Summary#

Resident Evil Requiem is a pretty good game. My final score is 8.5 out of 10. The game features a balanced combination of classic survival horror with intense action sequences and it’s fair share of RE cliches. Definitely worth playing for Resident evil fans, and very approachable for beginners.

You are now entering the spoiler zone. The following sections will contain spoilers for the game all the way to the end

For all tastes#

As I normally do, I played Requiem without watching any trailers or reading promotional content about the game. I knew only about the two playable characters and how each would have a different gameplay focus.

To me this feels like Capcom put 2 and 2 together. Resident Evil is both a horror and an action franchise. Earlier titles were definitely to the horror side while 4 and onward were action games.

Then with the franchise soft-reboot’s Resident Evil 7, they went all in on the horror, and for it’s sequel the game starts of very similar to RE4, then has some classic sections, and by the end jumps all into the action.

In the franchise latest release, they somehow went all in on both genres, with each protagonist having a clear focus. Grace’s gameplay is textbook RE classic survival horror while Leon’s is, well, Leon.

While I prefer the survival horror style, the game interlaces both very effectively, being able to keep the game’s pace flowing and the player engaged throughout. As the popular saying: a rollercoaster cannot go only downhill, when the player starts feeling saturated by the horror, the game throws a Leon section. Once you’re reset with the action mindset, the game throws back another horror section.

This effect is enhanced by the fact that Grace tends to be very powerless against most threats, the gameplay is focused more on escaping and smart planning around obstacles, while Leon’s gameplay is more straight to the point “see enemy, shoot enemy”

Puzzles#

Requiem of course has plenty of puzzles. There are the classic puzzles like figuring out a sequence of buttons to press using clues and there are environmental puzzles like the Chef, Chunk and the Girl.

One downside is the lack of logical puzzles. For instance it comes to mind the chess puzzle from RE2, or the Happy Birthday video tape from RE7. It feels like most of the game’s puzzles tend to be solved by just exploring enough, and they rely on the environment being the difficulty factor.

For the 3 quartz section of the game, the first puzzle box requires only to combine the diary with the pencil, which are in the same room, with an enemy by the pencil. The second puzzle box requires the Corrosive, which itself requires a combat, then the actual puzzle solution can be found by looking at 2 pictures, both with each half of the solution. And the third quartz is basically a wave defense section.

Then later in the basement the power plugs puzzle is a bit more complex since there are plenty of locations to use the plugs and you need to get them in a specific order, but once again the difficulty factor is the environment and the girl.

Finally on the last Grace section of the game in the ARK, the puzzles once again have the difficulty based on the environment with lickers and regular pale zombies patroling the area.

Not to say that it’s a bad thing having puzzles based on environment, because as it stands, this game is gorgeous and very pleasant to walk around and explore. The environmental challenges are good challenges, but I feel it could use with a few more logic puzzles.

Environment#

Speaking of the environment, the game has a few locations during it’s runtime: Wrenwood, Rhodes Hill, Raccoon City and the ARK.

Wrenwood#

There’s not much to say about Wrenwood since it’s the tutorial area and a presentation on each character’s play style. For Grace this section is very important in setting the tone and telling the player what to expect and presenting some backstory on her. The same goes for Leon, right off the bat in combat sections and setting his motivation.

Rhodes Hill#

Rhodes Hill is where we’ll have most of Grace’s screen time. It’s a care center that has long lost it’s purpose, being used by the current owner Victor Gideon to conduct his research. In gameplay this translates to a great stage for the survival horror: indoor area, diverse cast of enemies, decadent infrastructure, and plenty of areas to explore. Leon’s sections see plenty of close quarters combats with a tower defense and a mini boss finale.

Raccoon City#

Raccoon City is the bulk of Leon’s screen time. Here we see the opposite: open areas with fewer enemy diversity and more linear. While I’m not a fan of reusing the same environments on multiple games (like RE3 remake did a lot), it didn’t feel out of place, since we’re seeing what’s left of the city after the missile strike. It serves a story telling purpose by backing Leon’s motivation to fight against umbrella.

ARK#

It’s not a resident evil game if it doesn’t have a lab at the very end. ARK is the final remaining umbrella lab, still standing under the remains of raccoon city. I will say that while having Raccoon city back wasn’t a big deal for me, I couldn’t help but think about how umbrella already had the NEST (2 of them in fact) under the city (and you access it through the sewers under the Police Station) to now having another lab very close by. It felt a bit cheap story wise to have this show up now.

The lab isn’t really remarkable, serving the purpose of holding the only samples of Elpis. There are some nice combat sections in this park of the game but not much more.

Story#

Requiem’s storyline is pretty solid overall. We have 3 stories going on around the same time: Grace’s, Leon’s and Grace’s past.

Leon#

Leon has the simpler story arc: he’s investigating deaths related to a disease he has. While it doesn’t seem at the start, he’s very close to falling victim of this T Virus contamination. This establishes a clear motivation to seek after Victor Gideon and attempt to find a cure, venturing deep into the ruins of Racoon City. We also have some fan service during the short section at the RPD and Kendo’s Gun Shop.

Grace#

Grace definitely is the main character in terms of the plot. She’s an FBI agent that is somehow related to Umbrella. The game reveals information on her backstory very gradually but the pace feels very good.

Being the very cryptic in the beginning, we only know that grace is somehow related to something called Elpis, then later we find out that she’s the key to retrieving elpis. Anby the end we find out that she had nothing special at all, it was a red hearring from Spencer.

The reason the pace of the backstory being revealed is so good, is mostly because we have other plot points filling the space between, mostly with Emily and the care center background. We learn throughout the care center that they are attempting an experiment on transfering memories through blood, which means that by using absolutely enourmous quantities of blood they can create subjects that recall memories from another life. When you stop and think about it, it’s brilliant. They have a care center where patients are dying at all times and no one would notice if 1 or 2 people dissapear.

What they are attemping to create with the test subjects is a clone of Grace, having the ‘key memory’ to unlock Elpis. One of these test subjects we find is Emily, and she plays a pivotal role during the game’s middle act. Emily’s arc starts by bonding with Grace during her initial section at the care center. When The Girl kidnaps Emily, we start to see a change in Grace’s personallity. Grace grows some courage to rescue Emily, making their bond even stronger. Then what is possibly the climax between their relation: the helicopter crash, which sees emily badly wouded.

Finally, the last stop in the emotional rollercoaster is finally defeating The Girl only to find out Emily had passed, and worse yet, transformed into a monster. At this point in time that Grace sort of gives up the fight and join the antagonists for a first class trip to ARK.

Antagonists#

If I had to pick one low point of the plot, it’d be the antagonists. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Victor’s character, but it falls short on the overall. The two main antagonists of the game are Victor Gideon and Zeno.

Victor is an ex-umbrella researcher, that cashed out and started doing his own private research, trying to uncover the ultimate weapon (Elpis) through blood memory. To me he definitely has that charismatic villain personality, grotesque look and lack of ethics and morals (a requirement for that kind of research).

Zeno on the other hand is just there along for the ride. If I have a complaint about this game, it’s Zeno. His character is underdeveloped to the point that if you skip all cutscenes, he doesn’t make any difference in the story at all. What I can speculate is that he’s a Wesker clone that plays an important part on The Connections terrorist group. Besides that on the main story he’s working with Gideon to create the Grace clone. I absolutely love his characterization, he’s not the regular “I’m bad” antagonist, he seems meticulous and has a classy vibe to it. I’m sad that he doesn’t play any important role and it’s killed in a cutscene.

This game also expands a bit on the overall story: we see more of the Raccoon City orphanage and the tests they were conducting there all the way back in 1998. We get some clarification (or should I say, obfuscation) on who ordered the missile strike in Raccoon City and why. The game doesn’t really advance what we know about The Connections, but it sets up the stage for future games about it.

Endings#

The game features 2 endings, though only the good ending is cannon. The bad ending is more of a ‘You pressed the wrong button’ sort of finalle. It ends with Leon getting murdered by Zeno, and Grace fleeing without a final boss fight.

The good ending starts by Grace releasing the Elpis, which is a cure and not a virus. With this cure Leon recover his strength and is able to fight off Victor in the final boss fight, defeating him and burying umbrella at last

Platinum#

After finishing the main story and getting both endings I had over half of the achievements. I played 2 more runs to finish all achievements, making this one of the easier games I’ve ever 100%. There will be a future DLC and I’m certain it will add more achievements that I’ll have to get, but as of today this game is pretty fun to get the 100% completion and it doesnt take long to do that. I beat the game in 3 days and got the platinum within a week after launch.

Conclusion#

Resident Evil Requiem is a pretty good game. Even though it’s a bit short and simple, it shows capcom can appeal to both major audiences and is a step in the right direction for future games. Requiem is an 8.5/10 for me.