@Yoshi3
7 starts strong but gets progressively worse as it goes on, and I believe even big fans of the game can agree on that.
Village on the other hand is just a weak, hollow shell of a game in every regard other than visuals.
STORY / CHARACTERS / DESIGN
It’s story is complete utter nonsense, with immersion-breaking logic in practically every cutscene. The game is constantly putting spectacle and mystique over an actual line of reasoning in events, to the point where the game needs to lampshade its own nonsense writing with thinly-veiled excuses that only end up causing more holes in the long run.
The characters suffer greatly for this too, the four lords are shallow caricatures that only exist because the Bakers were such a hit in the previous game, and the game puts little to no effort into their theming. Lady D for example looks like a vampire (with inspiration also taken from a Japanese urban legend) and that’s as far as the idea goes. Mechanically she’s just a more embarrassing Mr.X, on account that they put the primary store/save room in the same hall that she patrols the most, meaning the majority of your encounters with her are going to end in you going through a door she arbitrarily can’t follow you in. While Mr.X and Jack Baker do have the same problem, those game try and account for it by placing the rooms they can’t follow you in out of the way (In VII I even remember them having narrow passageways Ethan slides through to create segments where Jack can’t follow).
STRUCTURE
Enemies in general have extremely short leashes in Village save for a few mob battles, for the most part you only need to run a little ahead of them for them to quit their pursuit of you. I assume they do this because the game isn’t really interested in creating diverse combat scenarios and is primarily focused on getting you from one ridiculous cutscene to the next. This is also why there’s very little exploration outside of the few pleasant optional treasure hunts in the village between the main sections. Despite Castle Dimitrescu having the appearance of big winding halls, your path through it is almost entirely linear, with only one major divergence being which of the two remaining daughters you want to kill first (who are functionally the same boss fight). This linearity continues all the way up until Heisenberg’s factory, which most people seem to agree is one of the worst sections due to it’s labyrinthine layout. I myself didn’t hate it, but I did start to get sick of it when the game began to spam the robot enemies.
They even made things confusing by putting the remaining three lords on the map early like you’d have a choice on the order you want to tackle them in. I remember thinking my game was bugged when I tried to open the gate leading to Dr. Moreau, only to realize that my only option was the gate on the opposite site leading to Donna.