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Resident Evil Requiem is the culmination of the RE Engine era for the franchise. Capcom takes every lesson it learned from the past decade of RE games and executes on its vision almost flawlessly, with minor gripes barring it from perfection.
It’s no secret that Capcom has recently tried to marry two distinct Resident Evil styles. On one hand, you have the tension-filled "slow burns" like RE7 and RE2 Remake, where players meticulously manage resources through interconnected, maze-like corridors. On the other hand, there is the action-oriented approach of the timeless Resident Evil 4. While Capcom attempted to replicate 4's high-octane success with Resident Evil Village, they ultimately decided to go all-in by remaking the 2005 classic in 2023.
Requiem succeeds at merging those two styles thanks to its dual protagonist structure: on the one hand, you have Grace Ashcroft, an FBI agent with seemingly very little field experience, who quickly realizes she's out of her depth following a personal assignment that will see her trace ghosts from her haunting past, and former RPD cop turned bona fide super agent/80s action movie star Leon S. Kennedy, who makes his grand return to the franchise following the events of Resident Evil 6. He's not doing so well this time around, as a mysterious disease is slowly creeping up on him, with his personal journey leading him to Victor Gideon, a person of interest with ties to Umbrella, who takes an interest in Grace right around the time Leon is on his trail.
I don't want to spoil the story, as it boasts shocking twists that significantly alter what fans know (or think they know) about the Resident Evil canon. Rest assured, it is an incredibly gripping mystery that had me more hooked than I'd like to admit. That said, Requiem does falter for me in its depiction of character motivations, settling on some utterly generic conflicts to drive the plot forward. The way some specific stuff gets resolved at the end also left a bittersweet taste in my mouth.
There is one extremely bold choice I will commend Capcom for, and that's the scale at which they decided to keep Requiem. Again, I won't go into specifics, but this is very much a story centered on Grace and Leon ultimately coming to terms with their past trauma, so temper expectations if you're a fan of a single character rather than the franchise as a whole.
Just as you've likely seen from various previews (including our very own), Grace carries the survival horror portion of Requiem while Leon is all about bombastic, over-the-top action set pieces. Gameplay preference will vary from player to player. I found both to be excellent companions, with pacing only stuttering in certain sections, including the always obnoxious forced stealth sequence the franchise can't seem to get rid of.
That might irk those looking for a specific type of experience from their Resident Evils, as the playtime is evenly split. It's also not a situation like RE2, where you play an entire campaign to its fullest and switch to another character; it's a single narrative thread.
Preferences aside, this is where Requiem shines the most. The early hours will see you primarily play as Grace, letting you get intimately acquainted with the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. It's a sprawling playground filled with rooms to explore and dreaded undead standing in the way of your next objective or a special resource you desperately need.
It's up there with some of the best locations in Resident Evil history, think Spencer Mansion or R.P.D. It evokes a sense of mystery and eeriness as you explore its vast layout.
Grace is not entirely helpless, as you'll have a small handgun and the ability to craft tools to help you dispose of enemies, using perhaps the best crafting mechanic implementation I've seen in the Resident Evil franchise: the Blood Collector. Scattered around the care center, Grace will be able to collect blood from distinct locations or downed zombies, which she can then use to create all sorts of equipment: do you need extra ammo? Maybe a makeshift knife? Heal yourself with a Med Injector or craft a handy Hemolytic Injector that will let you swiftly take down enemies without wasting bullets? These are all questions you have to ask as you manage such a finite commodity (besides wondering how blood can be so versatile as a crafting tool). It's especially more enjoyable if you play in Classic Mode, where you'll need Ink Ribbons as Grace to save your progress, which also requires blood to craft.
This system gives you a reason to directly confront enemies if you wish to farm more blood. It becomes a game of how to properly manage your current inventory and weigh the pros and cons of wasting a few bullets or a knife just to get that extra bit of bodily fluid to perhaps craft a Stabilizer, one of the permanent upgrades Grace has access to, which gives her increased stability and more firepower.
Grace does have an ace up her sleeve, the Requiem revolver, a break-in-case-of-emergency last resort that could save you from a tight spot with its one-shot capabilities (on most zombies, at least). Crafting ammo for it is expensive, and finding even a single bullet will fill you with a sense of calm and relief only comparable to making it back to a Save Point with a sliver of health. Miss a shot with it, and well, I know you'll hover over that reset to last checkpoint option.
Capcom has puffed its chest whenever it has discussed the zombie AI behavior, and for good reason. Zombies in Requiem retain a fraction of humanity that makes them much more than just pesky obstacles to dodge or eliminate; it's a great callback to the origin of zombies as a concept created by legendary horror master George A. Romero, who envisioned these as an allegory for how humans can, essentially, be robbed of their uniqueness as individuals, forced to be yet but another cog in the soulless corporate machinery of mindless consumerism and mind-numbing work that serves no purpose other than continuously filling the pockets of a select few.
Even when they're nothing but a husk of who they were, these zombies retain patterns of their previous lives: a chef carries around a massive kitchen knife, continuously preparing "meals" for his guests, an exasperated cleaning lady losing whatever sanity she has left after being unable to scrub the endless streams of blood all over the floor. All of them are so distraught that you can easily bypass them completely undetected if you so desire. It works on so many levels, thematically and mechanically, that I can only gush at the brilliance of the idea and its execution.
The fact that, at certain points in the story, these zombies will break patterns you thought you had memorized is the cherry on top. "Hold on, where'd the chef go?" Only for you to hear the thumps of his heavy steps stemming from another area of the care center you needed to explore, filling you with a sense of dread.
The interactions are polished to a shine, for the most part, as there are moments where the zombie AI acts a bit too automated, completely ignoring your clearly visible presence. It's very nitpicky, but if you really want to cheese the zombies, you certainly can.
Zombie interactions aside, Requiem lacks good puzzles. Sure, there are a couple here and there, albeit very minor, barely brain-tickling ones, with the most interesting of the bunch actually not even being required to progress through the story. It's a disappointing miss that could've elevated the game to even greater heights, especially since everything else about the early hours is close to perfection.
For my playthrough, I opted to stick with a third-person perspective. Unlike the RE Village DLC, which added a very lackluster, tacked-on third-person POV option, Requiem's works wonderfully. Sure, the game recommends you play as Grace in first-person and Leon in third, but Capcom went as far as adding unique running animations during intense Grace sections, so both ways of enjoying the gameplay feel perfect and immersive.
Moving past Grace Ashcroft, we still have a hefty chunk of the game featuring Leon S. Kennedy himself. He's thankfully more than just a glorified cameo. Capcom stayed true to its word: he carries at least close to half of Requiem's playtime. There's a very specific reason why marketing focused on just a handful of scripted Leon moments to showcase, and I'm not here to spoil why; you'll have to find out for yourself, but I have to commend the developers for pulling out all the stops for what I can only describe as Leon's swan song. It's a trip down memory lane that will leave fans feeling nostalgic, reminiscing about their own past while playing previous Leon-centric Resident Evil games.
It's a visual homage to Resident Evil 2 with the visit to a decimated Raccoon City and a riff on Resident Evil 4's gameplay with tight combat and a constant barrage of undead, forcing you to use every tool in your vast arsenal to wipe them out, as much as it is a tribute to Resident Evil 6. The ridiculous, nonsensical, larger-than-life action of such a divisive game has made RE6 gain a bit of a cult following, and Requiem isn't embarrassed by it; it embraces it fully in all its cheesy glory. It's a thing you'll either hate or love, but you won't forget it.
To further distinguish Leon from Grace gameplay-wise, he's retired the use of barely durable cutlery, opting to bring his reliable Hamilton watch, but more importantly, a hatchet. Leon can parry and dispose of enemies in a gory fashion using his unbreakable melee weapon, which needs to be sharpened from time to time. Alongside it, you'll get a wide variety of weapons right from the get-go, with more inventory space than you could ever hope to fill, letting you focus on the fast-paced sections involving a grizzled veteran that has nothing to lose. His animations carry weight; you can feel and hear the skull-crushing force of every hatchet swing. He's got unique environmental kill animations, both with melee and guns, if you fire them point-blank, making for a satisfying dynamic rhythm of shooting and going for a melee final blow.
There's also a returning parry mechanic, which will come in very handy and reward you for being precise, and even the ability to pick up weapons zombies have, including the highly showcased chainsaw, which leads to some hilarious moments as zombies get ragdolled around by the sheer force of it and doing damage to Leon if you try to pick it up before it stops spinning uncontrollably.
There's a fantastic way both characters intertwine at the care center, as you'll get to control both and fully explore the facility. The actions you take as Grace will naturally affect what Leon faces, and vice versa. That chef we mentioned, giving you trouble as Grace? Let Leon pay his compliments instead.
I can't really say much more about Leon's side of Requiem without going into spoiler territory, but let me assure you one final time: if you love this character and have been following the journey of Resident Evil as a franchise, you won't be disappointed with the callbacks Capcom has decided to cram into RE Requiem.
Ultimately, Resident Evil Requiem is a confident, near-perfect blend of horror and action that Capcom had long dreamt of bringing to life. It stands tall when compared to some of the series' best entries, and while it falls a little short in a few areas and has a somewhat inconsistent pacing with unnecessary padding, it delivers the scares, the gameplay, and a surprisingly compelling story that will be sure to surprise long-time veterans of the series.
A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review
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