life erased. Of course, she also has private ruminations and especially a vocal outpouring of grief after you kill one of them suggesting it's genuine.
  • With "let's see what you're really made of" and his true plans for Ethan, were Heisenberg's suspiciously avoidable traps just another test for a potential ally and a way to trick Miranda into thinking that he's loyal to her?
  • Donna Beneviento is especially prone to this due to how so much of her character is deliberately obscure.
    • The diary of a gardener who worked on her estate is different in the Japanese and English versions on whether Donna's extreme social anxiety was caused by her parents' deaths or insecurity about a scar on her face that the former only made worse. Is either true? Both? Was the scar even that bad before her mutation caused a fungal growth over her right eye?
    • How much of the maze of puzzles in her basement were things she directly caused, and how much did Ethan bring with him into the hallucinations? Setting up a doll with puzzle pieces on and inside itself is justifiable, but it's unlikely she could have a recording of Mia feeling Rose kick during her pregnancy.
    • When Angie says to Ethan that she'd make a better daughter than Rose, is this just trolling? Or given the hallucinations of Mia with baby Rose is Donna saying she wants Ethan to be her husband and Angie's father? Or Donna's father? Does she even know, given her brain damage?
    • When Donna speaks, she sounds quiet and frightened, while Angie is loud and more openly psychotic. Is Angie merely Donna using a medium to express her Ax-Crazy side? Is Angie's voice a Literal Split Personality inhabiting the doll? Is she a totally independent being who just acts in concert with Donna? Their boss fight only exacerbates this. In the illusion, Angie gets stabbed four times with scissors, while in reality, he was stabbing Donna and the doll is unharmed.
    • The diary of Donna's gardener ends with her using her powers on him to let him see his dead wife and family again. Was she just testing her powers on him? Was she trying to be kind to the gardener, who until then had been her Only Friend and longtime human contact?
  • The Megamycete's actions after Miranda's defeat. Was it Miranda still trying to control its actions or was it the Megamycete-root itself, freed from Miranda's dominance, trying to replace the "parental figure" it had just lost by going for the closest one within its vicinity (Ethan)?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A fully-automatic M1911 pistol might sound silly at first blush, however, it's actually a real concept. Depression-era bank robbers John Dillinger and "Baby Face" Nelson were known for owning modified 1911s that can fire fully-automatically, and fitted with extended magazines like the one found in-game to boot. However, these custom pistols had a blistering 1000rpm fire rate, and had to be fitted with Thompson foregrips and recoil compensators to reduce the kick, instead of firing at a leisurely pace like the one used by Ethan.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Mutated Dimitrescu can very easily be defeated the first time around with merely the shotgun. All that needs to be done is just shoot the part of the monster that still looks like her repeatedly. That's probably why she's the first major boss.
  • Donna Beneviento and Angie are the least combat capable of the Lords, and accordingly their boss fight barely even qualifies as a boss fight. Pretty much all you need to do is locate Angie around the house three times. Considering the house is fairly small, the locations she can appear in are very limited in quantity, and Angie's cackling is an easy way to locate her, it's unlikely you'll fail. Taking too long does result in taking damage, but it's not even an instant kill.
  • The same can be said of the mutated Heisenberg. While he kits himself out in what can only be described as a mechsuit, it's completely killed off by the fact that Chris gives Ethan a tank with infinite ammo and a recharging cannon before the fight takes place. Even after Ethan is forced to fight on foot, Heisenberg attacks in a very slow and obvious pattern while the fight takes place in a wide open field littered with shotgun shells and sniper rifle bullets. It does make for an awesome spectacle, though.
• Awesome Art: One of the game's most praised aspects is its frankly amazing Gothic Horror Art Direction; from the snow-clad, Lycan-invested streets of the Village, all the way to the dark turrets and elaborate frescoes of Castle Dimitrescu, the game's environments are oozing dark atmosphere and character, with some of the most beautifully rendered gothic environments in any kind of medium. The character and monster designs have been similarly praised as both utterly horrific, awesome, and love letter to the genre itself. The stop-motion-styled cutscenes for the "Village of Shadows" storybook are a separate kind of awesome art, being beautiful and having a darkly magical quality on par with an animated feature.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: It's impossible to talk about Village without mentioning Lady Dimitrescu, the very tall and very attractive woman who Ethan goes up against.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Castle Dimitrescu is a beautiful elegant castle that has shades of the Spencer mansion, numerous puzzles, and multiple stalker enemies.
  • House Beneviento is lauded as a gaming horror setpiece and one of the scariest sequences in the RE series, aided by being both a No-Gear Level and having a legitimately creepy atmosphere in the style of Amnesia or P.T.. Some fans also appreciate it as a nice Breather Level from the action aspects.
  • Heisenberg's factory likewise has gotten praise, having both a great mechanical nightmare aspect, one of the larger areas to explore, new enemy types to fight, and culminating with a very enjoyable (if slightly easy) boss fight of the game. Getting to spend time with the crazy mechanic nut didn't hurt, either.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: After completing the escape room in Donna Beneviento's basement, the player suddenly finds themselves being chased by a giant fetus monster thing. This encounter is never explained anywhere in the game afterwards and it is never brought up again in general. It's possible that the thing was just a hallucination that Donna put Ethan through but she never even mentions it to him before her death.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Towards the climax of Village, Eveline confirms that Ethan has been mutated by the Mold ever since his visit to the Bakers' estate in 7, which. while not explicit, many saw as pretty clear in the previous game, as it neatly explained Ethan's limb reattachments, his absurd durability, being able to speak with Jack in the Mold Hive Mind, and experiencing Eveline's hallucinations. The fact that Ethan died from his first encounter with Jack Baker, was more of a surprise however, even to those whom knew (or correctly guessed) that Ethan was infected.
    • Strangely enough, this may be averted for the Japanese version. Continuing the topic of Ethan reattaching his limbs, these scenes are censored in the Japanese version of both 7 and Village^*The CERO (Japan's video game rating system) won't allow depictions of dismemberment, even in games aimed at mature audiences. Instead, Ethan's limbs are intact, but he's still in severe pain, as he screams out accordingly during those assaults. In turn, it's as though The Reveal of Ethan being a Mold mutant was only for the Japanese version of Village. This appears to be an oversight on the developers' part, making the dismemberments/reattachments in the overseas versions come across as hand waved moments created for shock value, because how could Ethan himself possibly not know that whole time he'd been mutated while attempting reattachments?
  • Chris being a good guy all along came as no surprise to fans who were skeptical that he would shoot Mia and take away Rose for no good reason and that Capcom would just suddenly turn one of their franchise-wide heroes into a villain without explanation.
  • The crazy old woman is Mother Miranda. It can be pretty obvious by the fact both of them show up at the same place, at the same time in the village, and that the Hag is the most notably mysterious character in the game.
  • Mia not really being dead from the shooting as well. The shooting kicking off the plot of the game and even being shown in the trailers placed such high emphasis on it that the event was guaranteed not to be as it seemed by the end of the game, though the circumstances for Mia's survival and whether the victim was actually Mia at all weren't as immediately discernible.
  • In Shadows of Rose, Rose's disembodied guide Michael being the consciousness of Ethan surviving in the Megamycete. There's really nobody else within the Mold who would be looking out for Rose.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Near the end of the game, you get to play as Chris, going through the village with a full loadout of military-grade equipment and a support team. The enemies you face still provide a challenge by their sheer numbers, but damn is it satisfying to tear through them.
  • Infinite ammo once again becomes this after having to scrounge enough firepower to take out even a lycan mook or an annoying boss with your favorite weapon. Even moreso if you have a magnum and have the satisfaction to make mincemeat out of every enemy in the game with it. Even better, much like in Resident Evil 5, you are not penalized for using this when attempting to unlock achievements.
• Continuity Lock-Out: In a way. Some players will find it confusing as to why Ethan would be able (and knowledgeable enough) to use a bottle of chem fluid to reattach his severed hand without asking any questions. Ethan's knowledge of doing this actually comes from a cutscene in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, where his leg is severed by Jack and he uses a bottle of chem fluid to reattach it, much to his own shock. However, the cutscene is optional and can only be triggered if Ethan is cornered by Jack near a trapdoor at the beginning of the game.
• Creepy Cute: A decent number of fans are quite open about finding Angie utterly adorable and something they'd want to own and play with themselves, with them viewing her Creepy Doll status as making her more lovable than if she had an intentionally cute look.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Its become very popular to pair Lady Dimitrescu with Dante, as a lot of fans think he would brush off Alcina's attacks due to his Healing Factor, earning her admiration.
  • It has also become popular to pair Lady Dimitrescu with Lust, thanks to their similar appearances and badassery. The fact both are part of super evil families definitely helps.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • All the House leaders are horrible people^note Except possibly Donna but all of them, except Heisenberg, do love Mother Miranda and crave her affection. Despite this, she only sees them as nothing more than failed experiments to be killed off without a second thought. Even Heisenberg and Moreau are at least aware of this.
  • Lord Moreau especially is quite pitiful. A horribly mutated and mentally impaired man who has barely any control of his powers who desperately craves his mother's love who in turn sees him as her biggest failure and has no love in turn. A note written by Moreau where he learns of his mother's plan to resurrect her real daughter ends with a panicked "No, I don't want that! No! No! No! No! No!" as he realizes she never really loved him. His last words involve him begging for his mother's help.
  • Donna Beneviento is easy to feel sorry for, but she barely qualifies as a Nominal Villain. On paper, she's one of the Lords, serves Miranda, and helped kidnap Rose. In practice, Angie is the one that does most of these actions, leaving the massive Shrinking Violet that is Donna without much agency of her own. Her backstory of her familial loss and the scar on her face^note The English dub of the game mentions one, but the Japanese dub doesn't causing her to shy away from the world and left her as a mentally handicapped womanchild desperate for love and thus easily taken advantage of by Mother Miranda and trapped in the unloving "family" of the Lords by her and the malevolent Angie. Because of their actions, Donna is eventually killed by Ethan, dying as a lonely unloved woman.
• Demonic Spiders: Lycans aren't too bad when dealing with them on Standard difficulty, with their frequent tendency to dodge your aim being the only thing you might have to worry about. On Hardcore and above, however, they're an absolute nightmare. The Lycans' strength and speed are increased to the point of becoming Lightning Bruisers and their health is to the point where you'll likely have to use a good chunk of your bullets on just one of them and considering they're the first things you fight, it can come off as Early Game Hell.
• Draco in Leather Pants: All of the Four Lords have fans that either excuse their actions or claim they sympathize with them:
  • It didn't take long for fans to claim they sympathize with Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters. Many say they didn't want to kill them or they portray Alcina as a vengeful Mama Bear who's just fighting to protect her children like Ethan is. This is ignoring the fact that the entire family's likely killed dozens if not hundreds of innocent people, as the notes and various areas of the castle show, and they introduce themselves by attacking Ethan then leaving him hanging off of two meat hooks with the intention of coming back to eat him. Her damning Ethan for killing her three daughters is also massively hypocritical, as the Hypocrite and Moral Myopia tropes on her character page show.
  • To a lesser extent, Heisenberg has a fair number of people wanting Ethan to side with him to fight against Miranda and sympathizing with his desire to be free from her control. This also ignores the fact that Heisenberg very clearly wants to use Rose as a weapon against Miranda and there's no way Ethan would ever allow this. That and he's just as morally bankrupt as the other Lords are, given his factory filled with tech zombies.
  • Fans who favor Donna Beneviento draw upon her tragic backstory to characterize her as a Tragic Villain or an outright innocent victim of Miranda with a Literal Split Personality. These fans transfer the blame of her villainous actions and behavior to the much more openly psychotic Angie (one of several dolls that Donna controls in the game), such as having murdered her gardener in her backstory and trying to kill Ethan with psychological torture during the events of the game.
  • At least some players have expressed pity for Moreau due to his awful physical condition, his earnest desire for Miranda's love, and his Psychopathic Manchild demeanor making him come across as more pathetic and pitiable than his other siblings. Like the rest of the Lords he's trying to kill Ethan, was complicit in kidnapping and chopping up Rosemary and notes indicate he experimented on innocent people just like the rest of the more intelligent Lords.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Duke is relatively well-liked by fans, not only for being a great counterpart to RE4's own Merchant, but also being a surprisingly very helpful figure throughout Ethan's mission to rescue his daughter. Giving him advice, directions and even having his back all the way to the ending. It helps he's revealed to actually be friends with the OG Merchant. And that he ends up saving Ethan near the end of the game even though he gets no personal gain from it.
  • The Hound-Wolf squad is getting this reaction from fans; becoming beloved by the fanbase for their status as Badass Normal special forces operators who are highly competent in a series chock-full of Informed Ability Red Shirt Army. It helps they have amazingly tactical designs, quirky yet distinct personalities, badass Animal Motifs, provide actual help to their CO, and great interactions with Chris. Since they survive the events of the game, fans are clamoring for their own DLC chapter.
  • The Baby that shows up during Beneviento's section. It only shows up for a few minutes and can't actually be fought against but fans praise it as being one of the most terrifying creatures in the game and acting as a (possibly intentional) throwback to Konami's cancelled Silent Hills.
• Even Better Sequel: 7 was already considered by many people to be a return to the series' Survival Horror roots after the previous games went overboard with actionizing the franchise. Village, however, has received even more acclaim than its predecessor among many of those same people. This is attributed to the game having more varied enemy types, a wider and more open-ended setting, reintroducing beloved features such as the cache chest and the ability to purchase weapon upgrades, retaining the survival horror aspect in spite of being an Actionized Sequel, explaining some of the more looser ends of the previous game, and the gameplay overall being much better paced.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters have been praised for being charismatic and showy antagonists with a well-liked vampire motif. Alcina turning into a Draconic Abomination probably helps with that.
  • Heisenberg has got praise for being an entertaining and well-designed villain with his showy, loud yet affable demeanor. Even though he can be quite an Anti-Climax Boss, the battle against him is a great visual spectacle.
  • Donna Beneviento might not be much of a character on her own, but fans praise her section for being extremely terrifying and using Nothing Is Scarier to great effect in making the player feel helpless and isolated.
  • Salvatore Moreau in his mutated form is arguably the toughest of the Four Lords, boasting one very damaging attack as well as high endurance against even the most powerful weapons at Ethan's disposal. Coupled with the section in which he stalks you through the water, he makes for one of very tense boss encounter.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Lady D", "Tall Vampire Lady" or "Tall Lady", or, more profanely, "Big Tiddy Vampire Mommy" for Lady Dimitrescu. Lady Dimmadome has also gotten some traction, thanks to her height drawing comparisons to Doug Dimmadome's incredibly tall stetson.
  • "Maximilian" or "Bloodborne Cosplay Max" for Lord Karl Heisenberg, due to his resemblance to Maximilian Dood and his attire resembling a Bloodborne Hunter. He's also called "Walter White" due to his last name being exactly the same as White's alias.
  • Karl Marx for the large hammer-wielding Lycan Urias, due to his hair and beard resembling that of Marx.
  • "DaBaby" for that disturbing baby-like monster that Ethan encounters in the Beneviento's basement. Case in point. The English actors call the monster Jimmy.
  • Air Man for the Sturm enemy, because its "face" is a giant, rotating airplane propeller, just like how Air Man has a giant fan for a face.
  • "Fish Boy" or "Fish Man" for Lord Moreau, because his One-Winged Angel form is an aquatic monster with a fish's tail. His human form also has webbed fingers/feet and he has a fish's tail underneath his coat.
  • The Duke is almost uniformly referred to as "a bro" by players for his chummy and helpful nature.
• Faux Symbolism: There is a surplus of twisted sex and family imagery in the game — the relentless sexual torture of House Dimitrescu, the immense mutant fetus in House Beneviento, Lord Moreau's infantile obsession with gaining his mother's love, etc. — but any interpretation of it beyond character Motifs depends entirely on the imagination of the audience.
• Fountain of Memes: Lady Dimitrescu became the target of very widespread memetic lust, due to her being a very tall, powerful, voluptuous, curvy middle-aged lady.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Just like Resident Evil 3 (Remake), reloading an earlier save becomes your best friend within the in-game challenges. It tracks the number of kills you have across saves, meaning you can clean house as much as you want and gain enough points to get infinite ammo for the weapon of your choice.
  • The usual work of the magnum is obviously meant to be Purposefully Overpowered - it can one-shot everything weaker than a mini-boss and near-assuredly stagger anything above that, dealing more damage than any other gun a normal playthrough even before upgrades. The only thing holding it back is its very, very limited supply of spare rounds. Once New Game Plus hits, however, resourceful players can craft magnum ammo and even upgrade to a second, even stronger one, turning the magnum into an absolute boss destroyer.
  • Landmines are ridiculously powerful once you plant them. Despite being hindered by 5 mines per slot, its blast radius is powerful enough to take out multiple mooks all at once. It can also blow off Soldat Panzer's armor once you trick them into stepping on one or just plant them on their feet.
  • During the first four levels of Mercenaries, the sniper rifle is king. As long as you make sure to keep upgrading the damage between rounds, you'll be able to 1-2 shot literally everything the mode throws at you. And you don't even need to get close to your enemies with the sniper's range, unlike with a shotgun. And if you get the upgrade that makes killed enemies explode, you can wipe out swathes of grunt enemies in a single shot. The only potential concern is running out of ammo, but as long as you are careful with your shots and be sure to pick up all the ammo that you see, you should never be in an unwinnable situation. Unfortunately, the sniper rifle becomes unavailable for the latter half of the Mercenaries mode.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Those aware of Japanese folklore will notice Lady Dimitrescu's white outfit, her wide sunhat, and her incredible height make her a dead ringer for Hachishaku-sama (Ms. Eight-Feet-Tall).
  • The series loves to be cheeky about what specific countries later games take place in, but foodies might be able to narrow it down easily, since the examples of named cuisine that appear in the game (such as ciorbă de legume and mititei) are dishes from Romania, and Lady Dimitrescu's surname is Romanian in origin.
  • There's a lot of in-game indication that Donna Beneviento's doll Angie is not just a proxy for her to express herself, but that Angie, while connected to Donna, has her own personality, meaning she is a Literal Split Personality from Donna. Some of the descriptions from actual dissociative identity disorder patients of what it is like to switch identities fit perfectly with the idea of ghostly possession, fitting Donna' theme.^note For example, some will describe the identity switch as being pushed out of their own body. Others describe a sort of out-of-body experience where they feel like they're watching their own body instead of actually piloting their body. In addition, most DID patients suffered severe traumas as children, fitting with Donna's backstory of the loss of her family, implied to be when she was a child.
• Good Bad Bugs: If Ethan is knocked on his back, the game can clip him out of bounds if he's standing inside a door frame or if he's blown off a ledge and lands beyond the invisible wall of certain areas. Unfortunately, the game's Event Flag setup prevents most of the sequence breaking that could've been done with this trick.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All those soldiers who fought and died for BSAA's cause and how that group was formed into an anti-bioterrorism organization? Apparently, BSAA got fed up with their human soldiers dropping like flies and has replaced them with humanoid BOWs.
  • Lady Dimitrescu showing grief and sadness over the deaths of her daughters, more specifically Cassandra, becomes more tragic when you take into account Cassandra's VA Jeanette Maus passing away from colon cancer shortly before the game's release.
• He Really Can Act: Todd Soley was already a good actor especially in the previous game, but here, he lets his voice acting truly shine. He makes Ethan as emotive as possible, such as his anger and sadness. The ending is truly heartbreaking once Ethan decides to pull a Heroic Sacrifice, he was actually crying when his last words were "Goodbye, Rosemary".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • After the reveal of Dimitrescu's clawed hands, lots of people started making comparisons to Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist. Lo and behold, a couple of months later, it was revealed that Alcina's Japanese voice actress is none other than Lust herself, Kikuko Inoue^note from the Truer to the Text adaptation Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, not the 2003 adaptation, where she is voiced by Yuko Sato.
  • In 7, Chris and Blue Umbrella troops show up towards the end of said game and assists Ethan by tossing him an Albert-01 handgun to finish Eveline off. After she dies, Chris approaches Ethan, who is so exhausted and battered up from the battle that all he can say is "The fuck took you guys so long?" Usually one of the first to arrive for B.O.W. related incidents, one can say that Chris took Ethan's words to heart and wanted to make up for it. Fast forward to the beginning of Village and cue Chris along with his team attempting to assassinate Miranda AKA the Big Bad disguising herself as Mia, riddling her full of bullets. Though she ended up faking her death, that relentless effort was still impressive. Basically, it's as though Chris set his alarm very early, didn't oversleep this time, and decided to speedrun killing the next Big Bad immediately. Though it could also count as Harsher in Hindsight as this action cause a rift between Ethan and Chris until late game, that even his own team called him out for it.
  • The reveal that Ethan has been dead since the first run-in with Jack at beginning of 7 is tragic, until you realize how Ethan died: "Daddy" stepped on him.
  • Shortly before the game's release, series producer Tsuyoshi Kanda has gone on record stating that Capcom was aiming for Village to be less scary than 7. And then comes House Beneviento, considered one of the scariest levels in the entire franchise.
  • Miranda's notes indicate that she views Moreau as an abject failure due to low intelligence and low compatibility with the Cadou. In spite of this and a poor early showing by letting Ethan steal his flask right out from under his nose, Salvatore actually fares rather well during his segment first by feigning stupidity to stall for time until Ethan's exit is blocked off, and then doing everything he can to impede Ethan's progress through the reservoir. He even puts up an admirable effort in his boss fight, being far more mindful to protect his weak spot than Alcina, not suffering from any Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? moments either, and being remarkably resilient even in the face of Ethan's upgraded weapons. In contrast, his genius-intellect siblings (Dimitrescu and Heisenberg) left the keys to their defeat lying around for Ethan to use, and Donna is brought low by mere scissors.
  • Ethan absolutely refuses to let Heisenberg use Rose as a tool/weapon to kill off Mother Miranda. Then came the DLC, Rose ended up fighting and killing Mother Miranda anyway even though these events all occurred in the mind.
  • Heisenberg has a mutual hatred with his "sister" Alcina, who largely resembles a vampire. By 2023, his voice actor Neil Newbon is probably best known for his role in Baldur's Gate 3 as Astarion... a vampire spawn.
• Ho Yay:
  • Lady Dimitrescu is clearly not fond of men and has a statue of a young maiden being murdered by her daughters while depicted in very... interesting positions. And then there's one of her lines while chasing Ethan:
    Lady Dimitrescu: I will become eternally beautiful, just like Mother Miranda!
  • In House Beneviento, Angie calls the other female dolls her "cute friends".
  • The way Heisenberg's private diary describes his interest in Ethan's body is intended to be a plot-related foreshadowing, but when combined with theatrically flirtatious villainous mannerism and going from "I like you" to "You should have never refused me, Ethan" (in no small part due to how he says it, so unsurprisingly the voice actor himself lampshaded it in his walkthrough), it's pure Foe Yay fuel.
• I Knew It!:
  • In following with Resident Evil tradition, many people believed that Lady Dimitrescu would end up mutating into a hideous monstrosity in order to subvert the amount of adoration she had been getting. And that is exactly what happened with her true Molded form. That said, that didn't stop some people.
  • Many fans already suspected that Ethan is a Molded mutant, so the reveal in the game doesn't come off as a twist as much as it is a confirmation. The real twist, however, is that Ethan has been dead since the beginning of Biohazard, killed when Jack Baker stomped him in the face after his "Welcome to the family, son" punch, and the Mold is the only thing keeping him around.
  • Also, a number of fans suspected correctly that Mother Miranda was the nameless old hag that appeared throughout the story.
  • While a lot of the fans genuinely thought Resident Evil was going in a supernatural folklore direction with its bestiary in Village, there were some that didn't buy into the possibility for one minute and stuck with the belief that the monsters were going on to be some kind of bio-mutants. Those skeptics turned out to be completely right when it turned out in the end all of the monsters in the Village are a result of Miranda's experimenting with the Mold.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A common criticism about the game was the noticeable decrease in difficulty compared to 7. While definitely difficult in its own right, the game provides the player with more ammo to work with, allows you to upgrade your weapons, and most of the bosses are slow and have obvious weak spots. In addition, unlike previous games in the series (barring Resident Evil 3 (Remake)), Village allows you to start a New Game Plus on harder difficulties without having to actually beat those difficulties first, meaning you could breeze through Hardcore mode or even Village of Shadows mode with your infinite weaponry. Lastly, obtaining infinite ammo or powerful weaponry don't require completing difficult challenges if you're willing to just pay $5 for a DLC that literally gives all of it to you.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Not everyone was on board with the game once again using the first person perspective, showing that Ethan still remains The Faceless. However, perhaps as a response to criticism, the Gold Edition eventually gave players the option to play the game in third person.
  • A common complaint is that the game's story is basically just a thinly veiled remake of Resident Evil 4. The opening sequence^note Not the prologue featuring Ethan and family in their house, but the sequence immediately after as Ethan regains consciousness in particular follows very similar beats as that game's equivalent, just this time in first person.
• Jerkass Woobie: Lord Moreau isn't any less monstrous than his fellow Lords and is responsible for just as much suffering as they are, but his pitiful condition and serious case of mommy issues make it hard not to feel just a little bit sorry for him. Supplemental materials also reveal that in his downtime, the guy likes to keep to himself, sitting around watching old romance films and snacking on cheese, giving him a little touch of relatability that his cohorts don't really have.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Lady Dimitrescu, who has managed to attract lots of attention from outside the Resident Evil fandom.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Lady Dimitrescu has become a major source of crossover ships.
  • A major result of Ethan being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap is that fans consider him prime shipping material with numerous other characters. While there is of course him being an Official Couple with Mia, who surprisingly enough is rather lacking in Die for Our Ship, instead being otherwise ignored outside birthing Rose, almost all the other major characters have been shipped with him in some capacity:
    • The most prominent of them all is the plethora of Foe Yay Shipping with all the antagonists, excluding Moreau (though it's not out of the question that some might pair them), where Dimitrescu is a tall sexy lady and her daughters are cute and pretty girls who all get tons of sexually-charged interactions with Ethan, Heisenberg is so insistent on persuading Ethan to join him in stopping Miranda that it seems like he's coming onto the man, Beneviento's playfulness and love of dolls is often interpreted as somebody who'd make a great motherly playmate for Rose, and some like to portray Mother Miranda accepting Rose as her new daughter without doing any of her horrible experiments.
    • The Duke being so adamant at doing everything he can to help and support Ethan, bordering on a Big Beautiful Man in appearance, being such a good chef for Ethan it increases his stats, and never doing any wrong by Ethan at any point has resulted in a decent number of fans seeing The Duke as a better "wife" than Mia could hope to be.
• LGBT Fanbase: Most of the notable cast has gotten sizable chunks of the fanbase who adore them sexually regardless of gender. For specific examples, Lady Dimitrescu has such an alluring and commanding presence that plenty of female fans love her just as much as the guys, while Heisenberg is so suave and charming that numerous male fans admit to sharing the girls' desires to call him "daddy".
• Magnificent Bitch: Mother Miranda is the respected ruler of the village, the leader of the Four Lords, and the architect behind the entire franchise. Having lost her daughter Eva to the Spanish Flu, Miranda does whatever she can to revive her daughter, which leads her to the discovery of the Megamycete underneath the village. Using it to gain immortality, Miranda would also discover the Mold, a virus connected to the Megamycete that resurrects the dead. Having inspired a young Oswell E. Spencer into creating a resurrection virus of his own after saving his life and tutoring him in the ways of science, Miranda would later kidnap four people and use the Mold to transform them into horrific monstrosities to serve as her false family. After hearing of Rosemary Winters's newfound abilities, Miranda kidnaps her mother Mia and poses as her to kidnap the baby, escaping from Chris Redfield's grasp after her supposed death. Posing as an old hag, Miranda manipulates Ethan Winters into killing her Four Lords in order to power the Megamycete, planning to use both that and Rose's power to fully resurrect Eva, even killing Ethan herself once his purpose has been served. After her death her mind survived in the Megamycete and continued to plan her daughter's revival. Miranda created an illusion of Rose's friend to lure her into the Megamycete in order to sever her connection to it, whereupon Miranda intends to turn Rose into a "vessel" for Eva, killing Ethan again when he interferes.
• Memetic Badass: Ethan and Rose Winters.
  • After the game's release, the fans' opinion of Ethan Winters changed from him being a Vanilla Protagonist in the previous game to a badass One-Man Army on par with Chris Redfield himself who is no stranger of being memed as the man who punched a boulder inside an active volcano, with fans joking that he can win any battle against any opponent as long as he has a bottle of first aid medicine. In fact, there are thumbnails of Ethan wearing a shit-eating grin and Cool Shades before going into action.
  • Rose lives up to her father and is the most powerful of all characters in the franchise, bar none. She drains the power of Miranda, taking away her immortality and making her killable, all while she's just a little six-month-old baby girl who is almost completely oblivious to everything. At sixteen she ups the ante and eliminates Miranda's consciousness. She's grown so powerful that she effectively can kill ghosts, something even mentioned on This Very Wiki.
• Memetic Molester: Ethan has been gaining a reputation of being a Stalker with a Crush on Lady Dimitrescu, with going to large lengths to get to her and not returning until he has a baby. In fact, fans have turned him into this towards other female villains.
• Memetic Mutation: Enough to have its own page.
• Misaimed Fandom: Many people think Ethan should have joined Heisenberg and helped him kill Miranda, ignoring the fact that not only is Heisenberg a maniac like the rest of his "family", he wants to use the infant Rose as a weapon and does not guarantee he'll ever return her to her father.
• Moe: Many fans wish they can be Donna's playmates instead of having to kill her, due to her child-like mentality and her beautiful portrait of herself and her doll Angie. They even find Angie to be cute and lovable too.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Mother Miranda and the Four Houses reveal the sadistic, evil monsters they really are after they slaughter an entire village and chop Rosemary Winters into pieces.
  • Chris believes that the B.S.A.A. crossed this threshold when they covered up the Baker Incident in its entirety despite the scale of the outbreak, among other controversial decisions they made that causes him to go independent and call them "rotten and ruined". Part of the ending has his squad retrieve a dead BSAA body in the aftermath of the final battle, only to realize that the organization is issuing goddamn Tyrants as foot soldiers, officially crossing into He Who Fights Monsters territory despite their supposedly-benevolent intentions. Whether they're future antagonists in the Sequel Hook or not is left in the air.
• Narm: Not quite as bad as past entries, but it just wouldn't be part of the series without it.
• Narm Charm:
  • Moreau's Boss Banter can get a little silly at times, especially when he cries out childish phrases like "Up and down!" and "I'm the best!" while leaping at you in fish form. However, it's quite fitting banter coming from a Psychopathic Manchild.
  • The amount of ridiculous punishment Ethan takes with only the bare minimum of reaction to what would be extremely painful (ie. his fingers being bitten off, being impaled, getting his hand sliced off), would be straight Narm, but his nonchalance in pushing forward like nothing happened is especially amusing.
  • The idea of applying a baby's natural cries and baby-talk to an absolutely nightmarish monster seems absurd, because with some exceptions babies are completely adorable. Yet "the Baby" of this game literally does just that. Aside from its One-Hit Kill, all it does is cry, laugh, and talk like a human baby... and it's one of the most nightmare-inducing things ever encountered in Resident Evil.
• Nausea Fuel: Lord Moreau's fish form and his intermediate stage seem aimed at being the grossest/most nausea-inducing of the Four Lords.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • It's simultaneously terrifying and hilarious to see Lady Dimitrescu squeeze through small narrow doors to continue her pursuit of Ethan.
  • Donna Beneviento's collection of Creepy Dolls look a little silly once you realize they're all positioned in the exact same way: in an A-pose.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Fans complained once again that zombies are absent, despite the fact that it's not the first time they're not present, mutants have been part of the series since day one (although the unarmed Moroaicǎ found outside the castle do look and behave rather similarly to the archetypal "ghoul" zombies).
  • Also, the premise of a returning RE character going Papa Wolf in a dangerous location out of worrying about his daughter was already used in Resident Evil: Revelations 2, as part of Barry Burton's scenario.
  • The BSAA bioweapon soldiers was done first by Umbrella, specifically the Sheena Island branch called the "Umbrella Trashsweepers", as the cost-effective equivalent of USS designed to remove traces of Umbrella's involvement in said island in case of the viral outbreak failure to leave no survivors.
• Porting Disaster: At launch, the PC version suffered from obvious framerate issues whenever the player battled enemies, most egregiously the Maidens. It was eventually discovered that these performance issues were caused by the poor implementation of the combination of Denuvo and Capcom's proprietary DRM, which was, over two months after launch, finally addressed in a patch.
• Recycled Premise:
  • A returning series protagonist, who has Taken A Level In Badass since his last appearance, must go to a remote European village to rescue a kidnapped daughter from a mysterious and reclusive cult who seeks to use her for its own ends. Along the way, he fights hordes of villagers, who have been mutated by a parasite given to them by their leaders, and encounters another returning series protagonist whose allegiances are unclear for most of the game. He's also aided by an Intrepid Merchant who appears in a variety of improbable locations while selling him weapons, supplies, and upgrades for his guns and inventory. The plot varies in some respects, but there's really no hiding the fact that much of Village's DNA derives from Resident Evil 4, specifically its cancelled "Castle"^note Which eventually became the first Devil May Cry and "Hookman" iterations.
  • Some basic parallels can also be seen between Village and its predecessor; both follow a Family Man Badass Normal going to rescue a member of their family from a "family" of BOW monsters, The Leader of which is imposing this on them and manipulating them for her own ends. Plus, an old lady encountered early on and is never attacked is revealed to have been the Big Bad in a different form, while a member of said "family" is a Gadgeteer Genius.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While Ethan was never hated per se, his Dull Surprise, generic personality and overall lack of uniqueness compared to the other Resident Evil mainstays caused some mocking from the fanbase. In this game, his more expressive reactions, increased competence, love for his daughter and his Tear Jerker Heroic Sacrifice have turned some players around, with many wishing he'd turn out to somehow still be alive (at least in some way, such as Reincarnation) so they could play as him again.
• Rooting for the Empire: Since Heisenberg is a popular villain, some fans wish that they could have taken his offer to rebel against Miranda.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Dragoon assault rifle is one of the worst automatic weapons in Chris' arsenal. While it has it has a good rate of fire and burst damage, it is hindered by its usage of 30 bullets per magazine and Chris' slow reloading animation, which leaves him open for an attack while enemies swarm you. The weapon itself isn't very useful when you are facing a large horde of enemies, especially if you are speedrunning, and on Hardcore and Village of Shadows difficulty. If you are aiming for an assault rifle with a good rate of fire and ammo compacity, the WCX has 80 bullets per magazine, isn't hindered by slow reloading animations, and it does slightly more damage per shot when fully upgraded. If you're playing on the hardest difficulties, you'd better be really damn good at nailing headshots with it during Chris' segment; there's quite literally no reason to use it as Ethan.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Lady Dimitrescu, while her original model is considered very attractive by most of the fanbase it's common for some of her traits to get changed in fanwork. The most common changes are massively increasing her bust, making her face younger looking with less wrinkles and changing her ghostly white skin to peach colored. Some of the more popular fan mods replace her long dress with racy lingerie or swimsuits.
  • A very downplayed example with Moreau, but he tends to be at least Ugly Cute in fanart.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: While the game isn't exactly easy per se, the difficulty is noticeably toned down from 7. Resources such as ammo and healing items are easier to come by, you can now upgrade your weapons, running speed, and health, and most of the bosses aren't damage sponges (at least not majorly).
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • In a continuation of the "Redfield bloodline" meme, many fans have taken to (mostly) jokingly shipping Ethan and Claire Redfield, two characters who have never met. Or rather, Chris aggressively pairing them together.
  • There's emerged a bit of a fanbase for pairing Donna Beneviento and Bela Dimitrescu together, though neither of them ever even references the other in game or even interacts with the other.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Fans had this reaction when werewolves were introduced into the series in the announcement trailer.
  • The ending of the announcement trailer has the return of Chris Redfield... who then shoots Mia to death in front of a distraught Ethan.
  • The boss battle with Lady Dimitrescu. Most people were expecting her to go One-Winged Angel, but nobody was expecting said form to be A DRAGON!
  • The reveal that the collectable Plot Device of the game is Rosemary cut up into body parts that are heavily implied to still be alive is a morbid moment even by Resident Evil standards.
  • While the reveal of Ethan being a Mold mutant was something considered a Captain Obvious Reveal due to all the rather blatant foreshadowing, most especially the fact Ethan can reattach body parts with just a splash of healing fluid, absolutely nobody was expecting or prepared for the accompanying reveal that Ethan becoming a Mold mutant involved him dying near the beginning of the previous game, having been unintentionally killed by Jack punching and stomping on him, and he's actually been a Humanoid Abomination made entirely out of Mold ever since, only retaining his mind and appearance through Heroic Willpower.
  • The fact that Ethan dies at the end of the game, marking this game as the second time in the series' history in which a mainline protagonist dies. Just like Piers, he sacrifices his life to save his daughter, wife and help Chris stop Miranda. Which must particularly cut deep for the latter, as he's basically experiencing what happened to Piers.
• Signature Scene:
  • The scene where Ethan spies on Lady Dimitrescu as she complains over the phone to Mother Miranda before picking up her dresser and heaving it across the room.
  • For many, the moment Duke urges Ethan to take a closer look and find out what's REALLY in the Flask...
  • The sequence in the Beneviento basement where Ethan is stripped of all his weapons and forced to run away from what can only be described as a giant mutant fetus.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Just as RE7 was often compared to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), so has this been compared to Dracula (1931) for its rustic Ruritania setting, its villains being heavily inspired by Classical Movie Vampires, their leader being a very tall, elegant aristocrat (in this case, a female one), and her having three female underlings who call to mind Dracula's brides.
  • As soon as the first trailer was released, a lot of people thought of it as Capcom's answer to Bloodborne; a foreign protagonist who finds himself trying to survive a vaguely Eastern-European setting suffering from a werewolf-plague caused by the religious organization it's allegedly protecting the citizens from, Vampiric nobles in an old castle, Eldritch Abominations created from science experiments meant to evolve humanity and there's a doll. Two of the antagonists — Lord Karl Heisenberg and Lord Salvatore Moreau — even bear a strong resemblances to the Bloodborne boss Father Gascoigne (his signature hammer weapon similar to the Boom Hammer trick weapon) and the Huntsman's Minion respectively. There even exists concept art of a revamped design for Ada that looks almost exactly like Eileen the Crow.
  • Another similar comparison is that this is the best 3D Castlevania game ever made.
  • If RE7 was known to have similarities to Silent Hill 2, this game will have similarities to the original Silent Hill as Ethan is a normal schmuck who stumbles into a sinister, wintry village who will do everything he can to rescue his daughter Rosemary, much like Harry enters Silent Hill to save Cheryl, with Mother Miranda playing the Dahlia role. Meanwhile, the Beneviento manor may come across as Resident Evil's take on P.T.
  • The game is also reminiscent to a gender-flipped, far less Narmy D2 considering the snowy setting, ability for the protagonist to hunt animals, medieval aesthetics of the prototype build, and also the storyline involving a baby that was also in the planned prototype before it was changed.
  • Chris Redfield's role is remarkably similar to Dante's subplot in Devil May Cry 4. In both titles, the player character from a prior game has inexplicably become an antagonist, by shooting a seemingly innocent person and refusing to explain why. But it's eventually revealed the character he shot was actually a villain — and said character comes back from the dead to serve as the final boss.
• Squick: Late in the game, Ethan is revealed to be a literal walking pile of Mold and Mia kept it a secret for three years. This means that Mia conceived Rose by having sex with her fungus-husband, which is disturbing in so many ways.
• That One Achievement:
  • While some in-game challenges have bosses by defeating them at a certain time table, Angie requires you to defeat her under a minute and forty seconds. Whereas defeating Alcina and Heisenberg requires that you defeat them in under 2 and 5 minutes respectively, Angie requires that you remember where her hiding spots are in order to beat the challenge (and they can change up slightly in repeat playthroughs). That doesn't seem too bad, until you realize the clock keeps ticking each time Ethan finds and stabs Angie, so you have less of a margin for error in tracking the damn thing down than it may seem; missing the cutoff by a mere two or three seconds is frustratingly common. Even the "Sashimi" challenge listed below is perfectly doable on a New Game Plus if you have a magnum and enough ammo to brute force it, but defeating Angie in time pretty much requires you to luck out and dart to her correct hiding place the first time, each time; any searching you need to do will push you over the limit.
  • Moreau is even worse, as you must defeat him in less than a whole minute. This is difficult because, as note directly below, Moreau is considered That One Boss since he usually won't outright reveal his weakpoint unless you do a substantial amount of damage to him, and when he does, he moves sporadically which can make it difficult to properly aim. None of that is even getting into his fast and often deadly attacks.
  • "Knives Out" require that you go to your enemies up close and personal, and all firearms are off limits except for puzzles and structure damage. This isn't bad in Casual mode where enemies and bosses have less health, but are an absolute nightmare even on Normal where it takes a while to defeat even the Final Boss with a knife. Even Chris' karambit knife, which is stronger of the two knives, can do Cherry Tapping-level damage to enemies and bosses.
• That One Attack: All normal mooks in the game have access to a grapple move, where they will pull the player towards them for a very damaging bite that can't be shaken out of. And they will pull this attack very frequently with no cooldown in between each one, thus making a melee scuffle against a mob an exercise in frustration where Ethan or Chris will get stunlocked to death by several Lycans taking turns biting them over and over again. The only silver lining is that blocking completely foils this attack, but dropping your guard for even an instant and it will connect again if ill-timed.
• That One Boss:
  • Moreau is already a pretty annoying fight on regular difficulties, but turns into a real bastard on Hardcore and above. He charges rather fast which can make it difficult to try to catch openings to shoot him, his weak spot is rarely open to hit, his puke has a wonky interaction with cover, meaning sometimes you'll get hit even after you've rounded a corner, and his acid rain attack is essentially an instant kill if you aren't in cover when it begins.
    • He also appears in the "Bloody River" level in The Mercenaries almost compleletely unchanged, only now with Mook and Giant Mook backups to harass you as well, and you also have to fight him under a strict time-limit. It's not uncommon to run out just before killing him.
  • On lower difficulties, Bela is a fairly easy Warmup Boss that establishes the weakness of the Dimitrescu sisters and, smallness of the arena aside, is an easy fight. All of this is thrown right out the window on the Village of Shadows difficulty, as Bela is not only significantly faster, stronger, and tougher, but a handful of Moroaica show up a few seconds into the fight to make things that much harder on you at a point in the game where resources are minimal and a fresh run wouldn't give you much in the way of healing items, ammunition, or money for upgrades.
  • Much like Bela, Heisenberg jumps from being a pushover on lower difficulties to an absolute menace on Village of Shadows. His increased strength and durability make the flaws in the tank - namely its slowness, weaker guard, and inability to heal - far more apparent, as only three or four mistakes will result in death in a much longer fight, and the tank also means you cannot cheese the fight with a powerful gun like you could the aforementioned Bela or Moreau. The result is a hectic game of maneuvering and keeping your distance or else you may find yourself in a position where Heisenberg will unavoidably hit and possibly kill you.
• That One Level:
  • The opening encounters with the Lycans isn't too bad on regular difficulties. On higher difficulties, however, the encounters immediately became notorious for being extremely difficult. On Hardcore and above, the Lycans are immensely difficult to fight due to their increased health, strength, and speed. All you have is a weak pistol and an even weaker knife in your possession at that point; the knife isn't very useful period and you're likely to waste all your bullets on just one Lycan alone. If you managed to survive the first couple of fights, you'll then have to survive a whole rush of Lycans. You'll end up finding a shotgun that has 5 rounds max if you look around during this portion, but unfortunately not even that's going to be enough when you have 3 or more enemies coming after you. To make matters worse, it's very possible you are going to be at rather low health after the previous fight. So on top of having to deal with a large swarm of powerful enemies with very few ways to fight them off, the amount of time you have to do it for seems to be much longer than on Normal or Casual difficulty, making some wonder if the encounter is bugged. Considering how much easier the rest of the game is in comparison (not that it's necessarily easy on Hardcore), it's a wonder how the very first segment managed to get released as it is. It's slightly mitigated by the fact that the game doesn't require you to beat the harder difficulties first in order to play them on a New Game Plus, meaning you could beat the game on Normal mode and then replay on Hardcore or Village of Shadows using your current weapons and upgrades, but still be wary of the enemies' speed and your lower health.
  • The portion in Castle Dimitrescu where Ethan gets his hand sliced off by Lady Dimitrescu, especially on Village of Shadows difficulty. You can't use any weapons or healing items during this section and, on the highest difficulty, there are other enemies in the area that makes navigating it much more challenging than usual. It doesn't help that even if you've gotten all of the Duke's dish upgrades to increase your guard's effectiveness or your health, you will still die in two hits regardless.
  • Donna's home is an unusual example in that, while it's a well-beloved level, it turns into something of a drag on repeat playthroughs since you'll already know the puzzle solution. The problem lies in the fact that you can't skip a good chunk of it, and the parts that are skippable require the player to either take notes or have a really good memory. ^note For example, being able to remember two of the crest combinations on the door plus the six-number passcode on the ring. The baby chase is either something you don't want to experience again for how scary it is, or because you know what's coming since its spawn point never changes, making it less scary and more of a tedious waiting game.
  • The stronghold is a brief area to explore, but it involves a never-ending swarm of Lycans coming at the player. When we say never-ending, we mean it as the Lycans will just keep coming until you reach the end of the level.
  • Chris' section on Village of Shadows difficulty. Even with infinite ammo already unlocked by then, Chris' assault rifle is inefficient at killing large hordes of Lycans at the highest difficulty setting due to how much health enemies have, not to mention the increased speed.
  • Among the Mercenaries stages, the first Factory sequence is especially unforgiving, and doubly so when it comes time to do the II variation of it. The initial sequences for the other stages are fairly short and simple and mostly serve as a chance to get your feet wet and build up your points and money so you can build on your arsenal from there. The Factory, however, is only two sequences, and shamelessly dumps Panzer Soldats (which are functionally invincible until struck with explosives), all three of the Dimitrescu daughters (including two at once, and Sturm in the first sequence. In contrast, the second sequence lacks anything like this and you'll be able to bring a proper arsenal to bear on the enemies there... but good luck living long enough to get to it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Unlike the other three Lords, Donna Beneviento's role is very limited. She traps the player in an illusion having to solve puzzles and play cat and mouse against oversized fetuses followed by a boss fight where the player has to track down Angie and stab her three times. By the time the illusionary fight ends, Donna's already lying dead on the floor. She never shares any meaningful dialogue with Ethan like Alcina or Heisenberg or even a short conversation like Moreau.
  • The Dimitrescu daughters Bela and Daniela are both rather underutilized in comparison to Lady Alcina and the other sister Cassandra. Bela is the first to die, appearing just once to chase Ethan around in the dungeons before she is killed when her weakness to cold is exposed. Daniela herself has even less screentime than Bela, dying in the same area where she officially fights Ethan. Meanwhile, Cassandra is granted more screentime and opportunities to hunt down Ethan than both sisters combined, and she even gets to join in with Lady Alcina at times.
  • One gets the impression the villagers were meant to have a larger role in an earlier build of the game, since they are all killed off in the very sequence that introduces them, all of which comes before the first main "dungeon". The fact that they are all individually named, modeled, and voice-acted in their short screen-time lends weight to the idea. A pity, because without any locals around Ethan has nobody to talk to in the village except the Duke, and having a few ancillary characters actually get to survive for a while would have been a very refreshing switch-up from the usual RE formula of killing off anyone who isn't critical to the plot shortly after they're introduced.
  • Wasted a Perfectly Good Boss in this case. While the fight against Heisenberg in his mutated form is undoubtedly one of the most ridiculously awesome moments in the game, it's somewhat disappointing that you didn't get to fight or get pursued by him in his base form at any point, with him using his cool-looking hammer (which you sell as if to add insult to injury), and flinging metal at you as if he was Magneto.
  • Wasted a perfectly good mechanic in this case, but after the first cutscene with Urias shows that the Lycans can ride horses, they're never seen doing that again for the rest of the game. Fighting Lycans who are on horseback would have been a nice change of pace in the gameplay and might have even provided a bit of a morality choice on whether or not to shoot the horses to better immobilize the Lycans.
  • The Dagger of Death's Flowers, the weapon Ethan works towards getting through the entire Castle Dimitrescu sequence, is used exactly once in a cutscene before being lost, presumably due to it having a Story-Breaker Power, all in spite of being one of the most detailed and intricate objects in the game. It certainly would have been interesting as an Infinity +1 Sword after completing the game.
  • The Hound Wolf Squad are all supposedly old friends of Chris that followed him after he left the BSAA. They were an excellent opportunity to re-introduce some older characters like Sheva, Josh and Parker, all of which are BSAA members that survived their missions with Chris and were major characters in their respective games. Instead, all members of the Hound Wolf Squad are people we have never heard from before.
  • One could make the case that Mia would have made for a much better protagonist than Ethan. She worked with organized crime that trafficked bioweapons and kept this all a secret from her husband. Then she spent years under Eveline's mind control, under which she was forced to attack and almost kill Ethan. It could easily be very interesting to delve into how and why she got into the criminal operations, and her feelings about everything she has done and was forced to do. Seeking some degree of redemption would provide good additional motivation. Instead, the real Mia doesn't even appear in person until about 80% of the way through the game, and when she does she cryptically hints at Chris about what Ethan really is and then pretty much plays the role of an ordinary civilian for the rest of the game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Late in the game, Heisenberg confronts Ethan about Miranda using the latter to take out the Lords, and offers that he and Ethan team up against her. Due to Heisenberg wanting to use Rose as a weapon against Miranda, Ethan gives a hard refusal, yet several players have voiced great interest in the prospect of taking up his offer or at least negotiating with him about potential alternatives, as it could have made for a very interesting branch in the story. Many have expressed disappointment that an option to take Heisenberg's offer wasn't given, and are hoping that an alternative scenario that plays out such a plot will be available as future DLC.
  • Much of the game's advertising focuses on the titular village and Castle Dimitrescu, frontloading the game with a lot of what people assumed the game would be like. Then after the castle, the village effectively becomes little more than the occasional route to get to the next location and a bunch of extra collectibles and items to search for. Even though all the villagers are dead before you even enter the castle, it feels like more could've been done with it all instead of being cleaned out so fast that it becomes a distraction soon enough. This is especially highlighted by the endgame, where Chris and the Hound Wolf Squad rush a linear track through the village within minutes as little more than a shooting gallery to have a final action section.
  • Following the epilogue of the main game, there was the very heavy implication that Rosemary was Eveline reborn, giving the Tragic Monster a chance at a better life - though Rose is oddly snippy at being called "Eveline". Come the Shadows of Rose DLC, we find out why: Rose and Evie are not the same being despite the former inheriting the latter's powers, and Evie's consciousness still persists in the Megamycete. Worse, she tries to kill Rose, upset that Ethan and Miranda "replaced" her despite Rose herself not knowing anything about it until the end of the DLC. What could've been a Redemption Quest for the tormented child was torpedoed by the child herself, ensuring she will only be remembered as a monster.
  • The DLC Shadows of Rose could have been a perfect opportunity to explore the past of the titular Village and explore the backstories of the different lords more in-depth, as the Megamycete houses the memories of those affected by it. Instead, much of the plot instead focuses' on Rose's angst and personal issues with little else. Adding salt to the would is the fact that, by all accounts, Rose was mostly a plot device and rather minor character in the main story, since she was a baby who could not affect anything (albeit being relevant to and serving as a central driver for the plot) while the Lords were all major villains.
  • The cutscene immediately following the Lycan siege near the beginning features several of them firing arrows and riding horses, showing they the creatures are more intelligent and crafty than they initially appeared. The archers do eventually show up again, but you never end up fighting or even seeing any more Lycans on horseback after this cutscene.
• Ugly Cute: Unlike their canonically grotesque and hideous appearances, Angie and Moreau look much more adorable as Puppet!Angie and "Moreau-kun" in the Play in BIO VILLAGE marketing campaign. The contrast is especially greater in Moreau's case.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mia can easily be treated as The Woobie for surviving two BOW incidents, having her infant daughter kidnapped and losing her husband. However, its also easy to forget that Mia herself was technically part of The Connections whose actions created Eveline, setting up the events of the previous game. Her keeping the fact that Ethan was Dead All Along secret from everyone, including Ethan himself, as well as her begging her interrogators to not tell Ethan about her past, is also a pretty sore subject among the fandom.
• Unpopular Popular Character: While Miranda's children all hate each other, Moreau is given pretty much no respect from anyone, even his own siblings. A note you can find in the final hours of the game even shows that Miranda thinks of him as a failure in terms of her experiments. Outside the game itself, Moreau has more than a few fans, and a lot of people express sympathy and/or pity towards him and his lot in life.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: The English version of the game has the characters pronounce "Dimitrescu" as "Do-mee-tresk", with the "u" at the end being silent. Some players use the phonetic Romanian pronunciation instead ("Dee-mee-tres-koo").
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As with the previous game, Resident Evil 2 (Remake), Resident Evil 3 (Remake), and Devil May Cry 5, the game uses an enhanced version of the RE Engine, specifically designed to have virtually no loading times at all. The commitment to this was so intense that Capcom initially decided against making the game for any of 8th generation consoles in their final year entirely, until seemingly behind-the-scenes advancements made it possible for them to announce Playstation 4 and Xbox One ports approximately 4 months before the game's release. The Maiden demo is basically a glorified tech demo to show off the incredible graphics and 3D audio of the enhanced engine on next gen consoles. For instance, the lifelike skin details on Ethan's hand.
• The Woobie:
  • This video takes this interpretation of Donna, using evidence in-game and some deducing conclusions from it. Donna was a mentally handicapped womanchild who lost her parents^note And in English versions of the game, has a scar on her face and was taken advantage of by the manipulative Mother Miranda who feigned care for her. Once infected with the Cadou, she became even more lonely and unhinged, with the independently thinking Angie expressing the unhinged side of her, while Donna herself had a huge mold deformity on her face that made her even more shy. While Angie became the voice for both of them, her behaviors and actions led to Donna being entirely alone despite having a "family" in Mother Miranda and the other Lords, and sees Ethan in her own mentally handicapped way as a potential new family member. However, because of Angie's actions, Ethan kills her. In the end, Donna was really a mentally handicapped girl who had nothing, and then fell victim to Mother Miranda, and ultimately died without anyone to love her.
  • In the "Shadows of Rose" DLC, Rosemary Winters is continuously reminded of the fact she's bullied and ostracized by her classmates for the powers she had no choice in being granted, which is the driving force in her wanting to find the purifying crystal so she can be rid of her mold infection and get friends and no longer be labeled as a "freak." Rose is also shown to be utterly terrified of the horrors in the Mutamycete, more than any of the other protagonists. Her experiences likely make the player want to hug her and tell her she's nowhere near as bad as she thinks she is.
• Woolseyism: The Mold and its source are merely referred to in the original Japanese as "Fungus" and "Fungus Root". The English localization instead uses the more scientific-sounding "Mutamycete" and "Megamycete" to better tie into the recurring scientific origins of the series' undead.

---