Resident Evil Requiem review – the best Resi since 2005

Capcom’s seminal survival horror is about to reach its 30th anniversary and new game Requiem is exactly the sort of celebration the franchise deserves.

Resident Evil will be 30 years old in March and it’s almost unique in video games, in that all its characters age in real-time. Leon S. Kennedy was just a rookie policeman when he starred in 1998’s Resident Evil 2, but now he’s turning 50 and his famously floppy hair is sprinkled with grey.

Growing old with the stars (pun intended) of the Resident Evil franchise has been an impressively consistent pleasure, with the odd below par entry, such as immediate predecessor Resident Evil Village, but no true sinkers except for the infamous Resident Evil 6. And yet Requiem does share some small amount of DNA with that entry, in that you’re controlling two completely different characters with very different gameplay styles.

But while Resident Evil 6 was an incoherent mess that did a dozen different things, all badly, Requiem is the best entry since the original Resident Evil 4. It doesn’t really move the franchise forward but in a way that almost makes it more impressive, as it proves that the same undead formula still has what it takes to entertain after all these years.

Since Resident Evil has never had a hard reboot, the same ongoing story has been continuing for three decades, and this still has references that were seeded in the original game. They’re minor though and the story can easily be enjoyed without any knowledge of the originals, as you follow FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, who has been mixed up with evil residents since an early age, when she witnessed her mother being brutally killed.

Grace is not a field agent and so has no expert fighting skills and no idea why the enjoyably evil Victor Gideon wants to kidnap her. Both are new characters and Grace makes a very good everywoman protagonist, scared out of her wits but with enough courage to soldier on.

Although you can switch perspectives for both playable characters, by default Grace’s sections are played from a first person view, like Resident Evil 7 and Village. However, her gameplay style is very similar to old school Resident Evil, with limited ammo and a slower pace that’s focused more on exploration and scares than it is action. There’s even a worryingly finite supply of ink ribbons, needed to save the game, if you choose the harder of the two standard difficulty modes.

A unique crafting element, based around collecting blood from defeated zombies, is new though and creates some interesting tactical decisions, particularly around an injection that can one-shot enemies – including larger ones almost impossible to beat by normal means – or prevent defeated zombies from mutating into more powerful blister heads after a period of time. You can only craft so many of the injections, so how you use them is a difficult choice.

There’s very little puzzling solving, but Grace’s sections still feel authentically old school, as you overcome absurdly overcomplicated door locks and are forced to run past, or creep around, zombies you don’t have enough ammo for. The game isn’t consistently scary – and never with Leon – but there’re some extended moments with Grace that are amongst the most tense and frightening in the whole series.

The game switches control to Leon at certain story milestones and while his sections can be played in first person they work much better in third person, as they control very much like the Resident Evil 4 remake. Whereas Grace’s most effective melee skill is lightly pushing a staggered zombie, Leon’s age hasn’t stopped his penchant for roundhouse kicks or a new fascination with using a massive hatchet to both attack enemies and block anything up to, and including, chainsaws.

He’s got some hilariously over-the-top one shot kill animations and while the use of detailed gore, in specific set pieces, is only a little more pronounced than usual, the aftermath of one of Leon’s battles paints the floors and walls with so much claret it looks like he’s been playing Splatoon with buckets of blood instead of paint.

Leon’s mix of melee and gun combat is hugely enjoyable and the gunplay alone, with a surprisingly wide range of different weapons, is far better than many games where that’s the sole focus of the action.

Not only is the game mechanically sound but the action is always framed in interesting and inventive scenarios, from Grace’s terrifying meat grinder experience to a section where Leon is fighting on a skyscraper that’s been turned on its side, so he’s walking on the windows – which will shatter if you run on them but allow you to shoot the ground out from beneath enemies.

Although Grace is nominally the lead protagonist they both get about equal playtime as playable characters, although it’s a little hard to say as there’s no predictable pattern for how long their sections will last – although generally it’s at least 30 minutes and usually several hours.

We beat the game in 13 hours, although we had played around four hours of it in previews beforehand, so it’ll probably work out at around 15 hours for the average person on their first go. That feels about the right length for the story and gameplay, as while there’s a number of small innovations this isn’t reinventing the wheel in the same way Resident Evil 4, or even 7, did.

Whether that counts as a flaw depends on your history with the series but despite having technically seen it all before we loved every minute of the experience. Especially as it’s such a pleasure to play a game with graphics this good and yet virtually no bugs or glitches. The frame rate dips very slightly in a few isolated instances, on a base PlayStation 5, but otherwise it’s technically flawless.

What niggles there are relate to the lack of any ancillary modes, with no Mercenaries mode or any similar equivalent. Given how good the combat is that’s a major disappointment and while it may be coming as DLC, it’s not clear whether it’d be free or not and either way Capcom hasn’t announced it yet.

There’re also some tonal inconsistencies in the game, which is 90% pure shlock – in the best possible way – but in a few awkward instances still tries to take itself seriously, much in the same way as the Resident Evil 2 remake did. We thought Capcom had given up on that approach, but the game’s edgier moments clash awkwardly with Leon’s blizzard of, hugely entertaining, dad joke one-liners.

We also have to admit that we should’ve paid more heed to our own warnings about the pitfalls of video game previews, as what we played in our last hands-on did in fact turn out to be the best part of the game. It’s not like the rest of it is a major downgrade but the final hour or so does feel undercooked and there’s no truly great boss battle in the whole game.

These are mere specks of dirt in an otherwise spotless whole, but we really hope that there’s some substantial DLC on the way because Requiem is just too much fun for this to be it. It’s the most entertained we’ve been by the series since the GameCube days and for a franchise as old as this, that’s the best anniversary present you could ask for.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £64.99
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 27th February 2026
Age Rating: 18

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