Developer: Capcom
Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, Microsoft Windows
Just like I did in my review for Resident Evil: Village, I'm going to start this off with a bit of my history with this long-running zombie saga. Prior to Requiem, I'd only played 2 Resident Evil games: Resident Evil 5, and obviously, Village. Of those two, I only finished Village. So I'm for sure not any kind of authority on this series, and in a title that relies as much on nostalgia as Requiem does, that fact probably stands in the way of my enjoyment a little bit.
With that in mind, if you're looking for a relative newcomer's takes, read on!
Half of the game follows Grace Ashcroft: a new protagonist who works for the FBI as a field analyst. After being sent on a mission to investigate a dead body in the hotel where her mother was killed, Grace finds herself at the mercy of a deranged doctor with ties to the infamous Umbrella Corporation.
A lot of players misunderstand Grace's role and think she's an agent, which leads to a lot of complaints about the fact that she's always scared for every second of the runtime. But again, she's an analyst. She researches and investigates things. She doesn't go up against hardened criminals, and the gun she carries is likely only there for worst-case scenarios. It's an understandable misunderstanding, but it remains a misunderstanding.
So while that complaint is invalid, there's one completely valid complaint about Grace: her constant fear starts out both believable and relatable, but eventually it gets annoying. It's stammering city. Stammering, stammering, and more stammering. You can't throw a dart for all the stammering in the room. She stammers at the start of almost 100% of all sentences she says, and at a certain point, one can't help but imagine she's one cutscene away from coming out of a bunch of cartoon rings and saying "that's all, folks!"
At first it's understandable, but after a while, scary things stop happening to her. Despite this, she just. Keeps. On. Stammering and freaking out with every sentence. Good GOD it's annoying. It isn't cute, it doesn't make her endearing, it's just aggravating and excessive....
(I swear I liked her as a character...)
One silver lining with Grace is that when she isn't stammering, voice actress Angela Sant'Albano bring it home. It's a little too soon to call this for sure, but I'd be shocked if she doesn't win my Voice Actress of the Year award when the time rolls around. When push comes to shove, she's equally as harrowing as Konatsu Kato in Silent Hill f.
Anyway, the other half of the game follows longtime series co-protagonist Leon S. Kennedy: a pretty boy badass with a penchant for the worst one-liners you've ever heard in your life. He's all charm and little substance, but I do have to say he gets a little bit of interesting development in this title that I didn't anticipate. He isn't going to make you cry or anything, but I found myself intrigued at times.
Let's start with the good: Grace's segments. I know I really went to town on poor Grace in the last paragraph, but my issues with her completely fell away whenever I was actually playing as her (something about walking a mile in someone else's shoes comes to mind).
These segments are more geared toward horror, as Grace isn't a hardened soldier or anything like that. She gets basically one gun, limited bullets, limited inventory space, and she also isn't very strong. So when it comes time to play as her, you'll find yourself at an extreme disadvantage no matter what the situation is. With that in mind, her sections are all about resource management, stealth, and weighing your options carefully.
I'll give you an example. There comes a point where you'll come across a room containing three zombies. One of these zombies is an unusually strong variant. The area you need to reach will be on the right side of the room, and getting there requires careful movement. On the left, however, there's another version of the weapon you have that might have better stats. There's also some resources. But in order to get any of that, you'll almost certainly have to fight...and in this moment, you'll have to make a decision based on the resources you currently have available.
Before too long, Grace unlocks the ability to craft things like ammo by collecting blood (yeah, I don't know how that works either), but this doesn't break the gameplay loop like you might expect.
Zombies, after all, take several headshots to kill. So if you shoot their bodies or miss entirely, you can easily pour through a whole magazine of ammo taking a single one down. And while they sometimes are alone, they often aren't.
So, say you scrounge up enough materials to bring your total number of mags up to 3. If you really play it well, then in these levels containing easily 20-30 zombies, you might be able to kill 5ish...but you're realistically probably only going to deal with 3 of them (if even that). Oh, and some zombies can suddenly come back to life upon a second visit to the area you killed them. So in some cases, 2 of those aforementioned 3 zombies you might be able to deal with might be the same one. In other words, the whole ammo crafting economy is just empowering enough to feel like an absolute godsend every single time you get the materials necessary to make a new mag, but not empowering enough to take the tension away.
Earlier I referenced Silent Hill f to talk about Grace's voice actress, and I find myself referencing it again now. In my review for that game, I talked about the difference between fear of combat and annoyance with combat in survival horror and about how difficult a line that is to walk. It's the difference between realizing you're out of ammo and saying "oh no" vs saying "oh, come on!" Most survival horror, in my estimation, fails in this balance. But like Silent Hill f, Resident Evil: Requiem lands squarely on the side of fear, not annoyance.
Like I said at the start of this blurb, Grace's sections are legitimately GOTY material. They're some of the best horror gameplay sections I've experienced in...maybe ever? I don't play a lot of horror, so it's a low bar to clear, but that's where my mind is leaning even now, about a week after the credits rolled.
On the other hand...
Basically, after a prolonged, tense stretch of time with Grace, Leon comes into the same area with his ridiculously large arsenal of weapons and superhuman strength to effortlessly kill every zombie that has been giving you trouble. It serves as some much-needed tension release and a kind of revenge tour to wrap a particular chapter up with a nice little bow. What's more, these sections, at first, last just long enough to not overstay their welcome.
But then comes the second half of the game...where you play as Leon the entire time.
In the second half, Leon finds himself in the ruins of Raccoon City: a boring, bog-standard ruined cityscape the likes of which you've seen a million times before. And just like with his little interludes, he comes up against countless zombies that he...is supposed to dispatch with relative ease. In reality, while ammo isn't as scarce as it is in the Grace parts, it's still a commodity that runs out quickly.
It's here where Resident Evil: Requiem suddenly flips to the opposite side of the survival horror spectrum: the "oh, come on!" side. It's entirely possible that I just suck at classic Resident Evil combat...and in fact, I'm going to call it now and say that I do for the sake of argument...but when I'd run out of ammo in a gun and have to switch to another one, I'd find myself more exasperated than anything. I'd see the sheer volume of zombies standing in my way and just groan. It's the exact same overall concept of ammo scarcity as in the Grace segments, but when plopped into this action context where it wasn't as pronounced, it was frustrating instead of scary or fun. You know that meme with the hot guy and the ugly guy telling the lady at work that she looks good and she calls HR on the ugly one? Leon is the ugly one in this metaphor.
Of course, all of this could just be indicative of a deeper truth. Remember that the only other Resident Evil I've completed is Village, and that I tried Resident Evil 5 but couldn't get through it?
I think maybe I just don't like traditional Resident Evil gameplay. I've never felt like picking up any of the remakes over the years, after all, and I just hated this particular part of Requiem, so maybe that's it? IDK, but as always, all I can do is report on what I experienced.
Oh yeah, I guess I should talk about the Bulletstorm-esque combat point system, huh? Well, early in his half of the game, Leon picks up a bracelet that awards him points for killing zombies. He can use these points to buy small amounts of ammo, body armor, new weapons, and weapon upgrades. It's...whatever. Some people think it's awesome, some people think it's thematically compromising, I think it's just pointless. Weapon upgrades don't seem to make that much of a difference. The guy still moves clunkily around combat arenas. You can't buy more than like one mag of ammo per gun per rewards box, so it's not like this system actually gives you more killing power.
So yeah, not great. There's exactly one sequence involving a motorcycle chase that had me cackling with glee, but that's the extent of my enjoyment in Leon's half. It becomes clear very quickly that this half is meant to be nostalgia-bait for longtime fans of the saga. And as someone with no ties to that, I can say that the nostalgia is really all Leon's half has to offer, otherwise it's a pointless, boring detour that drags down what could've been an easy shoe-in for GOTY so far.
The RE engine really shows its prowess here. The character models themselves are second-to-none, with practically every pore on Leon's face being visible and with zombies being unfathomably detailed in how "falling apart" they are. I think the only thing I could even remotely point out as a weak point in this package would be the soundtrack, which is guilty merely of being unmemorable.
So folks, as a reminder, I'm coming from a place of distinct non-fandom. I've only liked half of the prior Resident Evil games I've tried, and wouldn't you know it, I only liked about half of this one. This makes me a bit conflicted. Do I recommend this game to a newcomer?
I mean, let's be honest: only newcomers are likely in need of advice about whether to pick this one up or not. On one hand, Requiem could be an easy way to find out if you like one style, both styles, or neither style of Resident Evil gameplay. On the other hand, it's a marked-up $70 experiment in that case. So I'll go with this. While the only technical problems I've heard of happened on PC, I'd recommend getting it there if you're on the fence. Within the usual 2-hour Steam refund window, you'll be able to experience both gameplay styles. During both of those, close your eyes and imagine playing that way for half the game's length. If that doesn't sound good, you still have time to refund.
As I've stated many times by now, Resident Evil: Requiem is a game of two parts: one good and one bad...or I guess one and a third good and two thirds bad, depending on how much the early Leon segments take up in the runtime. It's a game with lofty ambitions of capturing both sides of Resident Evil in one package, but it doesn't quite have the fuel to reach that proverbial moon. With all that said, a question remains: is it possible that Requiem ends up on the top 10 list at the end of the year based off the strength of its good bits alone?
Too soon to call, but I'd say it's a distinct possibility.
Let us review:
Horrible, boring level design in Leon's half - 1.0
Frustrating combat in Leon's half - 1.0
Couldn't wait for Leon's half to end - 1.0
The final score for Resident Evil: Requiem is...
7.0/10 - Good
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