With glowing praise, consistent above 90% scores, and the highest playerbase launch out of any title in the series, Resident Evil Requiem is an undeniable success.
It’s all so much more impressive that Resident Evil Requiem, despite seemingly being a foolproof culmination of the series’s legacy, is also a highly risky experimental title. To constantly swap between two completely different characters and in-game tones while still being fun at the same time is rarely cohesive. And yet, it miraculously is… with many regrettable faults.
But to get to that, I’d be best to start with Requiem’s greatest achievement.
Grace Ashcroft and the True Evolution of Survival Horror
Against all odds, Grace Ashcroft has managed to win many over.
If not just for her introverted, wimpier personality working as a perfect modern-day horror protagonist, it would also be that her gameplay in the first major level is one of the most intense, excellently curated survival horror experiences you’ll ever have.
Grace is a shaky, unwieldy character trapped within the halls of a haunted funhouse where each enemy possesses their own threat and unique behaviors. Initially, the variety of threats feels like an impossibly hostile situation, but in no time, you’ll start to memorize and manipulate the personality of the enemies, then leverage your incredibly powerful yet scarce tools (instantly starting with a magnum and having instant-kill stealth options) to constantly form minute-by-minute strategies. Though Grace is never strong enough to handle every threat on the map, she is never weak enough for a situation to truly feel impossible.
The more mastery you gain over the map and traversal, so too will Grace’s posture change and her hands will start to shake less. It is the closest Resident Evil has returned to the intensity of RE1, but with a massively modernized moveset.
Leon Kennedy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Leon is a bit of a complicated subject in this game.
On the one hand, Leon has some of the most fun set pieces in the game.
The relief of switching into a character with a higher level of control and weapon variety, the hilarious one-liners against threats that were so much scarier as Grace, and the downright insane action spectacle, all building to a one-man war in a post-apocalyptic Racoon City is some of the smartest implementations of action in the whole series. Though initially feeling a bit too brief at points, Leon’s Resident Evil 4-style story and gameplay become appropriate at mixing up Requiem’s campaign to feel fresh at every turn. It finally feels as if the series has understood how to properly pace the insanity of Resident Evil 5 and 6’s anime-level military action with some real sentimentality and tact.
Unfortunately, Leon’s combat and enemy variety noticeably feel less in-depth, not just compared to his near-perfect iteration in Resident Evil 4 Remake, but also compared to Grace. Leon’s best implementation is his appearance shortly after Grace finishes the first half of the Care Center, where he serves as almost a revenge power fantasy against all of the annoyances and stress Grace had before, allowing Grace to gratefully have full mobility to collect anything left behind on return.
This is where I had believed the marriage between both playstyles clicked together, and the game had initially felt unstoppably fun. Had the game simply reworked this structure at least one more time for the final zone, Capcom’s grand experiment would have completely landed for me.
However, this is the most complex and well-thought out the game that either character has. Which, unfortunately, results in the game rapidly becoming less and less complex and interesting on a mechanical level.
Simultaneously Awesome and Disappointing
I rarely focus too deeply on Resident Evil plots, but Requiem deserves a bit more discussion as it really is an Avengers: Endgame-level finale to the Raccoon City saga.
Requiem surprisingly incorporates far more series memorabilia from long-unseen characters and restores old plot threads than I expected. Many of which were definitely gratuitous but still emotionally effective and unreal to experience as a long-time fan (whatever you’ve been spoiled by, there’s probably 3 more insane surprises you haven’t heard about). Some of which even felt like a playable Resident Evil movie, complete with kung-fu and high-octane chase sequences.
Unfortunately, this commitment to going full circle on Leon’s legacy with truly awesome fan match-ups and massive scale hype scenes completely buries Grace’s agency in the second half. Grace vanishes from the plot alongside her incredible game plan and character journey in favor of Leon handling even the final dungeon and bosses mostly on his own. And while the game is still immensely fun on his end, the ending left me with profound disappointment, considering how much stronger and even how perfectly realized the first hours initially were.
There also still exists a major concurrent issue with the series, where the more Resident Evil plots tend to escalate, the more automated later sequences tend to become. Grace’s segments, with the character no longer having any reason to explore a whole map, eventually devolve into heavily linear or even unskippable in-game cutscenes that become an annoying chore to replay.
Overall Thoughts
It sucks what I ultimately feel about the game, because at one point, I was truly in love. And to some degree, I still am.
The highs are incredible, and some of the best experiences I’ve ever had in the series, and the lows are some of the worst pace breakers and disappointments I’ve had with the series as well.
The first hours of Requiem felt like a magic spell. The Care Center almost perfectly achieves all of its insanely risky design goals in making Grace and Leon two parts of a cohesive experience that was so dynamic and incredible that I believed I was experiencing a top-5, or even my favorite, title in the series. Only for the game to switch gears and, while never becoming boring, never reach that excellence again.
I cannot respect Resident Evil Requiem enough for the innovations it went for. I wish it knew how much it got right before falling back to older habits.
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