Resident Evil: Requiem

Resident Evil 4 may be my favorite game ever. 10 out of 10 Goldblums. The recent Resident Evil games and remakes have all hovered around great to amazing, constantly teetering the line between horror and action depending on which title you pick up. So when Requiem was announced and revealed to be both the return of Leon Kennedy and a split between action and horror, let us just say I was a tad excited.

A quick side note: the game was actually scrapped and restarted early on. It was originally pitched as a more open-world action game. You can still see aspects of that original vision when you finally reach Raccoon City, but the reconfigured, tight maze gameplay is a conscious pivot that you will notice from the get-go.

We open up with the horror aspect. Grace Ashcroft makes her way through a gruesome crime scene, reflecting on the story her mother was following before her death. This is a brilliant lore cut for longtime fans, as her mother is Alyssa Ashcroft, the reporter from the Resident Evil: Outbreak games. It is a fantastic reintroduction to the franchise's terror roots. Putting you into a first-person view as the meek Grace tries to escape intact after things go south is incredibly effective.

After Grace is bitten and finds some stashed documents from her mother, we flip to Leon. This is where the action gets put on full display. Leon controls perfectly. He feels tight, slightly overpowered, and more than capable of handling whatever the game throws at him. It is a wonderful dichotomy compared to Grace's stumbling and unsure mechanics.

It is a great callback to Resident Evil 2 and its shared location resources. Some of your choices as Grace will actively affect Leon later on. The change in style is really fun. Grace feels like a desperate bid for survival, while Leon feels like he is on a focused mission to explore and push forward.

Spoilers Below: Our first cat-and-mouse game with Grace is a "stay in the light" hide-and-seek encounter with "The Girl." It is expertly laid out to guide you through the basic mechanics while being heart-pumpingly intense. Just when all hope is lost, we switch to Leon for an action-heavy and totally ridiculous chainsaw rampage. Leon jumps in at just the right moment to blast The Girl and save Grace right where we last left her for dead. The way their gameplay switches back and forth is incredibly refreshing. Playing into each other's stories is a clever mechanic that keeps the pacing sharp. It is also worth pointing out the enemy design. These infected are ripped straight out of their everyday lives. Nurses, doctors, maids, and a chef are all going about their routines in a nigh OCD-like fashion. Leave the lights on, and an infected orderly will obsessively rush to turn them off to a fault. You will sometimes find him with his face smashed into the wall trying to bite the light switch off. The cook is just trying to make his meal, angrily searching for ingredients and insisting (bloodily, if necessary) that everyone stay out of his kitchen. It is a fascinating pivot from the mindless hordes of the past or the subservient henchmen from the more modern titles.

I have played pretty much every RE game over the last few decades, and I have no idea where the overarching story is at this point. But so long as the games are top-notch, who cares how convoluted and bogged down the lore gets? Requiem actually feels like a righting of the ship. It clarifies the storyline and slowly brings the bigger picture in for a landing.

The flipping between storylines, the constant hide-and-seek tension, and the extremely well-thought-out level design make this game amazing. Then you add in the voice work. Victor is especially terrifying and menacing, taking the whole experience up a notch. Yes, Leon's dialogue can be a bit cringy, and Grace can feel a bit cumbersome at times, but there is a narrative reason for it. Add in some truly impressive boss designs, new mechanics for the old zombies, and a few massive surprises along the way, and you have the markings of one of the best RE games ever made.

A minor knock on the game is the difficulty. If you love the punishing, high-difficulty loops then the standard difficulty will seem a breeze. There is ample ammo to be had thanks to the new blood crafting system. It is a neat idea in practice, but the execution needs some refinement for the next entry. The Leon gameplay is bonkers fun, though at no point do you ever really feel in peril. This is straight action schlock, and it feels great in the small bursts you control him to start, really ramping up once you hit the city limits.

When you finally return to Raccoon City as Leon, we are thrown some lore twists and revelations that harken all the way back to explaining events from Resident Evil 3. This is more open-world exploration time with Leon, again going full action mode, but the level design and upgrade system feel perfect for this scenario. You will also find yourself saving less, adding to the feeling that Leon is seasoned and does not need training wheels. However, Leon is not looking great. He is wheezing and has black sores on his body. The sheer weight of the prior games is finally taking a physical toll on him.

My only other real knocks on the game would be the pointless motorcycle level and the extremely annoying sneaking level with young Grace. Other than that, this is a crowning achievement in almost every regard.

Things really ramp up in the underground labs until you are finally faced with a choice: release or destroy Elpis. Depending on your choice, that is it. No final boss battle, no grand escape, just a heartbreaking game over. Making the other choice gives you one final epic boss fight.

Clocking in at just under 10 hours, I covered pretty much every inch of the map without a guide. However, I only finished about half the completion checklist, meaning Capcom baked replayability right into the harder difficulties. I plan to upgrade and hit my next run right away.

Overall, this is an amazing final(?) act in Leon's story. It boasts tight controls, amazing level design, great atmosphere, and probably the most accessible and clean Resident Evil narrative ever. Grace endeared herself as a worthy new protagonist, Victor was a great big bad, and Leon was amazing as always. There is one other character return I will not spoil, even if it felt a bit anticlimactic.

Requiem is exactly what its namesake implies. It is a somber ode to the deceased, both physically and to Raccoon City as a whole. It is a song of closure, a final goodbye to the Wrenwood hotel, and a fitting, bittersweet swan song for Leon Kennedy as he passes the torch to the new blood.