Review: Resident Evil Requiem

Resident Evil Requiem is a fantastic game. Being released just prior to the series’ 30th anniversary, Requiem serves not just as an unofficial anniversary game, but as the culmination of everything the series has been trying to do for the last three decades. To this end, Requiem marries conflicting gameplay styles and tones in a way that (on paper) should not work nearly as well as it does. 

This is a game that does everything almost completely right.

The game starts strong with a new character to RE taking center stage, FBI Analyst Grace Ashcroft. She’s sent to investigate a body found where her mother was murdered almost a decade prior to the events of the game. This (of course) does not go according to plan, with Grace being kidnapped by a mysterious masked figure. Series legacy character — and legend of the entire medium of video games — Leon Kennedy spots this happening and begins his pursuit.

From this point, the game is broken down into a dual protagonist structure, following the incredibly anxious Grace through serious survival horror situations and the near-superhero-level badass that is Leon Kennedy through gauntlets of fights that he decimates his way through.

And the game totally nails this. The balance between gameplay styles and tones — genuinely terrifying and tense as Grace and a power trip to end all power trips as Leon — strikes a practically even 50/50 split. The consistent pulse of horror, catharsis, horror, catharsis, keeps the momentum ever lurching forward and genuinely addictive to experience.

Grace’s horror sections are some of the best survival horror in the entire franchise, building off the modern foundation first laid with 2017’s RE7. The Care Center in particular is an unfurling puzzle box akin to RE2’s RPD, but with the best enemy design in the series to date. Zombies maintain facets of their personality from prior to infection, turning each enemy into a character of their own rather than just nameless fodder to cut through (or run from). 

They’re also, you know, terrifying.

The early stretch of the game’s story is gripping to a degree that many RE games fail to achieve. There’s the usual intrigue and confusion as to what the hell is going on, but more than just that is sending Requiem to new heights for the series — what really does it is the acting.

Prior to the recent few entries, Resident Evil was not often regarded for having great performances. The dialogue in early RE called back to campy B movie horror flicks with “so bad it’s good” line deliveries. Even though the recent franchise golden age of RE Engine games has brought with it massively improved performances and a more grounded presentation to what came before, nothing in the series to date even remotely compares to Grace Ashcroft.

Angela Sant’Albano as Grace delivers not just one the best performances in any Resident Evil game to date, but one of the best performances from any video game in recent years. Her anxiety was palpable in every gasp, anxious stutter, and panicked breath to herself. She flawlessly sells a multi-course meal of every emotion under the sun. Every single moment with her is completely convincing and enthralling.

Nick Apostolides as Leon delivers another stellar performance. Leon’s sections are tonally very different from Grace’s, bringing with them high octane action and one-liners that turn the serious horror stakes into something near a comedy. The balance between them works so well though — every joke Leon makes feels all the better for how scared I was just a few minutes prior.

This tonal and gameplay balance extends further with how the game juggles anniversary-related fanservice. Series callbacks (to characters, enemies, locations, etc.) are all handled well and don’t overstay their welcome, but any more detail than that would get into major spoiler territory.

Visually, the game is stunning. Graphical fidelity aside (though it is spectacular across a range of platforms), the game’s art direction is gorgeous. Each major environment feels unique from the last (with one exception) and each is crafted with an immaculate attention to detail. This is made all the more impressive by how big the scope of this game is. There are so many locations and so many things that happen in this game, yet the pacing and presentation remains (mostly) stellar across the board.

Resident Evil Requiem isn’t perfect though, as alluded to above. There is one major area of the game where the visual presentation takes a bit of a dive from what comes before and after it. The exact location is a spoiler, but it happens once we leave the Care Center for good and follow Leon for a while. This area introduces a level of visual homogeneity that isn’t there in every other section of the game. It isn’t egregious, but with how long the player spends in this area, the dull beiges and browns are reminiscent of some of the worst parts of 2009’s Resident Evil 5. 

This section also finally embraces the full scope of Leon’s action-oriented gameplay style. Weapon upgrades and an in-game currency are introduced here, harkening back to both RE4 and RE Village in structure. This section is a lot of fun, but it feels underdeveloped.

2021’s Resident Evil Village faced criticism for uninteresting upgrade paths for the weapons that protagonist Ethan Winters had access to, each new firearm serving as a flat upgrade to the previous. When Resident Evil 4 was remade in 2023, concerns from Village were taken into consideration, expanding the scope of available weapons and diversifying them for multiple available playstyles.

Requiem feels like a lateral shift with its weapons from Village instead of running with what was already improved upon in 2023. Despite the structure being nearly identical to the one found in Village, Leon’s access to this system is limited to the second half of Requiem. This makes it feel both rushed and like the least developed of the three systems, despite having several other games as reference points to build off of.

Leon’s sections aren’t the only areas with small quibbles, though. The puzzles presented to both characters are some of the most straightforward in the series and absent any real challenge.

The boss fights too are quite easy. Most have more gimmicks than mechanical complexity and the few that don’t are not particularly challenging. There was only one late-game (but not final) boss fight as Leon where I died during my first playthrough, which is a bit of a shame! Maybe I’ve just gotten too used to the formula for these games, but more of a challenge in the boss fights could have increased the tension.

Even though I’ve beaten Requiem, there are a few things still left up in the air. I was a little disappointed with how many legacy characters tied to the events of Requiem didn’t make an appearance (even though I understood how hard it would have been to fit them into the story). 

With that said, the jury’s still out on the full scope the story will take (characters involved included). The developers recently announced a major story DLC to come sometime in the future, so what shape the final narrative of the game will take isn’t yet clear. RE4 Remake introduced a full secondary campaign where you play as a side character from the main game as a story DLC. Village, by contrast, had story DLC that served as a sequel to the main game. 

At this point, we just don’t know what the full scope of Requiem’s story will end up being.

But that’s okay! What we have is genuinely incredible. Small annoyances with the visual presentation of one of the game’s areas and Leon’s gunplay aside, Requiem is a nearly perfect video game. It does everything that it sets out to do so incredibly well. 

It’s so good at what it’s doing that it’s become my favorite Resident Evil game. Everyone interested should absolutely check it out, but I would highly recommend playing the remake of Resident Evil 2 first. Unlike most games in the series, Requiem builds very heavily on its predecessors narratively. Quite a bit will be lost on anyone playing it as their first RE game.

Regardless of what order you play it in though, you absolutely should.