Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. There were some pretty big releases this week, including Resident Evil Village and Wizard of Legend, and I had a chance to spend some time with both of them. I also played some other new games and continued with Genshin Impact. Continue below to see what I thought of them all.

Resident Evil Village

With the arrival of the iPhone 15, Apple got CAPCOM on board to port the full Resident Evil Village to iOS. The catch is that it only runs on the iPhone 15 or M1 iPads. Thankfully, I have a 3rd generation iPad Pro, so I’m able to play it. That said, this is a port that is not really meant to be played with touch controls, since they’ve basically slapped an emulator over the screen for those unwilling to hook up a physical controller. You can’t even use the screen to interact directly with menus. Everything has to be done through the button overlay or a controller. Thankfully, the game can be downloaded for free and you can play a good chunk of it to see if the controls can work for you. I highly recommend using a controller, but if you don’t have one and still want to play, just give it a try and see how it goes. I wasn’t even willing to try those onscreen buttons, so I went directly for my PS4 controller. Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the game itself. I have never played a Resident Evil game before, so I only had a general idea of what I was getting into with Resident Evil Village. I knew to expect monsters and a tense atmosphere, but that was about it. So I’ve been taking my time with it, exploring pretty slowly, and therefore haven’t even finished the free demo, despite playing for over two hours already. I will say, they nailed the atmosphere. Even before I had a weapon and the ability to fight, I was nervous about something jumping out at me. There’s a lot of tension, especially if you’re not familiar enough with the series to predict much of anything. When I did have to fight, though, I couldn’t aim for sh*t and wasted a lot of bullets. I don’t know if this is by design, but at least I’ve still been able to survive so far by wildly swingling my knife and healing a bunch. I’m also playing on Casual mode because I know myself. I did rage-quit after a few failed attempts at not being able to avoid spikes in time, but I still might give it another go if the game lets me pick up at the same point. There really is a lot to like about the game, not least the weird village that it gets its name from. I’m curious to see where it goes but just don’t know if I have the skills or patience to make it through. If I manage to get past the point I kept dying on, I’ll see how far I can get past that. I don’t think I’m ready to give up just yet, despite my frustration in the second video. Anyway, if you have a device that can play it — especially a nice big iPad — I recommend giving it a try. You get a good chunk for free, so you should have a pretty good idea by the end of the demo whether you want to buy the full game.

Wizard of Legend

I have such mixed feelings about Wizard of Legend. It’s a roguelite in which you mix and match different spells and relics to try and survive a series of difficult trials. I really like messing around with the different skills and even opted to swap some of my spells for random ones just to shake things up. You start with a simple wind attack as your basic attack, a dash attack, flaming dragon heads, and a huge fireball that you can charge to make stronger. I ended up swapping out my dragon heads for a more stationary fire attack and my basic wind attack for a lightning attack. I was happy with the lightning attack — it seemed to have longer range and was good at stun-locking enemies. But losing my ranged dragon heads attack did hurt and I felt more vulnerable after that. Still, I managed to defeat the first of three bosses before dying shortly after that. I’m not sure if I’ll play anymore, mainly because of the pitfalls scattered throughout the procedurally generated dungeons. You need to dash over those gaps to get to the other side, and I fell in on more than one occasion. Sure, they’re handy when you can push enemies into them, but I just couldn’t enjoy the game when I was worried about falling into holes. There are also points where you’ll hop across a bunch of gaps only to hit a dead end and have to go back the same way. Aside from that, I don’t like how I need to buy most spells to see whether I like them. I wish there was a way to try a spell before buying, because I have limited currency and don’t want to waste them on spells I don’t even know if I’ll like. Those two things are putting me off from playing more, because I can see myself just grinding the first few stages over and over to earn more currency until I’m bored of the game. That said, the touch controls feel pretty solid and if you’re sure you want to play the game, I think the mobile port is a worthwhile investment. But if you’re on the fence, you might want to watch some of my video before deciding.

The Birdcage 3: Untold Tales

As a fan of the puzzle game The Birdcage and its sequel, I was glad to see a third game in the series was releasing. I’ve since played through the four existing chapters and unfortunately I’m not that impressed with it. The first two free chapters are way too easy. The third chapter hits more of a sweet spot, but there’s still nothing all that magical about it. I was pretty much going through the motions for most of it. The fourth chapter is what really bothered me, though. It felt very cramped and hard to even navigate. On top of that, the same simple puzzles kept being reused. Then there were some puzzles that I either didn’t see clues for or just had bad clues. For example, there’s a robot dog that moves its head in different directions and you have to copy them down using four arrow buttons. But no matter how much I watched the dog, there was no consistent pattern. It would just keep changing instead of repeating the same four moves. I finally watched a hint to get the answer and even with the answer I just didn’t see that pattern at all. It makes me think the developers got bored and stopped caring by the time they got to that chapter. The chapter ended up being frustrating, but not because of clever puzzles. It was just not enjoyable at all. Unfortunately, I don’t think I could recommend this game, the first two chapters are completely free if you want to try it yourself. I also have a walkthrough here for the first three chapters but don’t know if I’ll bother with the last one.

Hero of the Kingdom

Last week, I played through Hero of the Kingdom II and enjoyed it so much that I decided to play the first game. It was free at the time, so why not? I finished it in about three hours over two days, so it was not quite as big as the sequel. There’s also no ship to travel to different islands. But I enjoyed my time with it and would still recommend it. I’m sure I also got through it faster because I was already familiar with it and knew how things worked. If it’s still free, there’s absolutely no reason not to try it and then you can buy the second one if you haven’t had enough. I know there’s also a third and I hope it comes to iOS eventually.

Genshin Impact

And last, I’m still exploring Fontaine in Genshin Impact while waiting for the next update to arrive. I worked on some world quests this week that took place inside the Fortress of Meropide, got my Fontaine compass so I could look for treasures I missed, and got a surprise visit from Tighnari on the standard banner. I’ve been wanting him for a while now and he was the only standard 5-star I didn’t have. I have him almost fully built already and have been having a lot of fun with him. He’s like a cute little pet with his bushy tail and floppy ears. And he pairs well with Yae Miko, one of my favorite characters. It’s also nice to have a new character to play with that I didn’t have to spend months saving for. Hopefully it’ll help keep me strong through banners where I’m tempted to pull but not sure I want the character. There’s actually a new update coming in a few days and the teaser trailer got me very interested. So you may see more Genshin videos than usual next week.

And that’s everything I’ve been up to this week. I also finished the second season of Your Honor, which was honestly really unnecessary. I got so frustrated by the Assistant US Attorney because she not the slightest bit covert. She constantly put everyone in danger by doing her job horribly. I don’t know why I watched through to the end, but oh well. I also started Gen V and the new seasons of American Horror Stories and Upload, but I have to wait for new episodes for all of them. Anyway, let me know in the comments section which games you’re playing and I’ll see you back here next time with more of My Week Unwrapped.