This game worries me in the sense that it gives the impression the developers are heading down the same direction that gave us Resident Evil 5 and 6. Whereas 7 and 8 give you a character who can fight with melee weapons, plenty of guns, and can run worth a damn, Requiem separates this into two sides of the campaign that play very differently.

First, you have newcomer Grace, an FBI agent. She gets a few pistols she can use, but she never has a permanent melee weapon like Leon's knife from 4. Her segments of the story are slow, creepy, dark, and a perfect horror atmosphere. The genre of her gameplay segments is survival horror. Her segments are for the old school fans of the series.

Then you have Leon's segments. Throughout the story, you switch between characters. Whereas in 4 you had Leon, who can fight with numerous guns, launchers, some physical combat like punches and kicks, a knife, etc. while in a dark, scary, horror-filled atmosphere, in this title his environments are much more akin to 6 where the focus is on action. There is nothing scary or even an attempt to be scary in Leon's segments, and this is where my main issue with this game lies.

Capcom is trying to appeal to both groups. Those who prefer the horror of 4 or 7 and those who prefer the action shooter style of 6. They could have given Leon the same treatment as 4 does where he is in a scary, dark environment full of the living dead, but they chose not to. Instead, you essentially get parts of 7 and parts of 6 in this game. The development team, however, said they were aiming for similar gameplay as in the remake of 4. I think they missed the mark.

Other than that, it's a typical Resident Evil affair. Unkillable monsters you have to avoid (like the Tyrant from 2 or Lady Dimitrescu from 8), puzzles that are similar to those in previous entries, and doors that require three "keys" inserted into a lot to open are all here. The story is generally good, Leon is back, and Grace is a welcome newcomer that I hope we get to see more of in future titles.

The only other gameplay gripe I have is that the boss fights are very easy. At most I died once during a boss, and I believe it was the final battle in which this happened. All of the others can be beaten on the first try. I started in "Standard (Modern)" difficulty for reference.

All in all, Resident Evil requiem is not a masterpiece like the remakes of 2 and 4, and not quite as good as 8, but still an exceptional game that fans should play

My new favorite game of all time, replacing Resident Evil 4 from my top list. This game combines the horror of Biohazard (but done even better), with the action of Leon in Resident Evil 4. The best of both worlds done masterfully.

The game's story is told through various cutscenes and notes and they include a lot of lore from older games. If you are new to the series, you may feel very lost playing this game. If you are a veteran and a long time fan, this game is a love letter to 30 years of horrors. Requiem was very emotional for me; it messed up my sleep and my focus in everything. I couldn't stop thinking about the game and what could happen. I took it too seriously, I think! Anyways, it's a must play for fans.

As good as it is, there were a couple of things that could use some improvements. For example, Leon's gameplay can feel a bit clunky at times, especially in small spaces in the game. There were not as many boss fights that distinguish every Resident Evil game. And lastly, I did get a lot of stuttering from the game. It may ne my fault, but I used the automatic settings, where the game inspects your PC and sets the graphics to what your PC can handle. I also chose performance mode, and it was still stuttering, especially closer to the end of the game. The first half was fine. Again, it could be my fault for not using the proper settings.

In conclusion, a must play. Try it out and have a blast!

Ever since Resident Evil 7, it feels like there have been two distinct Resident Evils. There is the excellent, atmospheric horror that 7 reconnected with, but there was also the wonderful, goofy B-movie action-adventures that kept being delivered through the remakes of Resident Evil 2 through 4.

Resident Evil 9 is an attempt to marry these threads of Resident Evil into a single title through a dual-protagonist structure. New protagonist Grace Ashcroft leads us through creepy horror sections where you are sneaking around, avoiding enemies and scrounging for scarce resources. Then there are the sections led by series veteran Leon Kennedy, where you are essentially an action superhero mowing down zombies.

This structure works really well, especially in the first half of the game where you spend a lot of time as Grace in the creepy Rhodes Hill Sanitorium. You are vulnerable and have to deal with limited resources for a significant stretch. When you are finally given control of Leon and you are allowed to go to town with a full military arsenal, it's a super rewarding moment.

Once you leave Rhodes Hill in the second half, the game isn't able to repeat that payoff successfully, and the pacing feels a bit off with some sections that drag on too much. But there are still some really rewarding moments that keep you glued to the very end, especially if you're a long time fan of Resident Evil. And of course, Leon is still hilarious and carries the whole experience.

The Switch 2 port is quite impressive in motion, targeting 60fps and consistently hitting it in the early portions of the game, though some of the later sections struggle and made me wish for a 30fps cap option. But I have no regrets getting this version as it was great to play the game on the go.

Resident Evil 9 is a great game, but it's like a multi-course meal that gives you great samplings of the different versions of Resident Evil. It doesn't quite show me how these two variants could be merged together into one single cohesive whole. But when both sides are this fun, it's hard to be disappointed in the end.

Capcom has had a seemingly impossible problem to solve for the past 20 years. How do you satisfy two entirely different groups of Resident Evil fans with one game? How do you please the people like me who still worship at the altar of RE4 and RE5, and want less horror and more action and dumb one-liners and ridiculous set pieces? How do you ALSO please old-school fans of RE1-3 and the more modern survival horror triumph that is RE7?

The answer they came up with is so simple that it couldn't possibly work, and yet it does. Split the game up into two protagonists, with entirely different styles of gameplay and tones.

Grace's sections play like a more brutal and pared back RE7. She doesn't aim well, she has very limited ammo, she only has two guns (one of which is a magnum you will only find a few shots for), has a very small inventory, she can't take very many hits before dying. You are incentivized to sneak around, avoid conflict, scrimp and save as much ammo as you can. Many of her sections are crouching around in the dark with a flashlight.

Leon's sections echo the recent RE4 remake. You march into rooms with big guns, a big axe (that can be infinitely resharpened whenever you want so is less precious than the knife in RE4 Remake), and big dick energy. His inventory is as huge as his biceps and you will be stuffing an entire armory into your pockets. Towards the end of the game I was running around with a handgun, shotgun, SMG, two different sniper files, and almost 10 grenades.

Most of Leon's gameplay is in the back half, but you will get short sections of him interspersed throughout Grace's sections, and it will usually be some kind of boss fight.

Beyond the core gimmick of two different protagonists, it's a standard resident evil game that gets all the fundamentals perfect. The zombies look cool, they look even cooler when their head explodes from a shotgun shell. The environments are dense, looping, beautiful, varied, and memorable. I would go so far as to say the first big area you play in as Leon has my favorite level design in the whole series and echoes Dark Souls with shortcut doors and elevators aplenty. The puzzles are, as ever, simple and completely ridiculous from an in fiction standpoint.

The story is an intentional call back to RE2 and has a lot of fanservice. Depending on your disposition that's either a positive or negative. But the performances are entertaining from top to bottom. Grace's VA in particular does an amazing job.

On a personal note, this wound up being quite a fun bonding experience for me and my friend. Like I said, I don't really like PLAYING the survival horror resident evil games, though I love them dearly. And that's because I'm a wimp, I have trouble pushing through scary games where you feel powerless and actually have to just run and hide and conserve ammo, even mildly scary ones like RE. Personally I have only played the (many) different versions of RE4 and RE5. But I've watched my friend play through the remakes of RE1, RE2, RE3 and RE7 and RE8. He has never played RE4 but he watched me play through the original and some of the remake. We both played through RE5 together back in the day. So for this one we literally traded off, he played Grace's sections and I played Leon's sections, and that was a ton of fun and a totally new way to play a resident evil game for us.

10/10, would highly recommend. I personally think this is the best RE game since RE4. A triumphant win for Capcom, who has done nothing but cook for the past decade. I eagerly await Pragmata.

Resident Evil: Requiem opens with a confidence that borders on... well, predatory. From its first moments, it's clear that the developers understand atmosphere as a bloodstream as opposed to a decorative layer. The air feels thick. The silences feel intentional. As with the previous games, Capcom deftly demonstrate a damn near surgical degree of control over tone. The result is, fortunately, one that manages to drag a player under rather than just lure them in.

The brutality is striking - points all around for that. Not gratuitous in a juvenile sense, but shocking in a way that restores danger to a franchise long familiar with excess, and one that managed its execution perfectly in the seventh mainline game. Several cutscenes land with genuine jaw-dropping force. Violence in Requiem is staged with deliberation and it often feels consequential. Well done, developers, for succeeding in making the horror experiential.

Among the game's new threats, the so-called "Girl" stands as an instant fucking icon, good god. Her presence - her stalking, the relentless percussion of her footsteps - evokes a primal anxiety that even the towering figures of the Tyrant or Nemesis struggled to achieve at their most operatic. And she doesn't rely on scale alone, oh no. She weaponizes proximity and rhythm. In doing so, she earns her place among the series' most memorable monsters. Bitch scared me silly.

On the human side, Victor Gideon is rendered with remarkable nuance. The performance is layered and charismatic without slipping into caricature, and keep in mind that caricature is safe ground for Resident Evil - it's allowed, it's part of the fabric of this game franchise. Yet he commands attention whenever he appears, and I sense that the actor fully understood the tonal register the game demanded. Leon is a great contrast, as he tends to remain almost mythic in his composure. He's cool to the point of abstraction, y'all. He functions as a stabilizing axis for the narrative, a figure shaped by trauma yet never consumed by it.

The same cannot be said for Grace. No, it really fucking cannot. As a character, she strains credibility. Look, I can overlook a certain degree of timidity in an FBI agent thrust into extraordinary circumstances: fear is human. What proves more difficult to reconcile is the manner of its portrayal.

The performance frequently veers into exaggeration so pronounced that it fractures immersion. I grow irritated just typing this as I recount the constant stuttering and hyperbole that is her collective on-screen time. Her reactions feel less like the irrationality of terror and more like the artificiality of scripting. Instead of embodying a person unraveling under pressure, she is fucking entirely constructed for effect, her gestures and expressions repeating in ways that become distracting rather than feeling like a genuine nod to, say, neurodivergence in an untenable situation. It's rare for a protagonist in this franchise to feel like an obstacle to one's own engagement, yet Grace occasionally approaches that threshold.

Also, why the hell does she never close her mouth? Bitch may as well not even have lips. I seent her teeth more in the 9 hours it took me to play this game than I seent my goddamn own choppers in my entire life.

Mechanically, the hide-and-seek sequences, brief as they are, continue a long, long, long standing series tradition of overstaying their welcome. On a first playthrough, sure, they sustain tension. On subsequent runs, they risk becoming procedural interruptions. Allowing these sections to be streamlined or bypassed would only strengthen replayability, which remains one of the series' core virtues. I will not be replaying this one, and it's partly because I know I'm going to have to suffer through the slow-paced sneaking section within the orphanage again.

One of the game's most impressive achievements is its integration of franchise history. References to the events and tonal shifts of Resident Evil 7 and Village are woven in with subtlety rather than fanfare. And again, fanfare is safe ground. They could have gone that route and it wouldn't have been worse off for it. But with how they orchestrated these gestures and nods, the effect is organic, akin to the way Alien: Romulus gestures toward the mythic scaffolding laid by Prometheus and Alien: Covenant without completely collapsing into exposition, god help us all. The continuity feels earned.

Leon's return to the RPD and the Kendo shop exemplifies this restraint quite well: these sequences could have devolved into indulgence, but instead, they function as quiet meditations on memory. His recollection of the gunshop owner and his daughter could be argued as being nothing but a sentimental aside, but more accurately it serves as a clarifying force, sharpening his resolve. The city's ruins are a backdrop, yes, but they're also a mirror that reflects that trauma lingering in the architecture. Another outstanding section.

If there is a misstep in the realm of nostalgia, it's the reappearance of the Super Tyrant. Where other callbacks feel purposeful, this one edges toward spectacle for spectacle's sake - a "greatest hits" moment that momentarily breaks the game's otherwise careful calibration, a lot like how Siegmeyer of Catarina and Andre the Blacksmith from Dark Souls somehow show up in Dark Souls III.

Similarly curious is the absence of a stronger response from Sherry regarding the orphanage. Given her history of, you know, being threatened and hunted by a fucking serial killer, her silence feels conspicuous. I wouldn't go so far as to say the omission derails the narrative, but it's one hell of a missed opportunity for emotional resonance.

The aesthetic rendering of Raccoon City's ruins carries an unexpected echo of Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Whether intentional or not, the visual homage is strangely delightful. These sections, however, are more expansive than what the series traditionally offers. The openness lends scale but occasionally diffuses urgency, making certain exploration segments feel longer than necessary. Familiarity on repeat playthroughs may well temper this sensation, so it's not a huge complaint.

As with many entries in the franchise, the conclusion arrives abruptly. This time, the lack of conventional catharsis feels deliberate. We are left not with tidy closure, but with lingering lore and bold narrative decisions, one in particular that demonstrates admirable narrative nerve. Resolution is partial, and implication is plentiful.

So to round it all up, Resident Evil: Requiem stands as a worthy successor to the revitalizing brilliance of its immediate predecessors. It's perhaps slightly overlong, it's occasionally... scratch that, frequently undermined by an uneven central performance. Still, its atmosphere, its creature design, its performances elsewhere, and its willingness to engage thoughtfully with its own history secure its place among the stronger modern entries. If this is the direction forward, the future of the franchise remains compelling. Don't let me down.

And Grace, close your goddamn mouth, please.

I've never played Resident Evil 6, but I know it had a poor reception. It's regularly held up as the low point in the Resident Evil series, so it was odd that the same idea of having multiple different horror experiences in one game returned in Resident Evil Requiem. But fans seemed excited for it without even mentioning their most-hated entry in the series, and the game went on to be well-received by critics. I don't have such high praise for this game myself though.

Resident Evil Requiem follows two protagonists: Grace and Leon. Grace is a rookie FBI agent tasked to investigate an abandoned hotel for a case. She has a history with this place because its where her mother was murdered. During her investigation, she is accosted and kidnapped by a man named Victor Giveon. This same man is being chased by Leon S. Kennedy who is working to cure his T-Virus infection.

The story sets up for the two protagonists Grace and Leon to regularly cross paths while on their own adventures. The game bounces between both protagonists as I progress through the game aiming to deliver different experiences in tandem. The idea is that Grace's game play is "Survival Horror" while Leon's half is "Action Horror".

I hate what the term "Survival Horror" has become. The definition has been taken from it's creator Shinji Mikami and been co-opted by an annoying, gate-keepey fanbase. The definition has become an unclear mess that few describe the same way, but all love to say when a game isn't "Survival Horror". I'm throwing out this term here because I think Grace's game play is better described as "Stealth Action Horror". It's not much different from a Splinter Cell game.

And this is great news as I hate "Stealth Horror" games such as Amnesia: Dark Descent. Games like these need action. I'm fine with limited resources, but I need to be able to fight back. Otherwise, the experience is boring and frustrating. Because of this combination of stealth, action, and horror, Grace's half of the game turned out to be the best of the two.

Grace's gameplay is set up like classic Resident Evil in structure. She's dropped in an area open for exploration. She has to sneak her way through halls choosing what to kill or avoid based on the limited resources she has, but there are also un-killable enemies she has to purely avoid with only the ability to stun them for a better chance of running away. She also has safe rooms to restock or store items and save the game. I love taking a look at the map and planning trips with the least amount of resources to get the job done. It's a slow-paced, satisfying experience.

One of my favorite touches of Grace's experience and the game as a whole is how it handled her crafting system. Grace's crafting system is entirely based around blood. She finds blood in her environment and sucks it up with a syringe. She uses the blood to craft items like bullets and upgrades. It makes no since but is pleasingly disgusting. This is taken even further as Grace is able to craft a hemolytic injector. These can be used to stealth kill an enemy. Grace can sneak up behind an enemy to stab them in the neck with this thing or stab a staggered enemy during a fight. When injected, the enemies head swells up and explodes for an instant kill. Blood flies everywhere. It's hilarious, and I loved doing it as much as possible.

Leon's side of the game takes a while to get going. It's amusing upfront as he has new moves such as picking a melee weapon off the ground to throw at an oncoming zombie. They make him even more of an action hero with cool poses as he shoots at zombies. The difference between Grace and him is immediate as he has an over-abundance of ammo, and his guns do more damage. It's overkill, but his gameplay sections are unsatisfyingly brief in the first half of the game.

In the first half of the game, Leon comes in the clean up the mess after Grace has already left. Since I kill most enemies as Grace, it leaves Leon running through a mostly empty building only able to kill off the larger enemies Grace wasn't capable of killing. It's dull. Not a good design choice.

Leon gets his time to shine in the second half as the game mostly follows him then. He's sent back to Racoon City, but the present day version has been decimated by bombs in the aftermath of Resident Evil 2. There's a lot of fan service and nostalgia delivered here has Leon is sent back to the Racoon City Police Department.

The progression of Leon's side of the game has a major difference from Grace's. Leon has a whole shopping system. Every zombie he kills gives him points. He can uses these points at shops in safe rooms where he can purchase new weapons and upgrades and sell unneeded items. It's funny to see the game incentivize killing every enemy I come across. It feels the exact opposite of Grace's experience of conserving as many resources as possible.

Leon's section does a good job of mixing things up to create memorable moments, but I also found his part of the game more frustrating than Grace's. I think the developers pushed the action gameplay beyond what they were capable of. There are some sections where it just turns into a straight up third-person shooter, but it lacks the control and features to make it feel fair. I died often in these parts, and I was just annoyed by it. It also has some weak boss fights that were either too simplistic or not doing a good job of communicating how much damage I was doing to the enemy.

The story for both sides is weak. Resident Evil has never been good at this. Grace's story has obvious twists I could see coming from a mile away, and I have to wait too long for her to finally catch up. Leon has become a meme-ified version of himself with the lame one-liners that I can't take him seriously any more. The story tries to have some emotional reminiscing during this time in Racoon City, but it all falls flat. The swapping back-and-forth between protagonists also hurts the pacing of the story. It just feels like it hits pause on one story to continue another instead of feeling like one continuous storyline.

Resident Evil Requiem's attempt on combining the two different gameplay styles they've originated into one game didn't all come together. Grace's stealth action horror feels like the most ideal version of the gameplay style popularized by Amnesia: Dark Descent. Leon's action horror still doesn't hold a candle to the original Resident Evil 4 which I feel is misunderstood at this point. That man had many limitations in that game, so I don't know why the evolution of that led to half-baked Gears of War. And they need to calm down with the one-liners or stop trying to be so self-serious in its storytelling. With as bad as these stories are though, the latter would probably be the better choice. As for the series as a whole, Requiem was an odd swing to try to please all fans. I think they made a good game, but it's hardly the best in the series. The series will probably forever live in the shadow of the original Resident Evil 4, but when looking at the modern games, I would also take the Resident Evil 3 Remake over this. I'm very curious to see where they go from here though.

With how people talk about the mixed-bag identity crisis that was Resident Evil 6, you would not think it was the second best-selling game in the long-running series, but it still feels like subsequent games breathed new life into that series in an important way. On one side you have my two favorite games in the series in RE7 and Village, which took the series into first-person and more fresh ideas while still feeling like Resident Evil; and in parallel, you also have a series of highly-acclaimed remakes of three classic entries, which gave them a more modern feel in game design, graphics, and tone. Enter Requiem, which kinda sets itself up as a victory lap sequel to both styles of games, half first-person survival horror as new protagonist Grace and half third-person action as series regular Leon.

I'm not the biggest fan of how this split approach lands, but at least the game's first half is really good. Its centerpiece is a large area that brings to mind classic RE zones, lighter on puzzles but still offering that satisfying adventure game progression along with modern RE's scarier feel. The story also has a promising mystery setup, and Grace is a much more compelling protagonist than Ethan and many others in the series. These sections slightly overuse big unkillable super enemies that stalk you around, but they fit well with how the levels play with light and darkness and are preferable to standard boss fights. I do also wish there was no all-purpose resource collection / crafting in these parts, but it's only a minor annoyance. Each part of this first half has something pretty memorable about it, even the smaller bits, and I found myself pretty invested in what was going on and enjoying the tension.

Leon of course takes over occasionally during this first half to not disappoint those who were looking for action. I found his parts' tone and gameplay style felt shoehorned into these earlier segments, and I didn't care for how he left the main thread on cliffhangers. At least those were brief parts, but I was unprepared for just how much he would eventually take over the game. In the second half you play as him for at least a couple hours with minimal interruption in a really bland environment, literally earning points from kills to redeem for items. Combat as Leon feels nice, and the section has a decent flow through a bunch of connected areas, but this section is still forgettable and uninspired compared to anything that happened before. It didn't help when it tried to go over the top or drew heavily from the well of fan service, falling flat for me at a point hours removed from the last time I was having a truly great time. Still, the fundamentals of the combat and level design help keep this feeling at least okay.

It frustrates me a bit that that's what they turned the exciting direction of the first half into, kinda failing to cohesively marry these two game styles, but the game's final stretch bounces back decently. After playing as Leon for that long, the sudden realization that you're back to Grace's limited arsenal and perspective is a pretty nice moment of story and game design reinforcing each other. This section balances the two sides a bit better both in gameplay and narrative, bringing the story to a mostly satisfying conclusion. Resident Evil is a series I love as a whole but that's full of games like this with great peaks but also parts that are a bit of a drag or don't quite work. In this case, I can't tell if it's being overly ambitious or not ambitious enough, definitely leaving me wishing this was a Grace-only game but still ultimately succeeding in spite of its misfires.