That the story didn't make much sense was a let down for me.
What do you mean?
That the story didn't make much sense was a let down for me.
Like, there shouldn't have been all this secrecy from Chris.
How did he know about Miranda?
So was that really Ethan's model with his face?
Resident Evil Village is a different story. Although people call it a Resident Evil 4 game or an action horror game, its design is much closer to horror titles. The entire environment is designed for environmental storytelling and backtracking. It is much more realistic, which means you have less variation for the fights. This also means that the developers could fill the created locations with enemies, and not design the locations for enemies.
As you have already said, the combat system is quite basic, which is typical for survival horror games in general, because the genre uses battles as a tool for the goal, and not as a goal.
The Dimitrescu Castle is quite a classic mansion for the series, where you have the main task in the form of finding four masks. Then the borders expand and you need to find four flasks for the Altar. This is all the big Metroidvania that the series has been doing since 1996. Even less survival horror titles have these elements, though they're more momentary and stylized, I'd say.
Chris' team must've been investigating prior it looks like they were hunting Miranda for some time, maybe year's... I think Chris knew Miranda was going to try to steal Ethan's baby that night faking to be Mia because someone from his team was tipped off by one of the people who lived around the village, or probably by Heisenberg (since he was not very happy with Miranda so the more people to put on her trail would buy him time to make his own plans to destroy her).Like, there shouldn't have been all this secrecy from Chris. How did he know about Miranda?
3. Heisenberg is really weird. Like how is he even magically picking up metal exactly? The mold feels... weird. His mutation is weird too.
Hmm, quite an interesting perspective.
I personally think that the developers used the Resident Evil 7 formula, where there are also five antagonists with their own territory and the horror subgenre that they represented.
It seems that the developers used a lot of historical and religious references. The internationality of the founders, their crest, and the protection of the Holy Grail are allusions to the Templar Order.
Also interesting to note Ocelots hand gets chopped off by the ninja too, similar to what Dimitrescu does to Ethan at the castle segment.