Hardcore Difficulty Is Resident Evil Villages Sweet Spot

As someone who plays too many Resident Evil games and knows all the series' tricks, you can imagine how my experience as a fan makes me somewhat overly ready for its myriad challenges. While I adore Resident Evil Village, one of the few issues I had with the game was that I thought it was a bit too easy on Standard difficulty. For me, the ideal Resident Evil experience is one where you're constantly riding the line of barely having enough ammo and health to survive. On Village's higher difficulty, Hardcore, you have to play smart in order to maintain enough breathing room to survive, and just a few bad mistakes will dwindle your resources and put you in danger. This is the secret sauce of Resident Evil's survival horror, and my favorite games in the franchise often naturally nail that dynamic without the need to adjust their difficulty beyond the Standard setting.

However, in my first time playing Village on Standard, I rarely found myself in this sweet spot of tension. Ammo was never a problem, and, as a result, I barely touched the game's crafting system simply because I never needed to. It wasn't until about 75% through the game that things ramped up in terms of ammo scarcity and health management, forcing me to take the game more seriously. As a result, I only died a handful of times my first time through, and these deaths were primarily due to an unexpected environmental hazard or timing-based challenge, not combat. The game has all the pieces in place to make a harrowing survival experience work, but the balance isn't quite right, and I didn't think that the Standard difficulty demanded I take full advantage of its mechanics as much as I would've liked.

I don't mean all this necessarily as an indictment of Standard difficulty; it's not bad by any means. It's simply that as a veteran of the Resident Evil series, I am bringing with me all my knowledge of how these games work, and can thus take advantage of that to easily overcome Village's challenges. Nailing headshots, avoiding enemies you don't need to kill, scavenging every possible nook and cranny for items and money; this game absolutely rewards that kind of playstyle. But on Standard, you can often find yourself feeling a bit too powerful and more prepared than what the story would suggest, meaning you don't have to play very carefully. This, of course, has its own benefit--not worrying as much about ammo frees you to focus more on the story of Village, as well as the act of combat itself, and it can be fun to mow down hordes of Lycans as they start to surround you.

Before I go any further, however, I should reiterate that it is 1000% okay to play the game on Standard if that's what you enjoy. I personally like that terrifying feeling of having your back against the wall--it's why I love this series, after all. Some people want something a little more relaxed, and that's okay. You also might be the kind of player whose skill level is more attuned for Standard and will find it to be the right level of challenge, so don't let anyone tell you that you're lesser for it. Difficulty settings exist for a reason, and people play games differently.