Resident Evil Requiem is PURE CINEMA

Article at a glance:

• After the performance mess of MH Wilds and Dragon’s Dogma 2, Requiem launches polished, optimized, and smooth as hell on day one.
• Parries, hatchet finishers, chainsaws, a magnum named Requiem, 50-year-old Leon is aura farming at an illegal rate.
• Grace delivers raw, uncomfortable horror while Leon brings aggressive veteran energy, and the balance between the two is perfect.

You know, I was kind of worried about Resident Evil Requiem because Capcom kinda fumbled with MH Wilds and Dragon’s Dogma 2. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think those are good games, but their performance and optimization are indefensible. But I feel no shame in saying that Resident Evil Requiem is one of the best games they’ve ever made, and it had me ITCHING to write this review. The game plays incredibly well, looks amazing, and, best of all, has no major optimization issues or bugs on day 1. Heck, even the system requirements are reasonable.

So, full disclosure, I am about 6 hours into the game, and I believe I’ve only seen half of the story so far, probably less than that, so I will not talk about the story in detail here. Of course, I want to avoid spoilers as well. What I will be focusing on is the gameplay, optimization, performance, and everything else Capcom absolutely NAILED in this game.

But yeah, with all that disclaimer out of the way, welcome to my review of Resident Evil Requiem. And man, this game is so damn amazing.

Leon is a GOD at this point

All of Leon’s gameplay segments are so damn cool. They’re fast, responsive, and just make you feel like a true veteran in action. There is no wasted movement; you can FEEL Leon’s experience and confidence in every single action. Of course, the roundhouse kicks are back; he even kicks doors open now, and you have a damn hatchet to finish off enemies and parry attacks. Who the hell was cooking this Michelin-star meal, man?

Bro, Leon can now pick up chainsaws for himself and still keep that “just another Tuesday” energy LMAO.

Apparently, Capcom had its whole female staff focus on making Leon as cool as possible, and it shows. Just from the intro alone, man oozes SO MUCH charisma. He starts off with a damn mag in his inventory, bro, what else do you want me to say? And even still, they manage to make it feel balanced because your ammo and healing items are still limited, so you have to make your shots count. A man in his 50s SHOULD NOT be THIS cool, bro.

Grace is an Nice Addition

Leon’s gameplay sections feel even better when contrasted with Grace’s. Because, unlike Leon, Grace is timid, horrified, and just a young girl dealing with a lot of trauma. So her gameplay sections are more traditional horror. You are not exactly defenseless, but through subtle details like Grace shivering when aiming or stumbling while running, you can tell how uncomfortable she is.

Huge shout-out to Grace’s voice actor, Angela Sant’Albano. She does such a fantastic job of conveying how absolutely terrified Grace is. Even when she breaks down during her flashback, it feels deeply uncomfortable because of how good the voice acting is. It is such a stark contrast to Leon’s side, and it makes sense. Grace is like us, the player; meanwhile, Leon has been dealing with all this for damn near 30 years now.

Just in the first hour alone, the game hooks you in with some of the best set-pieces the Resident Evil franchise has to offer. Resident Evil games have always had a strong opening hour, think Mia chopping Ethan’s hand off or encountering all those monsters in Village, or surviving the La Plagas infected in a small open section in RE4 and RE5, but even then, Requiem just feels different.

Performance and Fidelity

The game runs smoothly as hell even on budget machines, it has no major bugs, and if you Nvidia GPU, you get a TON of options to mess around with. Now, I have to be fair, the game does have Denuvo, which is an immediate negative to people like me, and if it wasn’t RE9, I wouldn’t even have thought of buying the game till they removed Denuvo.

But even then, I am happy to report that the game runs well, so the performance will only get better over time when they remove Denuvo a year or two down the line. And knowing Capcom, the game will be on a massive discount by then, too. So if you want to wait a little, you will only be rewarded. It was just recently that they massively discounted RE4 Remake after removing Denuvo from it.

Now, I don’t have a beefy enough PC to run all the fancy stuff like ray-tracing and path-tracing, but you do, trust me, you won’t be disappointed. The game looks really damn good even on lower settting but it just looks breathtaking with everything maxed out. So if you are rich enough to afford a 5090, you will not be let down for sure. Just the first city section you play as Grace feels so alive with stuff happening everywhere. It really did catch me off guard.

In Conclusion

I don’t think there really is any surprise that Resident Evil Requiem has been getting glowing reviews all around, and of course, this review is no different. I think this is one of Capcom’s best offerings, period. It is short, but a very focused experience and infinitely replayable, like most RE games are. Well worth the asking price in my opinion, but Capcom games go on discounts VERY often, so if you’re willing to wait for a few months, you can get it for cheaper if you want. Your money, do as you will with it.

But yeah, RE9 is my Game of the Year so far, I don’t know if another release will change it, but I ADORE this game. I don’t know about the plot yet, but I may upgrade the rating to a 10/10 depending on how the story goes. With that said, though, I will take my leave here. See ya!