Resident Evil Requiem

The last Resident Evil game I really sat down and played was Resident Evil 5. Before that, I had gone through most of the mainline classics: RE2, RE3, and RE4. So I came into Requiem as someone with a decent sense of what the series can be, but who had missed everything in between.

For those who might not be aware: Resident Evil as a franchise has straddled two different tones throughout the years. The earlier entries and some of the more recent ones lean into pure survival horror: limited resources, oppressive atmosphere, and a constant sense that you are outmatched. Others, like RE4 and RE5, shift toward a more action-oriented style where you feel considerably more in control. Personally, I always found myself gravitating toward the latter. Not because I dislike survival horror — I genuinely enjoy it when it is done well. I like atmosphere, tension, and that specific feeling a game gives you when it makes you cautious. But survival horror can be draining when you are sitting in that tension for hours on end. RE4 and RE5 just felt more immediately accessible to me personally.

What surprised me about Requiem is that it gave me both sides of Resident Evil in a way that felt surprisingly organic.

The game alternates you between its two protagonists, Grace and Leon. Grace's sections carry on the more classic survival horror style that RE7 and Village built upon: first person, limited resources, and  that constant feeling that you are not quite equipped for what is in front of you. Leon's sections pull in the opposite direction, leaning into the kind of action-oriented third person gameplay that RE4 is known for. The different weapon loadouts, inventory limitations, character capabilities, and recommended perspectives all reinforce that split.

All that genuinely pushed me into a different state of mind depending on who I was playing as. With Grace, I felt vulnerable, cautious, and tense in the way good survival horror is supposed to make you feel. With Leon, I felt more capable and confident, ready to push forward rather than carefully inch through a corridor. That rhythm worked really well for me personally. The Grace sections gave the horror enough time to actually land, while the Leon sections gave me room to breathe before the dread became too exhausting. In some ways, playing as Leon felt like a reward after the more oppressive Grace portions, which is a dynamic I did not expect to appreciate as much as I did.

Between the two protagonists, Grace stood out to me as the more interesting character. She feels grounded and closer to an ordinary person being pulled into something terrible, which made her sections feel more frightening and human. The tension I felt when playing as her was not just about dark corridors or things potentially jumping out. It was that she herself felt less prepared for what was happening, and that made her sections feel more personal in a way that Leon's (fun as they are) simply did not match.

On the production side of things, the atmosphere and overall polish are exactly what you would expect from a franchise of this scale. Even when the story is not doing anything especially surprising, the moment-to-moment experience stays engaging enough to keep you moving.

Which brings me to the weakest part: the story. It is functional and easy to follow, but also fairly basic and predictable. It is not the kind of writing I would hold up next to something like The Last of Us. But I also do not think Requiem lives or dies by its plot. I was more engaged by how the game felt to play than by where the story was going, and for the kind of experience Requiem is going for, that feels like the right trade-off.

For someone coming in fresh or returning after a long gap, Requiem works surprisingly well as a starting point to the series today. By putting both sides of the franchise in a single game, it gives you a pretty clear sense of where your taste sits within the franchise. If the Grace sections resonate more, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village are waiting. If Leon's side is what kept you going, Resident Evil 4 (Remake) is the obvious next stop. With a back catalogue as deep as this one, knowing which direction to head feels like a genuinely useful thing to walk away with.

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PC Optimized Settings

For PC users, the following are Digital Foundry's recommended settings to achieve the best balance of image quality and frame rate. The PS5 settings are included as a point of comparison. Watch Digital Foundry's full PC tech review for a deeper look at performance and settings.