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Resident Evil Requiem is Capcom's victory lap - a game that takes everything the series has done well over nearly three decades and refines it to near-perfection. This isn't some radical reinvention or a risky departure chasing new audiences. Instead, it's a confident culmination of survival horror design that respects the franchise's legacy whilst delivering some of the most technically impressive work Capcom has ever produced.
More of the same? Absolutely. But when "the same" means intricate level design, tense resource management, and that signature RE loop of exploration and dread, that's hardly a bad thing. Requiem feels like Capcom's taken us on a proper trip down memory lane, revisiting what made Resident Evil brilliant, whilst also scaring us shitless in ways we've not seen before.
Two Sides of Survival
The game introduces Grace Ashcroft, a new protagonist investigating her mother's brutal murder. Years ago, Grace's mother was working on a dangerous case, constantly on the move with her daughter to stay safe. One night, a T-virus infected figure tracked them down and killed her mother in a hotel, right in front of Grace, who barely escaped, but returns years later to retrieve a hidden folder her mother left behind - only to be kidnapped by Victor Gideon, a villain who bangs on about how Grace's holds special properties he desperately needs.
It's a familiar setup, admittedly clichéd at first, but the story finds its footing as it goes on. What starts feeling a bit shallow eventually turns into something genuinely solid, with emotional weight that actually lands particularly in Grace's arc. She's vulnerable, terrified, but never backs down, even when it means dropping into a dark hole where a monster's just vanished. There's real courage in her character despite the shakiness and fear in her voice, and the game earns its emotional beats without spoiling where it all leads.
Eventually, Leon and Grace's path's cross and this becomes more emphasized as the story progresses. While Leon does once again come up as a knight in shining armour type of bloke at first, it turns into something much more meaningful later on. Leon has his own troubles, memories that haunt him, and he's determined (and ripped) more than ever before to make sure that none of what he and others experienced during the early days of T-virus happens again.
The narrative structure alternates between Grace and Leon Kennedy, and this dynamic between their playstyles is one of the game's smartest design choices. Grace's sections lean heavily into survival horror - backtracking to safe rooms, managing limited inventory slots, and rationing resources. Just when the exhaustion of that loop starts to wear thin, the game switches to Leon, who plays like an action hero. He's brave, doesn't give a toss, and smashes through everything in his way to the point it feels almost ridiculous - but in the best way. After Grace's tiring, methodical gameplay, Leon's power fantasy is genuinely refreshing.
Resident Evil Requiem review screenshots
Familiar Loops, Polished Execution
If you've played a modern Resident Evil game, you know the rhythm: explore meticulously designed environments, solve environmental puzzles (find the crank, grab the battery, fuel the generator), manage your inventory like a Tetris minigame, and aim for zombie heads. Requiem doesn't reinvent this loop; it perfects it.
The early game does lean hard into inventory management, particularly during Grace's opening hours. With limited slots and items aplenty (even on Classic difficulty), you'll spend a fair bit of time shuttling between safe rooms, storing items, retrieving them, and ferrying them to where they're needed. This creates a pacing issue: when you're clearing corridors of zombies only to walk the same routes repeatedly, the horror diminishes.
Enemies won't react to sound, you can sprint past them with ease, and once an area's cleared, it becomes a bit of a walking simulator. At one point, I had 50 bullets and several stealth kill items, which is hardly the scarcity survival horror demands.
That said, this issue's confined to the early game. Once you progress past Grace's initial section, the pacing evens out, and the game finds its stride.
Atmosphere and Enemies
The atmosphere's exceptional. Capcom's crafted some genuinely terrifying new monsters - easily amongst the best the studio's ever designed. Regular zombies feel a bit bland by comparison, but that's inevitable when you're working on the ninth major instalment in a franchise. It's hard to make the shambling undead feel fresh at this point.
The main villain, Victor Gideon, will give you proper chills at first, even if he looks like Sam Fisher raided a reptile house and decided to make it fashion. The night-vision goggles and snake skin coat are absurd, yet somehow it works. He's uneasy, gross, and manages to crawl under your skin with his unsettling presence. As the game goes on, though, his credibility falters. For someone who acts so calculating and intelligent, allowing two people to run around his clinic, undoing his plans at every turn, doesn't reflect well on him. He becomes a bit daft by the end, which undermines the threat he initially posed. It's safe to say that he isn't prime Wesker.
Boss fights are serviceable but unremarkable. They're mechanically simple - shoot the glowing weak points, parry and avoid attacks, repeat - and feel similar to previous RE games. They didn't seem to be the focus of the development team, and it shows. That said, they're not tedious. They serve as brief breaks from the usual exploration and puzzle-solving loop, and in that capacity, they work fine.
What elevates Requiem are the action set pieces like Leon taking down a pack of zombie dogs while riding his bike, the eerie moments designed to make your skin crawl when Grace is trembling with fear while hidden under a desk from a monster, and the mysteries that slowly unravel. It all comes together, both narratively and mechanically, into a cohesive, polished experience.
Technical Mastery
In terms of production quality, Capcom's peaked here. The cinematics, acting, animations, and photography are all top-tier - neck and neck with industry leaders like Naughty Dog or Kojima Productions. Motion capture is evident in almost every animation, creating believable, lifelike characters. This is especially true for Leon. The way he reloads, moves, and reacts feels so natural that it genuinely impressed me multiple times.
Grace's voice actor Angela Sant'Albano deserves special mention. She delivers a performance that sounds so genuine and real that I never once doubted her fear. She's utterly convincing, and part of why I bought into it so completely is because I believed I'd be exactly the same in that situation - absolutely shitting myself. That authenticity makes Grace's sections far more effective, far more scary.
Graphically, Resident Evil Requiem's one of the best-looking games of this generation. On PC, path tracing delivers almost lifelike visuals to the point I was mindblown by what I was seeing on the screen. The way light bounces around rooms, the handling of glossy surfaces and reflections, is simply stunning, comparable to other path-traced games like Alan Wake 2 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but with everything cranked up a notch higher.
The fire and smoke effects in particular are jaw-dropping. There's a specific sequence near a church where you're sniping zombies with Leon, and the fire effects are genuinely the best I've ever seen in a video game. The lighting overall is probably the new industry standard. I can't really think of a game that did it better. The way Capcom's designed certain locations later in the game (don't want to spoil stuff) to be elevated by the lighting is simply superb. It's cinematic, immersive, and brings the post-apocalyptic atmosphere to an entirely new level later in the game.
There's grain and noise, though, as with most path-traced games, but it's not distracting like in Cyberpunk 2077, especially if you disable unnecessary screen effects like chromatic aberration and lens flares. I even managed to mod out grain, which helped immensely with image quality.
Performance-wise, path tracing is demanding but not as punishing as you'd expect. The first outdoor area, the rainy street with a bunch of lit, neon signs and reflections, will hammer your GPU. I was getting around 58fps on a 4080 with DLSS Performance, Frame Generation x2 at 4K, max settings. Once you move indoors, which is like 80% of the game, performance jumps to around 100fps and stays smooth throughout.
The sound design's incredible, too. Grace's sections feature eerie, percussive music that builds tension and dread, whilst Leon's sequences are accompanied by aggressive electronic tracks with dark, dirty basslines and synths that make you feel like a proper badass while unleashing your arsenal on the undead.
AltChar's Verdict
Resident Evil Requiem is one of the best Resident Evil games ever made. Whilst RE2 Remake remains my personal favourite, largely due to its unforgettable atmosphere and nostalgic weight, Requiem comes bloody close. It's a game that understands what makes Resident Evil special and executes on that vision with confidence and technical brilliance.
Yes, there are minor stumbles: early pacing issues with inventory management, a villain who loses credibility, and boss fights that feel routine. But when a game's this polished, this atmospheric, and this engaging, those missteps fade into the background. Capcom's delivered an incredible package - one that respects the series' history whilst pushing it forward in meaningful ways.
I couldn't recommend it enough.
The Good
Exceptional production values and technical execution- Smart dual-protagonist structure with contrasting playstyles
- Best-in-class path traced lighting
- Intricate, rewarding level design
- Genuinely terrifying new enemy designs
The Bad
Early-game inventory management creates pacing issues- Boss fights are serviceable but unremarkable
