'Resident Evil Requiem' Review: An Outstanding Mix of Horror and Action With a Messy Story

Author's Note:The author was provided a PlayStation 5 code from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

I have been a massive fan of the Resident Evil franchise since my dad introduced me to the series when I was five years old (maybe a little young, admittedly). I fell in love with Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, zombies, viruses, and everything else the series has become known for.

Now, decades later, Resident Evil Requiem celebrates 30 years of the series with a unique blend of horror and action, both new and old gameplay elements, and plenty of fan service. Capcom took a massive risk with this game; it swung and attempted to hit a home run. However, the game's weak plot and writing and its disappointing boss battles stop this celebration from making it past third base, but it's still a ball game worth playing.

Requiem For the Living and the Dead

Requiem follows newcomer Grace Ashcroft (daughter of Resident Evil Outbreak's Alyssa Ashcroft) and series veteran and fan-favorite Leon S. Kennedy in dual protagonist roles. Capcom previously stated that the game was split roughly 50-50 between the two characters, and after my nine-hour first playthrough (not including cutscenes), during which I took my time and collected almost every file and smashed all but two secret raccoon figures, I found that estimate to be pretty accurate. Grace's horror-focused gameplay dominates the first half of the game, and Leon's action-focused gameplay takes center stage at the halfway point, though there are sprinkles of the other character thrown into all the game's major sections.

I would compare Grace's gameplay more to Resident Evil 7 than any other game in the franchise. She's weak, slow, and gets very few resources and weapons. She is virtually forced to stealth her way through the opening areas at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. As Grace, you can throw empty bottles as distractions, observe enemies from a distance to figure out movement patterns, and patiently plan how to overcome seemingly impossible odds.

For example, there is an early room that involves a zombified singer and several other enemies. How you choose to get through this room is ultimately up to you. Do you stealth your way through it and ignore them which could make them a nuisance later if you have to backtrack? Or do you try and take them out with what you have?

Getting creative with the limited resources you have as Grace creates one of the most riveting and intense gameplay loops the series has ever had. Not once, in any of Grace's sections on the Standard (Modern) difficulty, did I feel confident or safe with the amount of ammo, healing items, or supplies I had. That tension creates an outstanding level of dread and anxiety that elevates the horror to some of the highest levels the series has ever seen.

You do eventually get a weapon as Grace, so you're never completely helpless. However, Grace's arsenal is one of the most limited in the entire series. Crafting recipes allow Grace to make better items as the game progresses, but Grace never gets to the level of power that Leon or Claire Redfield did in Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 2 remake, or even Ethan Winters in Resident Evil 7. Grace is the most vulnerable character in the history of the series, and that works exceptionally well for her gameplay sections. You can find Antique Coins to grab some upgrades, like more health and more inventory space, but even backtracking to that room to exchange the coins for the upgrades can be intense.

Touching on resource management again, one of the new elements introduced with Grace is the ability to collect blood from buckets and also from dead enemies. However, in order to collect the blood, you have to kill the enemy without destroying the body. That idea works so well because almost all of Grace's craftable items require blood. Do you spend some handgun bullets in order to grab blood to make a healing item or another item you need more of? Or do you decide to leave the zombie and move elsewhere, and move on with what you have? The risk versus reward is survival horror gameplay at its peak.

Pulse-Pounding Action

Requiem has a lot of action moments, though, so there is a balance between intense horror build-up and then releasing it when you switch to playing as Leon. Leon feels strong. He has a lot more health than Grace, a lot more weapons, a lot of ammo, and a repairable Hatchet that does not require any resources to fix, unlike RE4 remake.

As a throwback to the original Resident Evil 2's "zapping" system, what you do as Grace and Leon sometimes affects how the other character will deal with certain gameplay scenarios (though not every section in the game is visited by both characters). It was so much fun to go back through early Grace sections as Leon and absolutely wreck all of the monsters. Leon's gameplay feels almost identical to the Resident Evil 4 remake, including the return of the parry system. He can stun enemies with bullets and melee them, and then smash their heads into walls or use the hatchet to dismember them, creating an ocean of blood in his wake (blood also being a major motif in the game's story that works really well as a gameplay function, too).

One new gameplay mechanic is the ability to shoot weapons that zombies and other enemies might have out of their hands and then pick them up and use them against them. From chainsaws to spears and some other melee weapons, Leon has a tool (or can find a tool) for every situation.

Requiem is Leon's first mainline in-game appearance since Resident Evil 6, and despite being 49 years old in this game, he feels stronger than ever. There are some absolutely insane action set pieces in the game when playing as Leon, on par with some things in Resident Evil 6. I found them to be very fun, even if they don't make a lot of sense, but I could see survival horror purists greatly preferring Grace's parts of the game if they are strongly against action horror. Vice versa, I could see hardcore RE4 fans wanting more Leon action when playing as Grace.

As someone who has loved every era of Resident Evil (besides Resident Evil 6 and a couple of spin-offs), the combination of the gameplay elements feels like a love letter to RE fans, and I absolutely enjoyed every aspect of Requiem's gameplay, top to bottom, except for one: the boss fights.

The boss fights are very limited in this game, and I won't spoil how many there are, but I found all but one of them to be incredibly easy and arguably boring. They're also very short. No boss fight took me longer than three minutes, with most of them ending in less than two. The boss fight gameplay designs are love letters to RE fans, and some are even callbacks to previous installments, but they are so infrequent and so short that I feel it's one of the few areas of this game that feels more like fan service than meaningful gameplay.

Overall, I feel like Capcom did an impressive job at balancing the horror and the action. Grace has some action segments, Leon has some slower, exploration-heavy sections, so you're never completely missing any element of the game, which showcases how well-paced the game is. The game does a great job of building to a moment and then switching things up before anything becomes repetitive or boring. Personally, I would say the game is arguably the most well-paced in the entire franchise, with the possible exception of Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 4 remake.

That being said, the game is quite set-piece-heavy, similar to Resident Evil 7, for both Grace and Leon. On a second playthrough, I did notice a few places that dragged, but only because I knew exactly what to expect, and it plays out the same way. There is a segment similar to Sherry's playable section in Resident Evil 2 remake and the House Beneviento section of Resident Evil Village. It's a great, short segment on a first playthrough, but it feels like a chore to play after the first time. Thankfully, it isn't too long.

Two Sides of the Coin

Grace and Leon are foil characters of each other, both in gameplay and in story. Grace is nervous, stutters, suffers from panic attacks, lacks confidence, and also lacks social skills. On the flip side, Leon is confident, stoic, and despite being in the most vulnerable position he's ever been in, he's still the same wisecracking one-liner machine that he's always been (some of which made me laugh aloud, given the context in which he says them). Grace struggles to make sense of her place in the game, while Leon is very aware of his.

That contrast works well, and it's one of the best things about the game's story. In my opinion, Grace is the best new character Capcom has introduced in Resident Evil since the original four: Chris, Jill, Claire, and Leon. She doesn't have the confidence to realize that she knows what to do in order to survive and gradually comes into her own in some unexpected ways.

For Leon, I think fans will mostly be pleased with the way he is portrayed in this game. He's older and a little more cynical, saying exactly the information he needs to deliver, and then going quiet. This is a Leon that is on the verge of giving up. Since the Raccoon City Incident in 1998, he has been fighting bioterrorism, and, in 2026, during Requiem, nothing has improved for the world. More evil corporations rose from the fall of Umbrella, and this mission is more personal for him than any previous one. Despite that, he still wants to help Grace. He's layered, funny, and an absolute joy to play as, despite being forced to face his trauma and past failures, along with Grace blaming herself for her mother's death eight years prior.

A Bloody, Fun Mess of a Story

Grace and Leon, their personal interactions, and they as characters, are the best part of the game's narrative. However, the game's main plot has a lot of holes, and the writing to get to each major plot beat is wildly inconsistent. It needs to be brought up because I think fans may go into Requiem and have a certain expectation, especially after the polarizing response to Resident Evil Village's story. The story itself is fun, but it is incredibly messy and, despite being surprisingly small-scale compared to most Resident Evil games with huge world-ending bioterrorism threats, Requiem still somehow buckles under its own weight.

The game's story begins with Grace being tasked by her supervisor to investigate a murder that occurred in the same place where she and her mother were attacked eight years prior, which resulted in Alyssa's death. She is eventually kidnapped and brought to Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center by Victor Gideon, a former T-Virus researcher.

Leon is also investigating the string of murders, but for a different reason, sees Grace being kidnapped, and heads to Rhodes Hill to find Gideon and rescue Grace.

That is the inciting incident of the plot. Seems basic at first glance. And it actually is. Requiem's narrative is much more personal than previous games. It's not Ethan Winters needing to save his daughter in Village or Leon needing to find the president's missing daughter in RE4. Leon needs to find Gideon for his personal quest, Gideon needs Grace for an evil plot, and Grace just wants to escape and live (at least at first).

That's actually where Requiem's story is at its best. However, there is an event that happens at the halfway point that I found to be extremely silly. I don't have a problem with what happens; it's the way that it happens that I found to be unbelievable, and it knocked me out of the story for quite a while.

There are some twists after that, but they are fairly predictable, and the game ends in an anticlimactic way. There is also what appears to be a bait for future DLC for the game.

Touching on the antagonist, Victor Gideon, for a moment--he is arguably the weakest antagonist in the entire franchise. He's boring, has a lot of plot armor, and is just a mustache-twirling villain with very little to do in this game. Luckily, he doesn't appear that often.

Requiem feels like it is scared to commit to anything in its narrative. It reminds me a lot of Stranger Things seasons four and five. There are good ideas, but the writing to make them happen just isn't up to par.

Additionally, and this is probably my biggest problem with the game overall, there is a lot of retconning in this game for the series' established lore, even more so than Resident Evil Village, and especially for one character whom I won't spoil. I suppose that was inevitable in a game in which characters are returning to Raccoon City after 28 years, but some of the plot beats and even a specific location feel forced into the game instead of interwoven organically.

The game's narrative is Requiem's weakest point, unfortunately, but luckily, Grace and Leon are handled so well that it didn't ruin the game for me. If fans were upset by the retconning that happened in Village, then they will probably be just as upset or even more so by some of the retconning that happens in this game.

Additionally, there are a lot of small details that, once you slow down and start thinking, just do not make much, if any, sense. The story might revolve around secrets from the past, but it's clear those secrets did not exist before this game, which makes the overall narrative feel more like a side game than a new mainline entry. The game is much smaller in scope and scale than some may expect. Even if the narrative falls apart partway through, I think fans will still have fun with it, as long as expectations are kept in check.

A 30-Year Celebration

Resident Evil Requiem is the anniversary game that fans have been waiting for in a lot of ways. There are references to all the mainline games in the franchise, all the way from Zero to Village, and even some spin-offs. I will, of course, not spoil any of them, as I feel fans will smile ear-to-ear with all of the Easter eggs and references.

Requiem pays homage to every era of Resident Evil, from some boss battle designs, to Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, and another area later in the game, operating like the mansion from RE1 and the RPD from RE2. The game features intense horror, intense action, backtracking, some puzzles (though not a lot), stalker enemies, and even the ability for the player to make choices themselves to decide the order for completing some objectives. There are some horror set pieces like RE7, and there are some action set pieces like RE5 and RE6.

Resident Evil Requiem might stumble a bit with its story, but in terms of gameplay and sheer respect and passion for the franchise, Capcom understood the assignment.

There is a decent amount of unlockables after finishing the game for added replay value, though not as much as Village, Resident Evil 3 remake, or Resident Evil 4 remake, which was surprising to me, but I will leave all of those unspoiled. And of course, being able to play the entire game in first-person and third-person creates two different approaches to play the game, adding another layer of replayability, which is needed, since I actually finished this game quicker than I finished Village, a game that took me around 10 hours to finish.

Resident Evil Requiem has some flaws, but overall, it is a strong homage to the entire Resident Evil franchise up to this point, and it's never been a better time to be a fan.

Resident Evil Requiem releases on February 27, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2.