Resident Evil Village: Winters' Expansion (Xbox Series X/S) Review

Beginning with the mode Shadows of Rose, players can hop into the story of a 16-year-old Rose Winters. No longer a little baby she is having a troubled upbringing where she's struggling with her mould powers and being bullied. Being offered a thread of hope of ridding herself of the powers she ends up connecting with the Megaycete segment that survived the blast from the end of the main game. Here Rose goes through some mind-bending challenges, all set in familiar but twisted places from the main adventure and interacts with a very small but interesting cast of characters. So, as not to spoil the story, this is all that can be said. It's a great little aside that offers some closure for the Winters' saga. It does however leave this reviewer wanting a couple more context cutscenes to build up the backstory more.

Gameplay is quite different from the main game with a bit more emphasis on puzzle solving and some surprisingly horrific horror moments that are super inventive as this world is not bound by any kind of reality. It makes a great case for either further exploration of these themes in Resident Evil or a return of something like Parasite Eve in Capcom's hands to make something ace. The third person perspective used for Shadows of Rose is great and offers Rose a bit more presence while also highlighting the cool character animations the developers created.

The story DLC isn't the only new thing, however. It is now possible to play Village's main campaign in third person. This is actually quite staggering in the way it repurposes Ethan's character. It makes him have much more presence and shows how many animations there are with his character model. The unintended side effect however is that it's occasionally hard to position him in a way where he can easily pick up or interact with an item. Somehow through all of this they still manage to obscure Ethan's face from the player. It feels a bit disingenuous; why shouldn't they reveal Ethan's face, he is after all a much more fleshed out character, less used as a vessel for the player to project themselves into.

The new Mercenaries mode offers players the chance to play as some new characters, namely Chris, Lady Dimitrescu and Heisenberg. Not all of them are available right away as players need to complete challenges to unlock them. Once unlocked however it's great fun to play with these new styles. The setup is the same as the base game's Mercenaries mode, but it changes it up enough for it to be interesting again.