Resident Evil Requiem Review - A masterful tribute to one of gaming's most-beloved franchises

And I’m glad to report that Resident Evil 9 is a masterclass in tension and catharsis, horror and action, and, at points, reaches heights only the best games in the series have before.

Requiem, or RE9, follows Grace Ashcroft, a young and inexperienced FBI agent, as she investigates a series of inexplicable murders.

As with most Resident Evil titles, this quickly descends into shambling zombies, mind-bending puzzles and survival horror mayhem.

But Grace isn’t alone in RE9; series icon Leon S. Kennedy returns, quips, spinning kicks and all.

Over the course of RE9’s 10-14 hour runtime, you follow both characters as they explore a series of stunning and haunting locations to uncover the mysteries of Grace’s past.

If you have played Resident Evil 7 or 8, you will know what to expect from Grace’s sections, which make up around half of the game.

These segments are tense, often horrifying and filled with the survival horror tropes Resident Evil made famous.

You will be exploring interconnected and winding locations filled with shambling zombies that can do serious damage in just a couple of hits,

Like RE7 and 8, these sections also include masterful and genuinely terrifying, cat-and-mouse moments where Grace is tailed and hunted by grotesque monsters.

These monster designs mark a high point in enemy and environmental design for the entire Resident Evil franchise and show Capcom working at a level you would expect from the masters of survival horror.

Grace’s sections can be played in either first-person or third-person, but the game recommends opting for the first option. I found myself switching between the two throughout my playthrough.

These segments, which often leave the player feeling totally powerless, wind up the tension until it's almost impossible, at least for me, to take.

And just when you think Capcom may have pushed the survival elements a bit too far, the game switches to the legendary Leon.

Leon’s sections play almost exactly like Resident Evil 4: Remake.

While he might be a bit older, the wisecracking hero still has all the moves, and more, he did in the 2023 masterpiece.

While Grace’s gameplay is a masterclass in building tension, Leon’s sections brilliantly release that tension with explosive action, brilliant encounter design and a decent amount of enemy variety.

In a brilliant move, Leon often explores the same environments Grace did, just slightly later than the bumbling FBI agent.

This means the game is truly able to emphasise just how different the two types of gameplay are here.

One moment you are sneaking through a room as Grace, praying a single zombie doesn’t see you.

An hour later, you are in the same room as Leon and this time, the zombies are hoping he doesn’t see them.

In the hands of a lesser developer, cramming what is essentially two games into one may have been too much.

But here, Capcom is able to weave the two styles together perfectly; Whenever a Grace section ends you are happy to be back as Leon.

And equally, once Leon is done murdering every monster he sees, Grace’s slower, more thoughtful and scary sections are welcome.

Visually, RE9 is the best the series has ever looked.

While many modern games go for scale, RE9 is fixated on details.

Because each environment needs to look good in first and third person, they are extraordinarily detailed.

Interiors shine especially here, with ray-tracing on PS5 making the game look startlingly true to life.

Character models are also industry-leading, with Leon and Grace both being stunningly rendered and beautifully animated.

In third person, Grace stumbles through environments, her fear clear to see, while Leon strides through as confidently as you would expect.

RE9 isn’t perfect, however.

The story, like most Resident Evil games, mostly functions to move our two heroes through well-designed puzzle, stealth and combat encounters. The setup here is actually very good, but by the end of the game, it descends into what we’ve come to expect from Resident Evil at this point - evil scientists, twists that don’t make much sense and somewhat unearned character moments.

This is also not a game for newcomers to Resident Evil.

RE9 relies heavily, perhaps too much so, on nostalgia.

Entire setpieces, enemies and areas are lifted from previous RE games and while this worked on me as a fan of the series, newcomers will find themselves very confused.

And this focus on reliving old moments sometimes highlights the game’s shortcomings.

At no point do Leon’s sections reach the essentially perfect encounter design we saw in RE4: Remake.

And, while genuinely terrifying, Grace’s segments struggle to feel as fresh as when Resident Evil 7 released almost ten years ago.

Despite this, Resident Evil: Requiem is a stunning achievement, a tribute to one of gaming’s greatest and oldest franchises, that weaves together two disparate gameplay styles masterfully and by the end leaves you wanting more.

Here’s to another 30 years of Resident Evil.

4.5/5

We played Resident Evil: Requiem on PS5. Thank you to Capcom for providing us with a review code.