It has been three years since Ethan Winters took on the terrifying Baker family in Resident Evil 7. His ghoulish trip to the Louisiana swamp has been put behind him, relocating to a quiet Eastern European town with his wife Mia and daughter Rose. The bliss is short-lived as, after an attack on their home, Rose is whisked away to a nearby village by a cult led by the mysterious “Mother Miranda”. From here Ethan travels to the mist-wreathed village to find its pockets of old houses largely deserted, except for the thumping terror of werewolves and ghouls prowling its rough roads. In the panicked pistol shots and dark secrets of a none-too-welcoming town, Resident Evil Village has found itself bearing comparison with series game-changer Resident Evil 4.

But while its crackling atmosphere and flamboyant baddies are certainly redolent of Leon Kennedy’s European tour, Resident Evil Village is more broadly a glorious greatest hits. According to producer Jun Takeuchi, Ethan’s foray in the swamp-wreathed Baker plantation in Resident Evil 7 was Capcom ‘stripping the series down to its core’. It served the reinvented Resi well, with its grisly tableau all the more intoxicating in its newfound first-person perspective. But if the flaw in 7 was a diminished sense of variety, Resident Evil Village recalls what has made the series such a titan, casting its net wide over its history in fierce action, terrifying pursuits and macabre psychological horror. It exchanges blows on this with breathless pace and admirable coherence, even if its yarn spirals with the series’ most outrageous excess.

After that initial foray into the village, a visit to Castle Dimitrescu is a fine example of this. The looming castle is an ornate labyrinth, with spiral staircases gilded in red and gold, opera rooms, wind-swept bell towers and plenty of Resident Evil’s familiar puzzles and doors with absurdly complicated locking mechanisms. It is every inch the equal of the original’s Arklay Mansion or Resident Evil 2’s Police Department, with that disorientating sense of both imposing scale and cloying tightness. Dozens of rooms interlinked with tight corridors prowled by the ladies of the house. One of whom, of course, is the 9ft internet thirst-trap Lady Dimitrescu (or, more simply, “tall vampire lady”).

She is an anxiety-inducing presence, much like Mr. X or Nemesis, but one that is constantly on the move. She will emerge from too-short doorways in a discomfiting stoop, before standing up and towering above you with 3 foot claws ready to have your eye out. Yet for all of the resplendent decor, design and the often heart-thumping set-pieces that happen within Castle Dimitrescu, it is but a sliver of the game, as you are coughed back out towards the village and the realisation that Miranda’s cohorts are scattered in its peripheries. In cramped houses, wide-open reservoirs, pitch-black catacombs and imposing factories.

The village itself lays at the heart of the game, with roads squirrelling out like arteries to different outposts. Getting through its gates has that clockwork ingenuity that sees shortcuts open and paths intersect as you find new keys, while treasures and weapon upgrades lie off the beaten track. It is a satisfying hub; smartly designed and painstakingly detailed, but small enough to not become a slog to get to the next beat.

Indeed, keeping things on the move seems to drive Resident Evil Village. Perhaps aware that simmering for too long in one place and at one pace can create terror-fatigue, numbing you to the game’s scares, Village changes things up with brisk vigor. One of its areas sweeps away combat entirely, pitching you into a skin-crawling creep through a claustrophobic house which has the kind of psychological trauma and imagery more closely associated with Silent Hill. But not long after emerging punch-drunk from its darkened horror, a brief section showers you with ammo and monsters in a blistering firefight across a multi-tiered arena.

That combat is a notable step up from Resident Evil 7. It doesn’t match the best shooters – not that it is trying to – and early on your weaponry can lack a sense of impact. Yet it trades off the panic-ridden stand-offs that Resident Evil has historically been very good at. Backpedalling as a snarling Lycan swings their axe, popping off shots towards their head in the increasingly desperate hope that they will go down. That nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you are using up too many bullets, so maybe you should switch to your knife to conserve ammo lest more challenging foes lurk around the corner. As you progress, you can find new weapons or upgrades scattered around the village in hidden treasure boxes. Or you can upgrade at the game’s merchant, The Duke, who mysteriously appears in safe rooms throughout the game.

As you power up, the game does so in step as fights become more intense and tactical. Some may have you retreating down corridors to lure enemies your way, laying mines as the horde bears down. Village also throws up a shifting bestiary, between those whip-quick Lycans, lumbering zombies and, later, armoured goons to which you must find a more explosive solution before blasting their weak spot with a shotgun. And, of course, towering boss fights against grotesque biological horrors.

Village is not a particularly difficult game on its Standard setting, but it succeeds in constantly keeping you on your toes. Resident Evil Village producer Tsuyoshi Kanda recently said that the game has been balanced based on feedback that Resident Evil 7 was “too scary”. And while it is true that Village is not as suffocatingly oppressive as its predecessor – at least not always – it creates its tension in myriad ways throughout. Be it in panicked fight or flight or more ingrained terror. While also understanding the need for giddy catharsis. This is arguably what it shares most with Resident Evil 4, more so than its setting.

Of course, many might prefer Resident Evil games that harbour more focus on location and tone and Village has a definite sense of hyperactivity as you whoosh through its story. Allowing a little extra time for off-road exploring, it will take you around 10 hours to see the credits roll. I could happily have spent more time in its company, but the game’s pacing and tonal trade-offs feel about right. It only stumbles slightly in its denouement, where a trip to the outskirts and a multi-levelled factory sags a little before a breakneck finale that feels over too quickly.

All the while it serves its perennially goofy story with just the right dash of silliness and seriousness. While its overarching yarn of a cultish village turned nasty by mysterious forces is typically B-movie – and its antagonists gloriously camp – it also travels to some dark places along the way. Without spoiling anything, poor old Ethan takes quite a battering both mentally and physically. And while his one-note man-on-a-mission schtick isn’t particularly endearing, you can’t help empathise with his cause.

Those comparisons to Resident Evil 4 are not entirely unfounded then. It is not as genre-shifting as that game – few games are – but it does share a certain ethos and hunger for variety in tension and action. It is very much its own thing too, both a natural continuation of the series recent reinvention and a manic expansion of its long-standing invention and flamboyance. Most of all, it is a tremendous, and tremendously terrifying, video game in its own right.