As is the tradition in any mainline entry in the series, beating Resident Evil Village‘s campaign is just the beginning.
Once you’ve seen the credits roll on Ethan Winters’ nightmare-fuelled adventure, a new shop stocked with all sorts of goodies will be accessible from the main menu. Unlike the Duke’s emporium, Lei is no good as a currency here and it instead requires that players spend some hard-earned Challenge Points (CP). These are accrued by completing various objectives in the story, with the reward for each one different depending on how difficult or time-consuming they are.
It’s worth noting, however, that in order to get your hands on some of the best bonus weapons for sale, a number of prerequisites must be met. To unlock infinite ammo versions of standard firearms, for example, every upgrade and attachment must first be purchased from the Duke. Others, such as the LZ Answerer, will only be obtainable by mastering Village‘s arcade-style Mercenaries mode.
Similar to past incarnations of the action-oriented side content, the central focus of Mercenaries is to rack up points by killing enemies in a series of different locations. Score is affected by the number of foes taken down, time remaining and money earned, with performance being ranked at the conclusion of each stage. To unlock Resident Evil Village‘s strongest melee weapon of all, you’ll need to get an SS rank or higher on all eight stages
While not labeled as such for obvious reasons, the Answerer is, for all intents and purposes, a knock-off recreation of Darth Maul’s dual lightsaber from The Phantom Menace, and is able to kill any standard enemy with a single swing. Good luck!