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I have to preface this review with a few disclaimers. For one, I am and always will be a Resident Evil fan. For almost three decades, I’ve been following the series through highs and lows. Explained away the issues I’ve had with Resident Evil 6, defended the Resident Evil 3 remake, and, of course, gushed about just how incredible Resident Evil 7, 2, 4 and Village are. I’ve known how I feel about Resident Evil and what I want from it. But with Resident Evil Requiem, I’m not sure Capcom knows what they want. Because while presented as one thing, it’s also entirely something else, and while that’s not bad, it’s bound to be one of the most divisive Resident Evil games in series history.
Requiem has you playing as two characters – series newcomer Grace Ashcroft, daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft (from the Outbreak series), and the now (arguably) legendary Leon S. Kennedy. Grace is captured by Victor Gideon, a strange man with ties to Umbrella, while investigating her mother’s death. Leon eventually crosses paths with Grace, and the two must work together to thwart Victor’s plan. You play as both sides of this rescue operation – Grace as she is trying to escape the facility, while Leon as he lays siege to those inside. It’s a simple setup with a whole lot more to it, so I won’t talk about it here out of respect for both players and Capcom’s wishes.
That said, this story is going to create an incredible amount of discord amongst Resident Evil fans. Many swings are being taken here that didn’t sit right with me. There were also aspects that you would assume would be explored that do not get touched upon in Requiem. As such, I rarely say this about the Resident Evil games, as most of them almost always offer something for me to enjoy, but Requiem disappointed me narratively. It’s clear that Capcom is laying the groundwork here to move the series elsewhere, but given that some pretty low-hanging fruit is left unpicked, I’m not sure it feels like a satisfying conclusion to an arc, if that’s their intention.
While the story was ultimately quite a disappointment for me, I’m still chuffed to say that the gameplay is as strong as ever and perhaps the strongest of the latest games. Resident Evil Requiem is split into two distinct parts. The progression through the game is linear – you jump between Grace and Leon as the story dictates. At first, the game jumps between both characters fairly regularly in the opening hours, but eventually lets you spend much longer stretches (hours) with each character thereafter. Both the characters feel balanced in terms of screentime, but the pacing does feel off – Grace feels rather forgotten about in the second act of the game, despite being pegged as the protagonist. She pops up from time to time in the third act, but she feels rather secondary here in the shadow of Leon.
Which is a shame, because the Grace sections, which feel like the best bits of Resident Evil 7, Village’s Castle, and the Resident Evil 2 remake, were easily the standout. These aspects feel like classic Resident Evil but with a twist. The locales she’ll explore are dense and atmospheric, filled with unique enemies to either sneak around or kill. She has stalker type enemies following her from time to time, but the level design is so well considered that there’s always a way to outrun or outwit an enemy following you. It was easy to get lost in a corner in previous Resident Evil games with stalkers, and Requiem remedies this issue with some clever level design that loops in on itself. Putting it simply, the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Centre is up there with the R.P.D. and Spencer Mansion as some of Resident Evil’s greatest maps.
Grace can hold her own in combat, though not as well as Leon. She has access to two weapons, craftable throwables and items, and commands to push enemies over. While she can fight, you really need to pick your battles with Grace. Those she kills can sometimes revive, mutating into even more dangerous enemy types, which can affect your pathing throughout the map. This adds another layer of tension to the already stressful proceedings, harkening back to the Crimson Heads of the Resident Evil 1 remake. Additionally, without spoiling, some of the enemies Grace encounters will actively alter the way you move through the maps, dovetailing beautifully with the strong level design I mentioned earlier.
While Grace’s areas are easily the scariest in the game, Requiem as a whole is much less scary than Resident Evil 7 or even Village before it. Perhaps it was foolish of me to expect that we’d ever get a return to an experience fraught with terror and dread that RE7 provided. But given how much the developers previously talked about the importance of horror in Requiem, I’d expect more here. That’s not to say the game isn’t tense – it absolutely is – but it doesn’t reach anywhere near the anxiety-inducing heights of the first half of RE7 or even House Beneviento in Resident Evil Village.
It becomes more obvious what kind of game the developers wanted to make when you shift to Leon’s perspective. While nothing quite jumps the shark (or punches the boulder?) as egregiously as Resident Evil 5 or 6, one or two of Leon’s moments feel a bit much. Resident Evil is always looking to expand to new audiences and try new things. But with some of the stuff Leon gets up to during his sections, Requiem really pushes the limits close to the same territory that got us into the same predicament that Resident Evil 6 did.
Early on, the Leon chapters are used as a pretty effective tension reliever. After spending hours in a section with Grace, scared of everything, there is something cathartic about running through that location as Leon, cleaning it out with a wide range of weapons. It feels really fucking good, but it’s when the game lets you sit with Leon longer that things change. These sections borrow liberally from Resident Evil 4, and while most argue that’s hardly a bad thing, many of these set pieces feel like pale imitations of those we saw over two decades ago in the original game.
I should reel in my aspersions a little bit and clarify that while some moments feel like Resident Evil 6, nothing quite ever gets as ridiculous as the scrap metal tornado that Heisenberg throws at you in Village. In fact, if I had to put a nice little bow on how I felt about Leon’s sections, it feels like a safer sequel to Resident Evil 4, albeit one stripped of the folky European charm the original had. And despite many of these moments’ predilections towards action, I can’t deny that some of Leon’s boss battles are some I’ll never forget, including one encounter that I’ve been gunning for across many, many years of modern Resident Evil.
It’d also be remiss of me not to talk about how strong the combat loop is here. The attention to detail in the combat systems is next-level and easily the best that classic and action-oriented Resident Evil has been. Leon himself has so many context-specific maneuvers, and enemies react realistically to your gunshots, no matter where you hit them. It feels weighty, and every shot really feels important, especially as Grace. It can be fun (if not macabre) to shoot a zombie in the face and see its eye fall out of its socket, or its jaw hang off its skull before kicking it over entirely. There’s a level of gore and detail here that easily makes it one of the most violent Resident Evil games – and that’s before I even talk about the gnarly death sequences that both Leon and Grace can find themselves in.
While the pacing does make it feel otherwise, you’ll spend about the same amount of time as both Leon and Grace through Requiem’s lengthy story. Time is always hard to talk about in Resident Evil, but my first run-through, where I did everything and completed all optional content, took around 15 hours. You can play this game faster or slower, and your playstyle will obviously affect how long that takes. But overall, across the entirety of the campaign, I was rarely bored, even if some of the scenarios Leon’s chapters put me through were a bit taxing.
Put it simply and without saying too much – I don’t think Resident Evil games should have you battling enemies with guns, and I especially don’t think it should happen here in Reqiuem, but it does.
Of course, having finished the game, you’ll be able to run through it again on an even harder more remixed difficulty, as well as work your way towards unlocking a slew of unique weapons for both Grace and Leon. There are some series classics here, but like many of the modern Resident Evil games that aren’t remakes, a lot of unique weapons you’ve never seen before. Mercenaries and Raid fans be damned – there’s nothing like this mode waiting for you on the other side of Requiem’s credits. Replayability is a huge part of the Resident Evil games, so it’s a bummer to see so little being offered here once you’re done, especially given how strong the combat is.
But of course, this is the first truly next-gen Resident Evil game, and it certainly shows in the game’s presentation. While it’s clearly aping the visual design and language of Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 Remake, Resident Evil Requiem is easily the crispest and best-looking game in the series thus far. From the lighting to the hair tech to everything in between, the team has done incredible work of drenching these locales in atmosphere and mood with its presentation. Raccoon City itself is a bit drab, admittedly, though how you make an abandoned city look interesting within the context of what’s going on is challenging, but otherwise this is one of the best-looking Resident Evils, especially when you factor in the body damage and gore.
Similarly, from an audio perspective, Requiem delivers. While most of Grace’s sequences are silent, employing incredible ambient sounds to create atmosphere, most of Leon’s tracks serve as incredible complements to his more action-heavy sequences. Most of the tracks that play during Requiem are grungy, industrial-tinged, almost DOOM-like arrangements that really help to give Requiem its own unique sonic texture. There’s still some hauntingly ambient music that plays during Raccoon City too, which, again, adds to the atmosphere. The voice work is similarly quite great – both Nick Apostolides returning as Leon and series newcomer Angela Sant’Albano as Grace are the obvious highlights. It’s wild to see Nick’s range here, having just played RE2 and RE4 back to back – he’s really become synonymous as Leon now.
All in all, putting aside my very personal concerns with the plot, when the dust has settled, most will not dispute whether Resident Evil Requiem is a good game. It is a great game. An incredible game, even. It makes earnest attempts to combine the two Resident Evil styles that have worked best for Capcom – the slower, more horror-oriented approach of Resident Evil 2 and 7 with the more action-heavy style of Resident Evil 4. The problem, however, is that the game opens almost too strongly with a style that I personally preferred, and jettisons that almost too quickly for yet another Leon game. While ambitious, the balance is a bit off, and that’s hard to ignore.
