Capcom has been unsure of which direction to take Resident Evil in for most of its existence at this point. After leaning too far into action, the series was pulled back to survival horror with Resident Evil 7, before Village decided to mix the two. Resident Evil Requiem once again follows this example, but with more of a laser focus on appealing to Remake 2 and 4 fans. The result is a game that does a great job of delivering things people love about those games, while pandering too much to nostalgia and trying to have it both ways. It’s a very good game, but I can’t help but feel this isn’t what the series should be doing.
The term “nostalgiaslop” gets thrown around a fair amount, and it’s hard to describe Resident Evil Requiem as anything else. The plot here makes very, very little logical sense in any capacity and seems to just exist to take the player back to Raccoon City. Why? Because the script says so. The game’s story sets up some big mysteries and promises satisfying payoffs, but it all amounts to mostly pointless MacGuffins that lead absolutely nowhere. I really enjoyed 7 and Village‘s stories for what they were, but the writing here is totally misguided and plays like an excuse to pander.
Resident Evil Requiem is basically divided into two halves: the half that’s like Resident Evil 2 Remake and the half that’s like Resident Evil 4 Remake. The former puts players in the shoes of newcomer Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst who gets abducted by a mad scientist named Victor Gideon while investigating the hotel where her mother was murdered. This comprises the game’s strongest section, which takes place at a care centre. This location is strongly evocative of RE 2‘s police station, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Pretty much everything I love about classic RE gameplay is on display here.
The area features some new systems, too. You’ll find infected blood all around, which Grace can pick up with a device and then use to craft items somehow. One of these is an injector that lets her stealth kill any enemy, no matter how powerful. The care centre is full of things to find and is extremely well designed, so I naturally did everything I could find. But Leon is also playable in this section, as it cuts to him a few times. His action gameplay is in stark contrast to Grace’s, as she only gets two weapons and is far more fragile. Granted, she still has enough supplies and whatnot to kill everything in the care centre on the game’s standard difficulty.
Leon’s half of the game starts out very well, too, dropping him into his own hub where he has to find parts of a detonator to get back into Raccoon City. It’s not nearly as visually interesting as the care centre, but it takes you through some really kickass set pieces and combat encounters. Leon’s gameplay here is much like RE 4 Remake, but there are some advancements. He can once again stun foes and melee attack them, plus his attaché case returns in lieu of using item boxes like Grace. The biggest difference is that he has a hatchet that can’t break, which is an effective melee weapon, in addition to being a satisfying tool for finishers.
Leon gets points for every kill, which he can use to upgrade all of his guns, plus there’s still exploration to be had. This section actually pairs rather nicely with Grace’s, I think, so I was happy with it. However, once you complete your objective for this hub, the game changes somewhat. An on-rails section follows, continued by a pointless detour where he returns to the RPD building and surrounding areas. This section has very little gameplay and even less of a real plot purpose. It exists for nostalgia baiting, and the entire sequence is a completely linear series of events with a couple of boss battles thrown in for good measure.
Afterward, you enter the last area, but Grace only gets a single extra gameplay section for this entire half of the game. It’s one of the weakest parts of the game, as she has to sneak past Lickers as well as zombies. She can’t fight the zombies because the Lickers will hear, so I found this section to be annoying and tedious. There are a couple of endings that you can select via binary choice, but one of them is very clearly a bad end. The final boss battle is easy and, again, doesn’t make much sense, but it does have the usual spectacle afforded to endgame fights in RE games.
Once you beat the game, you get a bunch of unlockables to purchase with points for completing challenges, but there’s no New Game+. A harder difficulty mode does get unlocked, so that’s something too, but I honestly didn’t feel much of a need to replay the game again. The final timer told me I took 10 hours to play through it all, but that doesn’t count reloads. I explored damn near everything I could and even got stuck for a stupid reason a couple of times, so the game simply isn’t all that long. However, that definitely tracks with RE 7 and Village. I do wish there was a Mercenaries mode or something besides the campaign, though.
I enjoyed playing Resident Evil Requiem. It’s gorgeous, runs terrifically, and has the great gameplay the series is known for. I did, however, get the sense that both gameplay types didn’t get to be nearly as fleshed out as they could have been with entire games dedicated to them. It left me a bit unsatisfied, but not nearly as unsatisfied as the incredibly subpar narrative did. It feels weird to see Resident Evil so desperately clinging onto its past like this, especially after the last couple of mainline games made such a show of moving forward. Still, it’s hard to say it still doesn’t deliver an engaging time despite all the pandering.
Resident Evil Requiem: A bit of column A and a bit of column B are the focus here, as Requiem tries to have its cake and eat it too, which left me feeling a bit peckish in the end. – Andrew Farrell
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