Editor’s Note: The Following Article contains spoilers for the Shadows of Rose DLC. Reader Discretion is advised.

Resident Evil Village has been out for over a year now and for many, the game is a fond memory of horror and mystery. Now we have a new story in the form of Shadows of Rose, an all-new third-person story that focuses on Rose and dives deeper into who she has become between the end of Resident Evil Village and the final cutscene that we see with her and Leon.

Beyond this, the gameplay allows players to revisit some of the iconic locations and characters that existed within the main story. However, there are twists to everything that you visit that allow things to remain fresh and strange to everyone! Let’s jump into this review and see what Rose’s first outing has to offer!

The story starts out with Rose meeting up with a scientist friend who has a connection with Chris Redfield, although it seems unclear to me if this scientist has a previous working connection with Umbrella Corps or the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. Regardless, the scientist gets talking to Rose about how she is fitting in at school. Hating her abilities and being scared of getting close to people because of it, Rose is desperate to find a solution to either dampen or remove them.

The scientist proposes a solution to Rose. The solution lies in finding a purifying crystal that can potentially be found in some of the mold that remains from the main story of Resident Evil Village. That is when we go down a mental rabbit hole into a strange new version of the village filled with even stranger versions of friends and foes alike. 

Seeing all of the main locations within the game was quite something. At times, it seemed a bit cheap with how many assets were just reused in order to create this new story. However, there were plenty of times when the twisted returning characters really shined and saved the story from being just a simple trip down memory lane. While the jump scares that existed in the main story are not really there, the game still finds a way from time to time of leaning into the tried and true formula that the recent Resident Evil games have been so great at nailing on the head.

Returning to one specific location that involved dolls was definitely just as unnerving to me as the original level. In fact, the mix of new and used assets actually seems to help with the game’s tension. Certain areas have events that are similar, while others take an entirely new approach that throws the player off. This way, the game doesn’t feel like it is entirely being a rinse-and-repeat of nostalgia.

While the third-person mode is definitely a departure from the new main games as Resident Evil 7 and 8 were both first-person initially, Shadows of Rose benefits from this new camera perspective. It is so beneficial that there are many times when the imagery used is more horrifying in this perspective. However, I did notice that sometimes I couldn’t properly tell how much space there was between Rose and an enemy.

That might have potentially been due to the stumbling of the basic enemies that could be throwing me off. Despite this potential setback, this has made me want to go through the entire main campaign in the third-person mode so that I can see how much different the experience is. It seems like a worthy experience considering that Ethan Winters is already gone despite only being in two games.

Overall, I believe that the Shadow of Rose serves as an interesting bridge between the end of the game and the final cutscene in Resident Evil Village. While CAPCOM has stated that this will be the final chapter of the Winter’s Storyline, I now hope that this is not the case. Rose seems like a character that has so much potential for growth that it would seem to be wasteful to leave her at the moment that she is starting to become aware of her full abilities.

However, I do also understand the creators wanting to go in a different direction. Perhaps they will swing back into doing a story more closely related to the Umbrella Corps. All we have to do now is find out and wait. If you want to read more articles that are Resident Evil-related, here is Samuel Moreno’s article about some of the teases that CAPCOM gave us.

A PC review copy of Shadows of Rose was provided by Capcom for this review.

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Resident Evil Village - Winter's Expansion

19.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Intriguing Story
• Classic Third-Person Perspective
• New Game Mechanics

Cons

• Some Reused Assets
• Some Controls Require Tweaking